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my youngest, three years old, got in here last week while I was making tea. found my good carving tool, the Pfeil No. 11, the one I've had about twelve years, the handle's worn to fit my hand. took it out to the garden and carved his name into the concrete path. just scratched it in there, lovely and deep, like a little viking. I was raging for about thirty seconds before I realised that's the most permanent mark I've ever seen that gouge make. sure I'll never move house now, there's a signature on the place. the worst of it though is I spent the next hour hunting for the gouge I was actually using before he came in, the 5mm V-tool, I'd only put it down for a second, and I still haven't found it. it's gone. the kids have their own dimension where tools go. I'll find it in a welly boot in three years. anyway the path has beautiful lettering now, fair play to him. kid's got a steady hand.

Still using the same cross-peen hammer I started with in 1989. Handle's been rewrapped three times, head's got a wobble I've learned to work with. My daughter keeps trying to buy me a new one for Christmas. Told her I'd rather have the old one back even if it broke in half. You spend that many hours with a tool in your hand, it stops being a tool. It's an extension of something. You know exactly how it's going to land before it lands. She doesn't get it. Most people don't. But I suspect some of you do.

weird thing I've never told anyone in studio circles. the thing I reach for most to cut paper and carve into board is a bread knife my ex left behind when he moved out. he didn't want it, it was in the drawer of stuff neither of us claimed. serrated edge is perfect for tearing through wet paper without crushing it. been using it four years now. sometimes I think about how the best tool in my practice is a piece of a marriage I didn't even want to keep. I don't know what that says about me or the work but it's true. anyone else working with objects that have a weird history attached? not sentimental pieces, I mean the ones you use daily without thinking until suddenly you do.

I've got a tungsten carbide chisel I've had since 1994. The handle is pretty much gone, wrapped in electrical tape now. Still takes an edge better than anything I've ever bought since. Apprentice I had ten years ago asked to borrow it. I told him no, flat. He got a little offended. Few years later he called me up and said now he gets it. Everybody's got that one tool. The one that's been through enough that it knows your hand. Not sentimental exactly. Just practical. It's earned its place.

Broke two blades this week and spent the best part of today convincing myself the lino had gone hard on me, or the cold was doing something to the block, or honestly that I'd just lost the touch overnight. Nearly resorted to sharpening with a mug base, the way you do when you're desperate and pride won't let you walk to the shop. Checked the block. Checked the bench. Swore at the dog, who was innocent. Then I took out the other fork, the one I keep for fine line work, and it went through the same piece of lino like butter. Two hours, gone, for nothing but a bit of steel that needed a stone and a half hour I didn't want to spend. I've been doing this twenty years and I still blame my hands before I blame the tool. You'd think I'd learn. The dog's still not talking to me.

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.

Been at the same studio for twenty-two years. My DeWalt angle grinder dates back to the first month. Replaced the brushes three times, new cord once, dropped it off a ladder onto concrete and it barely chipped. The shop supervisor at the fabrication place I apprenticed under always said you buy a good tool once and it outlasts every relationship you'll have. He wasn't wrong. Finally had to retire it today. The armature's gone, I can smell it, and no amount of new brushes fixes that. Put it on the shelf instead of in the bin. Can't bring myself to toss it. Which is ridiculous, it's a tool, tools get used up. That's the point of them. My kid asked why I kept it and I didn't have an answer. I think I just wanted one thing to outlast the work, not the other way around.

I've got a 1-inch gouge I bought secondhand in 1998 for eight bucks. The handle is worn down to the tang from years of tapping and mallet work. I've resharpened it so many times the blade is two-thirds what it was. And it still cuts cleaner than any of the Japanese steel I've tried since. Everyone wants to sell you a better tool. But a tool you've worn in with your own hands for two decades knows something a new one doesn't. You can feel it through the handle before the edge even touches the stone. Probably sounds like superstition to anyone under 30. But I know old fabricators who say the same thing about their hammers, their trowels, their welding clamps. The tool gets old with you.

That old Singer from the 50s, my grandmother's machine, it's still right there in the corner of my studio. She bought it secondhand when I was a little girl and it's sewn every quilt I ever made, every dress for every child, every hem I ever turned. It's got a sound to it, a kind of whir and thump that's as steady as a heartbeat. The light flickers sometimes and I have to jiggle the cord just so. My granddaughter keeps telling me to get a new one, a modern one that does all the fancy stitches and whatnot. And I tried one, a couple years back, borrowed a neighbor's. Made a whole afternoon of it. And I couldn't stand it. Too quiet. Too smooth. Felt like the machine wasn't talking back to me. I know people say tools are just tools. But I don't know. That old Singer knows my hands. It's got my grandmother's prayers still in the metal somewhere. Anybody else got a tool they just can't swap out?

