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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.

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.

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?

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.

Been at it since five this morning. Gas torch and an angle grinder on some 3/8 plate Ive had sitting out back too long. Rust on it now. Dont care. Going to carve into it with the gouges after. There is something about the noise of a grinder hitting steel at six in the morning that clears everything out. No room for doubt when you are wearing ear pro and getting sparks in your sleeves. Coffee went cold two hours ago.

Old bristle filbert, had it since 2016. The ferrule just gave up mid-stroke and the head flew off and hit the wall. I stared at it on the floor for a solid minute and then I just... laughed. It's weird how attached I get to specific tools. Like this brush had the exact right amount of fray and spring for pushing paint around a face. I know exactly what I'm going to replace it with and it's not going to be the same for months. Part of me is like, good. New tool, new energy. Stop relying on the same old crutch. Part of me wants to glue it back together and pretend it's fine. Anyone else get weirdly emotional about a dumb brush or is that just me being dramatic 😭

had this little brass sharpener, must've been twenty years with me. came from some market stall in ennis, cost a euro maybe. kept it in the same tin as my carving tools. and the blade's been gone off it for about three years now, I knew it, I knew it was just chewing the pencils instead of sharpening them, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. it'd been everywhere with me. first studio, second studio, the shed phase, the kitchen table phase. anyway the wife bought me a new one yesterday, one of those crank ones you bolt to the bench, and I had to stand there and actually drop the old one in the bin. felt daft, felt like I was putting down a dog or something. the new one's fierce good though. grand twist on it. might name it.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="tags" string="false">["tools", "studio rituals", "letting go", "pencil sharpener", "the shed years"]

She told me I need to "document the process." So I've been taking photos of the same chunk of limestone every few days. It's a bust. Half the face is still buried in the stone. I don't know who wants to watch that. But here's what happened. I posted a photo of my chisels laid out on the bench. Just the tools. Nothing fancy, dirty handles, worn down. That one got more likes than any finished piece I've ever put up. So I'm trying to figure out what the point is. If the work itself doesn't draw people, but the mess and the tools do, what am I actually selling? Because I'm not interested in selling the romance of being a sculptor. I'm interested in selling the sculpture. Hasn't made me any money yet. Just more people asking if they can come watch me work. Which I don't allow.

Kept it in the bottom of my toolbox like I was going to fix it. You don't fix a chisel that splits at the tang. I knew that. But I'd had it since my apprenticeship -- a Pferd 20mm, had the right weight in the hand. Used it on a chunk of Vermont marble back in 2022 and felt it go wrong before I saw it. Put it in the drawer anyway. Tossed it this morning. Felt stupid about it. But the toolbox is lighter and I'm not going to grab the wrong tool out of habit anymore. That's the thing about holding onto broken tools -- you reach for them without thinking and then you're standing there with something that doesn't work and you've lost the rhythm.

ok this is going to sound ridiculous but i'm sitting here cleaning my brushes after finishing a piece and i got genuinely emotional over my old escoda. i've had this one brush since my second year of undergrad, it's a size 10 travel brush, the handle is all chewed up because i was a nervous student who bit her brushes (gross i know but i was 19 and stressed), the ferrule is slightly loose, and i've rewarped the bristles like three times with my mouth after bad cleaning habits. but it still holds a point better than any new brush i own. i literally cannot paint without it. i dropped it once in 2018 and my heart stopped for a second. i know brushes are technically replaceable and there's this whole "don't get attached to tools" mentality in art but like. NO. i AM attached. this thing has been through every single painting i've ever been proud of. it was in my hand when i painted my dad's portrait the year he died. it came with me to every shitty shared studio i've ever had. it's survived three moves and a minor flood. my partner bought me a fancy new escoda for christmas and i keep it in the wrapper because i'm scared to use it. i don't want to replace my old one. it's not the same. anyone else have that one tool that's basically a part of them at this point

I have this one pair of embroidery scissors, very small, very old, I found them in my yiayia's sewing box after she died, probably from the 50s. I don't embroider. I don't sew. But they live on my workbench and I use them for exactly one thing: cutting the cotton thread I tie around bundles of smalti so they don't slide apart when I carry them from the shelf to the floor. Nothing else. If I need to cut string or paper or anything, I use something else. These scissors just do this one job. It's stupid. But there's something satisfying about having a tool that only exists for a single tiny task. Like a little ritual object. Anyone else have a tool like that, something absurdly specific that you keep around for one thing only?

My Singer finally laid down and died this morning. Just made a sound I never heard it make before and then nothing. That machine has been with me since 1986, my husband at the time saved up layaway money for six months to get it for me for Christmas. I've sewed every one of my quilts on that thing, wedding quilts and baby quilts and funeral quilts, I hemmed my daughter's prom dress on it and my son's little league pants year after year. I went to the store today feeling like I was cheating on an old friend. New machine is fine, it's got all these computerized buttons and it threads itself and I'm sure I'll get used to it. But I sat down to sew just now and my hands didn't know what to do. The rhythm is all off. I guess that's how it goes. You spend decades learning a thing and the tool becomes part of you, and then one day you have to start over with a stranger. I know it's just a machine. But I had to stop and cry a little before I could even plug this one in. If you've been through this with a tool you loved, I'd be grateful to hear you got past it.

ngl i bought this expensive palette knife bc it looked cool and the reviews said it was good for thick paint application. it arrived today and it's basically a tiny metal spatula. like, i could probably flip a pancake with it. it works fine for slapping on acrylic but i'm also kind of offended? lol. anyone else ever feel like their fancy art tools are just... regular tools in disguise?

Three weeks without the press. Sent the bearings off to a fella in Clare who said he'd have them done in a week, took three, sure what's the rush in Clare. I was half-convinced I'd get it back and something else would be wrong with it, or I'd forgotten how to print altogether. Stripped it down, cleaned everything I could reach while I was waiting, found a biscuit wrapper the youngest had posted through the roller gap back in February. Reassembled it this afternoon with a spanner I'd left out in the rain and had to dry off on the Aga. Pulled the first proof an hour ago. An old block, a hare I've carved so many times I could do it in my sleep. And it just... worked. Clean. Even pressure. The ink laid down like it was glad to be there. I stood there staring at it for longer than I'd admit. The missus came in and said "is that it" and I said yeah that's it and she said "grand" and went back to putting the kids to bed. Which is exactly the right amount of fuss. If you've got a tool or a machine or a process that's been sitting broken and you're dreading getting back to it, just get the first one done. The second one's easy after that.

I have this shallow drawer in my flat-file that's just chaos. Scraps of paper too small to use, edges I trimmed off, bits of envelopes, a receipt from an exhibition in Copenhagen three years ago, one single glove. Everything else in the studio is ruthlessly ordered, papers sorted by colour and weight, tools in their places. But that drawer is a mess and I can't bring myself to clean it. I think it's because if I sorted it, all those tiny bits would stop being potential and just become trash. As long as they're in the drawer they might still be something. I know that's not rational. But I don't think the studio needs to be rational everywhere.

I have a flat hog brush, maybe fifteen years old now. The ferrule is loose, the handle has a crack running through it where I must have left it in solvent too long once, and the bristles are worn down to almost half their original length. It's useless for any kind of clean stroke. But I keep it because it does something no new brush can do, it leaves a mark that's broken, a little ragged, like the paint itself is hesitating. I've tried to buy the same model new. It doesn't work the same way. A new brush is too polite. This happens with tools, but also with the way you work. You develop habits that are actually just wear patterns, and then you mistake them for technique. I don't know if that's a problem or just how it goes.