An ingenious idea!!

My 'new to me' loom still is not put together and in usable condition yet. To read about how I came across this loom check out this blog post.
One of the things that need to be done is replacing of some of the dowels on the sectional beam.

So I started out with a 3 foot piece of dowel rod and cut it into short pieces the correct length.

Then I had to figure out how I was going to taper it at one end like all the others. Sand paper was the only thing that I could think of.

Then my wonderful husband came up with this ingenious idea of using a pencil sharpener. Not just any pencil sharpener, but he big kind made for those flat carpenter's pencils.

Wow!! In no time at all I had all the little dowel pieces 'sharpened' down to match the original dowels.

All I need to do now is just smooth them on the edges so no yarns get snagged.
Then the messy part come. I need to drill out the old ones that have broken off. Going to have the shop vac running at the same time so, hopefully, I won't have a huge mess!

Thank you so much Rob!!