Here, I zipped it for you: pencil jig.zip (11.3 KB)
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Thanks for that, @Jules (and @marmak3261 !!!). This is great. I think I’m going to try to make some customized colored pencils for my little niece. Her head is going to explode.
But, like, in a good way.
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Conversation in spin class this morning:
“I went to see my sister, Sarinda, in Canada.”
“I bet she never finds her name on a pencil.”
“Neither do I.”
Me: “How do you spell your name, Betina?”
“My name isn’t on a pencil, either. Kevin.”
“Wait… Kevin???”
“Spelled C-A-V-E-N.”
“Nope, you’ll never find that on a pencil.”
“You must have been born in Utah…”
Gauntlet thrown. Challenge accepted. I bought 2 1/2 gross last week because my sister-in-law, Shawnya Klingler, is a first grade teacher… and I like to play.
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This is so true!!! I can’t believe the creative spellings I see with my students. You can tell their parents were probably one of a dozen Jennifer, Jamie or Heathers back in the 80s and wanted their kid to be unique.
Heather P. (That’s what I always was in class, ha ha!)
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Thank you so much for sharing! Now I don’t have to pull my hair out trying to make the jig 
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Sorry to be that person, but I can’t make this work in Illustrator. It’s wildly resizing things and I thought perhaps it was the 72 vs 96 dpi problem, but that’s not it. There’s some wonky error:
This page contains the following errors:
error on line 6 at column 67: Namespace prefix inkscape for label on g is not defined
### Below is a rendering of the page up to the first error.
[totally blank]
Has this one worked for anyone in Illustrator? What might I not be thinking of, or what search term might be I missing?
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I decided it would be faster to remake the file instead of trying to referee Inkscape vs old versions Illustrator arguments between filetypes - here’s a jig for anyone else who might run into this same trouble.
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Last Sunday, a member of the boys leadership council came to me with a mini bat 2.5" long (6.35 cm for those over the pond) and a wee bit thicker than a pencil, and asked for a quote for 3 lines of engrave. without this Jig, I’d still be trying to figure out how to safely place 50 of these buggers. I truly can’t thank you enough.
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You are awesome been looking all over for this!
Thank @marmak3261, it’s his file. (I just zipped it.) 
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Question how big should this be? When I import it into the GF its running off the cutting bed?
So when I tried to open it did not work but I did download the svg above but it seems to be bigger than the cutting bed… do we know what size it should be?
I believe I sized mine to a 12x20" art board.
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The zip file was probably saved in AI.
If you are using Inkscape, right click on the drawing in the first post in the Topic, then Save As an SVG file to your desktop. It should come out the right size.
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Yeah I tried that initially and it wouldn’t let me save as SVG… That’s when I got to scrolling but I got it figured I just ignored that layer and it turned red…
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Thank you! You are my new best friend! 
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dude, I love this idea. Will probably use it when my glowforge finally comes in
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This tutorial was super helpful when I needed to engrave a bunch of workshop pencils for giveaways. One pro tip I do have for everyone else though, when setting up your file, make the first five sets of text each their own color, then make each group of five after that in different colors. Because the Glowforge will setup job sets based on color this lets you turn on and off different amounts of pencils so you can do any number from 1 to the full set. Additionally, adding score lines around groups of five makes it easier to keep track of them.
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that’s a great tip, thanks!
I am using Silhouette Studio and LOVE this idea… does anyone have just the jig itself without lettering in a zip they would be willing to share with me ? I downloaded the previous jig but am unable to remove the “makForge”… thank you for all your help 
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