It was never meant for painting. It is a putty knife, a stiff one, with a wooden handle that has gone almost black at the thumb side. I bought it because I could not afford the proper scrapers that month, and now it is the only tool I really trust. Twenty-nine marks, if I remember right, and the shop is a bakery now. I have proper palette knives. Good ones, from a supplier in Düsseldorf, balanced and beautiful. I use them for maybe ten percent of the work. The rest is this ugly thing that I have to hold at a bad angle because the blade has worn uneven. It digs. It makes a scrape that the expensive knives cannot make, a kind of tearing that leaves the underpainting showing through in streaks. When I try to plan that effect with a good tool, it looks like decoration. With the putty knife it just happens. The handle is split now, about two centimeters down from the ferrule. I have wrapped it once with tape, which is worse than the split, so I took the tape off. I keep thinking I should buy another one, since putty knives are not rare. But a new one would have a square edge and a clean handle, and it would be a different tool. The whole point is that this one is no longer what it was sold as. Naja. Some days I think this is the only honest thing in the studio. Everything else I chose. This one I just kept.

Bought a new mallet two years ago. Carved ash head, hickory handle, nice weight to it. It sits on the shelf by the door and I walk past it every single day and pick up the ugly one I turned myself in '94 instead. That head has a chunk out of one face from a bad hit on a cold morning back when I was still renting shop time by the hour. Handle's been replaced twice. The new one is a better tool by every measure I can name. Still not the one in my hand at the end of the day. I think about this more than the thing probably deserves. You spend years learning a tool, you know where the weight sits before you lift it, you know how it's going to land. That's not sentiment. That's the work being in your hands instead of your head. Anyway the new mallet's for sale if anyone wants it. Cheap. It's a good tool. I just don't want it.

Been asked a dozen times why I don't upgrade my hammer. It's a 2.8 lb ball peen, head worn flat on one side, handle wrapped in tape I replace every couple years. Someone always points out I could get a new one for forty bucks. Here's the thing. That flat spot on the head is where twenty-five years of my thumb has worn it. I know exactly where it lands on the tool steel every single time, no looking. A new hammer would be a stranger for months. I don't have months to spend getting to know a hammer. Same reason I won't switch to those carbide-tipped chisels everyone swears by. Sure they cut longer. But I've got forty years of muscle memory in the old ones. The tool stops being a tool when it becomes an extension of your hand. That's not nostalgia. That's efficiency. Young guys think upgrading gear makes them better. Most times it just means starting over.

I've had these old Wiss scissors since I was maybe twelve years old. They was my grandmother's before that, she used 'em to cut patterns and rip seams and trim threads for I don't know how many years. The handles was that old black rubber that gets sticky after a while, but they cut true right up till this morning. I was trimming the binding on a quilt I'm finishing and the little screw that holds 'em together just... gave out. Dropped right onto the floor. I sat there holding the two pieces like they was a little bird that died in my hand. You know how it is with a tool that's been with you that long. It ain't just the tool. It's her hands on it before mine. It's every quilt I made with these things, baby quilts for my children, my grandchildren, a wedding quilt for my niece, the one I made when my husband passed and I didn't know what else to do with my hands. All of it in those blades. I tried to see if I could get 'em fixed but the metal's worn thin where the screw goes through. They're done. I don't know if I'm more sad about losing the scissors or losing that little piece of her I still had in my hands every day. Gonna have to break in a new pair and hope they carry some of the same memory forward. That's the way of it, I suppose. Tools wear out. What they helped you make stays.🙏

Not a metaphor. I have four hammers in the shop and I could not find the one I wanted. The 2 lb cross peen, the one with the taped handle from 1994. Ended up using the wrong one and left a mark on a piece I've been carving since June. That's the whole job some days. You lose 40 minutes looking for a tool you had in your hand yesterday. People think the work is the work. Half of it is knowing where your tools are and having the discipline to put them back. I know a guy who has everything on a shadow board, outlines traced on pegboard, every chisel in its slot. Nothing moves. I can't work like that. My bench is a mess and always has been. But there's a difference between a mess and losing your tools. I crossed that line somewhere and didn't notice. Spent the rest of the morning fixing the mark instead of carving. Good lesson. Expensive one.

