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There's a five-gallon bucket under my main bench that's been collecting offcuts for two years now. Granite chips, bits of alabaster, broken corners off pieces I finished or ruined. I tell myself I'll use them for something someday. Mosaic maybe. Or just crush them for texture in a base. I've never done it. I just keep dropping scraps in there and looking at it sometimes. Some habits are just habits. Not everything needs a reason. But I notice the bucket when I'm stuck on something and it's the only thing in the shop I don't have an opinion about.

Been using the same 1/4 inch masonry bit since 1994. It's got maybe an eighth of an inch left on it and the carbide's chipped in two places. I've got a drawer full of new ones that cut cleaner. But that old bit has gone through three shop walls and half a dozen concrete pours, and I know exactly how it walks before it bites. New ones chatter. That one just goes. My daughter keeps telling me to retire it. Says it's sentimental, like the thing has feelings. It doesn't. It's just measured. When you've pulled a tool a thousand times you don't think about it, you just know the weight of it in your hand. Same reason I don't change how I set a weld after thirty years. Not habit. Just settled. Most people think the old guys are stubborn. We're not. We just already found the thing that works and we're not going to fight it.

Did a forged and welded stair rail last spring. Twelve feet, fourteen balusters, hand-scrolled top and bottom. Quoted $9,500 installed. Client never blinked, which should have told me something. Steel went up between the quote and the buy. Not a little. The tube alone came in at $2,100 when I'd figured $1,300. I have a habit of not putting an escalation clause in the small jobs because I think it makes me look like a shyster. So I ate $800 out of my own pocket and told nobody. What actually chewed the job was the finish. They wanted a waxed black, and the wax has to go on warm in a ventilated space, so that's a full extra day with the shop doors open in March, torches running. I don't bill days like that. I bill the piece. That's the mistake. The piece is the easy part. The day after is what's expensive. The honest number was closer to $11,000. I'd have been paid it. They had the money and they liked the work. I'm 61 and I've been doing this thirty-plus years and I still undercharge on anything with a finish schedule, because in my head the finish is just "the last thing." It isn't. It's half the labor and it's the half that fails if you rush it. The rail is still dead straight two winters on, so I got that part right.

Steel prices have gone stupid. Last gate I did this size, the stock ran me about 1,100. That was four years ago. So the quote came out at 4,800 and I said it out loud to the guy and heard how it sounded. He didn't blink. Signed the deposit same day. Which tells me I was still low. The part nobody wants to count: 60 hours in the shop. Consumables, gas, grinding discs, the argon refill, the two trips to the yard because I miscalculated the first time. Finishing. Renting the trailer to deliver it. I did the math after and it's about 28 an hour before I take anything for the shop, the welder, or the twenty some years it took to be able to hang a gate that doesn't sag in ten years. 28 an hour is what a guy with a truck and a helper gets. I'm not complaining about the number. I'm saying I set it by adding up steel and doubling, which is a habit from when steel was cheap. If your material is half the job, doubling doesn't cover you. You need to price the hours like they cost something, and I keep not doing it. Raised it to 5,600 for the next one. Still haven't sent that quote.

I've got a limestone torso in the shop, about 90 pounds, Indiana limestone. Working the left hip down and took maybe a quarter inch more off than the drawing wanted. Caught it in raking light at the end of the day, the plane goes flat where it should stay round. Old habit says fix it. Take the whole side back, lose the width. I've done that before and ended up with something that measured right and felt thin. So I'm leaving it. Not because I'm making a point about imperfection. Because I think the fix costs more than the mistake. Cutting is one way. You can't put it back. Curious whether the rest of you know where your own line is. Not the theory of it. The actual moment you decide a thing stays.