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SimplyMichael -> Crafting a BDSM relationship (1/23/2008 12:03:01 AM)
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With all this talk of tools like safewords, negotiation, mentors and the rest, I thought I would post this about woodworking tools.
I have about 10 different hammers and mallets, not counting the half dozen or so for working metal. I have five hammers starting with a 2 lb sledgehammer, a 16 oz. claw, a 12 oz. ball peen, a non marring brass hammer and for driving tacks, a delicate 3 1/2 oz. warrington hammer. For mallets I also have five different ones, a light and a heavy dead blow rubber mallet, a rawhide mallet, a hornbeam carving mallet, and a general-purpose beechwood mallet.
I have all sorts of saws, a massive buck saw for felling trees, a few old style handsaws, one for ripping and a couple for crosscutting, a reversible backsaw, a veneer saw, a Japanese Ryobi, duzuki, and kugihiki, a fret saw, a jeweler’s saw, and of course all the various powered saws.
It is the same with chisels, I have sets for paring, chopping, mortising, short butt chisels, special purpose chisels like skew and dogleg chisels, sets dedicated to carving or for using on the lathe. Rasps, files, drill bits, router bits, forstner bits and the list goes on, all in a myriad variety, many doing the same or similar tasks as other tools and implements.
I have, in some cases, upgraded my tools, others I have moved beyond or abandoned and in most cases have settled on a particular technique and tool that works for me on any given task. My choices are different than others, my skills are different, what is and is not important to me is different than others.
There are craftsman who produce beautiful work with tools I have decided are worthless or inferior. There are people with much nicer tools than I, who produce schlock. The point is that a craftsman often uses different tools and techniques to achieve the same result and that my choices, while different, are not necessarily better or worse than another’s. Finally, a craftsman’s goals are often different, some strive for elegance, others for utility, some to recreate some piece out of antiquity, others to push forward and create something new.
Some choices are better than others, hammers don’t make good saws, and chisels don’t make good screwdrivers. Shaping a piece of wood can be done in so many ways, chiseling, scraping, filing, planing or sanding but all result in the same form. So, to judge a person’s craft, one must know a great deal about them and their goals, sometimes that judgment is easy, other times it is much harder. I think that the relative happiness and or fulfillment of those involved isn’t a bad place to start rather than which tool they used to get there.
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