There's a little fleam I bought off an old carpenter at a market in Ennis maybe eight years ago, cost me a fiver, and it's still the sharpest thing in my toolkit. Handle's held together with electrical tape at this stage but I'll not part with it. Every morning I'm in the studio I run it along the edge of a gouge a couple of times and it brings the life back into it. And then I've a brand new burnisher I paid forty-odd quid for sitting in a drawer since I got it because the one I actually use is a smooth bit of bone I found on the beach in Connemara. Kid you not. Dog dug it up, I cleaned it off, and it's the perfect thing. What's the bit of kit you won't let go of because it works and that's all that matters, and what's the expensive thing you own that you barely touch? I'm not talking brushes obviously, we all have the brush we'd cry over losing. I mean the odd bits.

There's a fella in the market who sharpens things for a living. Kitchen knives, secateurs, shears, he's there every Saturday with his stones and his strops and a little whetstone wheel rigged up to a bicycle chain somehow, and sure it's an education to watch him. I brought him my best carving gouge last week because I'd nicked the edge on something stupid, a staple I'd missed in a bit of lino, was raging with myself, and he handed it back and just said "whoever taught you to sharpen taught you right." And I thought about that more than I expected to. I learned from an old printer up in Sligo, man who could carve a heron's wing feather in a single cut and make it look like breathing. He taught me to sharpen dry, no oil, on a fine arkansas stone, and to feel the burr with your thumb rather than look for it. He'd say "you're not grinding metal, you're coaxing an edge out of it" and I used to think that was gas altogether till I realised he meant it. Anyway it got me thinking about how much of how we make things is just passed hand to hand like that. Little rituals. The way you hold your knife. The angle you trust without measuring. Someone showed you once and you've been doing it their way ever since, maybe without even knowing. I still sharpen dry. I check with my thumb. And I think of him every time.

i have a perfectly good easel. i have a drafting table i found on facebook marketplace for $40. and yet for the last three months i've been doing all my small studies on a clipboard i grabbed from the checkout aisle at stop & shop while buying trash bags. it's just... the right amount of friction. i can prop it on my lap, lean it against a stack of books, take it outside, set it down anywhere. there's something about the lack of ceremony that makes starting easier. no adjusting, no standing up, no "ok now i am in the studio doing Art." just grab the clipboard and go. i think i've made more paintings this quarter than the last two combined and i hate admitting it's because of a $6 piece of bent metal and a spring clip. but here we are. what's the dumbest thing in your setup that you're secretly loyal to

I see younger sculptors reaching for angle grinders before they've learned to read the grain. Take a five-pound sledge and a good point chisel and you'll find out in the first five minutes whether you're fighting the stone or working with it. A grinder just makes dust faster. It doesn't teach you anything. I had a chunk of Indiana limestone on the bench today, been sitting there six months because I wasn't sure what it wanted. Took the sledge to it this morning. Knew in ten swings. Sometimes you just have to commit and see what happens.

People assume the important equipment in the studio is the welder or the gantry. It's a magnet on a length of builder's twine. Maybe 40 cm of twine, a speaker magnet from a dead radio, and I lower it into whatever cavity I've built and listen for the click. Steel frame, hidden nail, a screw I forgot. If it snags, I have found the thing that will hold the weight. If it goes quiet the whole way down, I go back and rethink. I have a laser level. It lives under a pile of rags. The magnet is in my jacket pocket right now and has been for maybe six years. There is something honest about it. It cannot lie to me and it does not need batteries and when the piece is finished nobody will ever know it was there. Most of the work is like that. Also the twine has a knot about a third of the way along that means nothing. I have forgotten what it was for. I will not be removing it.

Twenty-two years I carved with the same bent-out-of-shape Pfeil blade I got in a job lot off a fella in Ennis for a tenner. Sharpened it on a stone till it was more tooth than blade. Knew exactly how it wanted to lean into the lino, every wobble and catch. Then the kids bought me a proper set for the birthday. Beautiful bits of steel, sharp as a hangover. And sure I'm useless with them. Carved the same hare three times this week and threw the lot in the bin. The old blade had a character to it, the new ones are too perfect, if that makes sense. Like they won't forgive you a mistake. I'll get there. But there's a fella in this room who misses his bent knife, and he's the one doing the carving. There's a lesson in that somewhere and I don't like the look of it. Anyway. Back to it.