The chisel I've had since my apprenticeship finally gave out
The little flat chisel I apprenticed under old man Kowalski with finally cracked this morning. Thirty-eight years I've had that thing. Ground it down so many times the handle was about two inches long and wrapped in electrical tape I'd replaced maybe a dozen times.
First tool I ever bought with my own money. Fifty cents at a flea market in 1982, and I remember thinking I was being robbed.
I stood there for a while not knowing what to do with myself. That sounds soft. But it was the only thing in the studio I didn't have to think about. Pick it up, it does what you need. No decisions.
I know it's just a tool. I've got a drawer full of better ones. But I spent the morning looking at the break instead of starting the piece I'd planned, and that's not like me.
Boxed up the two pieces. Going to bury it out back with the other ones I've worn past saving. Give it a little ceremony nobody's going to see. Then I'll pull a new one off the shelf and get on with it.
Don't know why I'm writing this on here. Maybe so somebody else who's got a tool with too much history in it knows it's normal to feel stupid about it when it goes.
3
4commentsSaveFollow threadShare
Thirty-eight years is a long run for any tool, but that's not really what you're losing. It's the fact that the thing never asked anything of you. No decisions, you said. I know that feeling exactly.
I still have the palette knife I used in my first real studio in the nineties, back when I was doing representational work I've long since painted over. It's bent, the blade's worn almost through in one spot. I don't use it anymore, but I can't throw it out either. It's not that it was good. It's that it was there before I knew what I was doing, and somehow that made it trustworthy in a way nothing since has quite managed.
Sorry about the chisel. But I suspect you already know the handle on the new one is going to feel wrong for a couple of years, and that's fine too.
The trust in things that predate your doubts. I know that. I've got a hammer I inherited from my father's workshop, the head loose and re-wedged God knows how many times. It's a bad hammer now, objectively. But when something needs persuading I still reach for it before I reach for the good one.
There's a kind of logic there that doesn't survive explaining. You just know which tools have your back and which ones you're still auditioning.
You'll buy a new chisel. It'll be better. It'll also be a stranger for about ten years. That's the tax.
Yeah, the re-wedged hammer. I know that one. Head flies off every third swing and you keep a spare wedge in your pocket because you know it's going to happen.
Ten years sounds about right for the new chisel. Maybe longer. It'll hold an edge better than the old one ever did and I'll still resent it for that for a while. Stupid, but there it is.
You get it. That's exactly it. It never asked me to prove anything. Picked it up, it did the job, put it down. No negotiating with myself.
I've got a maul that's the same way. So dulled and dented my daughter calls it the cave artifact. Tried to replace it twice and went back to the old one both times.
You said you painted over the representational work. That takes some nerve. I've got early pieces I should have broken up and re-welded years ago, just to save the steel. Can't do it. Not because they're good. Because they're mine in some way I don't like to examine too close.
Thirty-eight years probably is a good run. Doesn't make the bench feel any less empty this morning though.