That's false, I know exactly how to make a pencil. I know because I look it up in case I'm mysteriously transported back to the Roman Empire times.
The hard part is finding graphite (somewhere in Wales? looks like lead, but softer and leaves traces on sheep's wool). Then suitable clay to make the lead. Then some kind of glue to glue the two parts of the pencil (boil some bones and cartilages?).
The task isn't "make something that you could plausibly call a pencil". It's "understand every step of how a modern pencil is produced".