6. Before they are neat, cylindrical pencils, they are like conjoined octuplets—a single flat piece of cedar the length of one pencil and the width of eight, called slats. California Cedar Products Company (CCPC) has produced the slats that become Musgrave pencils for “30 or 40 years,” Hulan says, and still does—though in 2001 CCPC outsourced production to its Chinese subsidiary, Tianjin Custom Wood Processing, Co. The California firm ships Oregon wood in containers via the Port of Portland to Tianjin; re-imports the processed slats through the Port of Oakland; and trucks those slats to Shelbyville—and around the world: “About 60 percent of our product is for export,” says CCPC President Charles Berolzheimer.