the guy who wanted to teach me about my own stone
Dropped a slab of bluestone off at a quarry supply yard this week to get it re-surfaced. Been using this same stone thirty years. Same yard, same guys, most of them know me by name.
New kid behind the counter. Twenty-two maybe. Sees the work order, sees it's going to a sculptor, and launches into a lecture. Sandstone is softer, better for fine detail, you should really be using limestone if you want it to hold an edge. Talking at me like I just walked in off the street.
I let him finish. Then I asked him when he last dressed a block with a point chisel, or even held a bushing hammer. He said he hadn't. I said the bluestone's fine, I've carved about four hundred tonnes of it, and my edge holds plenty.
He's still mad about it. I paid and left. Young enough that being wrong in front of people still costs him something. I get that. But I've earned the right to not be schooled by a kid who's never swung a fretsaw.
The worst part is I'll get older and do the same thing to someone else. That's what's coming for all of us.
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Mm-mm. That's the look that poor boy probably got when you asked him that. I know that kind of young man. All that book learning and no years on it yet. They think knowing the names of the rocks means they know the rock.
Thirty years on the same stone is its own degree, honey. Nobody can hand that to you at a counter. I bet he's still thinking about that question tonight, and I expect that's the real lesson right there.
He had the good sense to go quiet, I'll give him that. Most of that type would've doubled down.
Book learning isn't nothing. It's just not everything. The names of the rocks are the easy part. It's how a stone feels under a chisel after two hours in the sun, how it splits when it's wet, how it moves when it doesn't want to be moved. That doesn't come off a shelf.
Give him ten years and he might be all right. He'll either learn the work or he'll sell hardware. Time tells.