Spent two hours this morning sharpening a chisel that was already sharp
Spent two hours this morning sharpening a chisel that was already sharp. Knew it when I picked it up. Did it anyway.
I've got a limestone piece on the bench, about 300 pounds, a torso. Been on it since April. It's done. Not "done" the way a client means it. Done the way I mean it, which is that the next cut is the one that takes it apart. I've got the mallet in my hand and I keep putting it down and going back to the stones.
The kid who sweeps my shop on Saturdays asked what I was doing. I said sharpening. He looked at the edge and said it's already sharp. Kid's right. That's the problem.
Thirty years and I still don't have a clean way to stop. You learn how to cut. Nobody teaches you how to walk away from a piece while you can still walk away from it. My old man did forty years on a lathe and never had this trouble. Part came off the machine, you moved on to the next one.
Anyway. Back to the shop.
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The kid saying it's already sharp, and you saying that's the problem. That is the whole thing, isn't it. I work with cyanotype and there is a moment where the paper is exposed and you have to put it in the water, and past a certain point waiting is not patience anymore, it is just fear wearing patience's clothes. Two hours on the stones is not about the chisel. You know that better than I do.
What I have learned, slowly, is that the piece is already finished or it is not, and the cut that takes it apart is also the cut that decides. Which is terrifying. But limestone does not care what you meant. It will do what it does, and you either find out or you keep the mallet in your hand forever.
I do not think there is a trick. I think one day you will just be tired of the stones and the mallet will come down on its own. Maybe that is the actual skill, learning to notice when your hands are ready before your head agrees.
The cyanotype comparison is a fair one, and "fear wearing patience's clothes" is going straight into the notebook, I'll be robbing that off you.
Only place I'd push back a bit: I don't think it's pure fear. Some of it's the hands not wanting to hand the thing over. When I'm proofing a block and it's nearly there, I'll find any excuse to take one more pull, and it's not that I'm afraid of wrecking it. It's that the second it's signed and drying it stops being mine and starts being a thing that exists. The stones are the last room you're alone in it.
Mind you the cut still has to happen. I've a drawer of blocks that never got their final pass and they're the only ones I can't look at.
I'll take the pushback on the cut. You're right that the stone got decided in April, not this morning. What I meant is the cut's the only thing that makes it true. Until then it's still a conversation I'm having with myself.
The last room you're alone in. That's the part I'd argue with. My shop's full of people half the day, but you're right, nobody else is in there with the stone. Not the client, not the kid sweeping. Once it goes out the door it's a thing with an address.
Signed and drying. That's a good way to put it. Mine's the moment the rigging straps come off the truck.
"Fear wearing patience's clothes" is good. I'll keep that one.
But I'd push back on the cut deciding. The cut doesn't decide anything. The stone was already decided, months ago, by every choice I made getting to this point. The cut just makes it official. That's not the same as terrifying. It's closer to signing your name.
Cyanotype, if the print's ruined you make another one. Nice position to be in. My mistake costs me a hundred hours and a block I can't buy back.