Chisels and Philosophy

By Bobby Neal Winters

As those of you who follow this space know, I am now deep down the rabbit hole of woodworking.  So you can imagine how thrilled I was the other day when my grandson wanted to borrow one of my chisels.  I was thrilled, that is, right up until the point I discovered he wanted to use it to break open a geode.  

Now, one could, conceivably, use a wood chisel to break open a geode, but any woodworker reading that sentence just cringed. Wood chisels must be kept with sharpened, polished blades that can shave hair from your arm.  Such edges do not long survive repeated violent contact with stone.

Luckily the request was made over the phone because I myself visibly shuddered when I was asked.  I informed my daughter, through whom the request was conveyed, that it would be a sin to use a wood chisel in such a way. 

Different plans were made.

There are chisels for wood and chisels for stone. Who knows, there might be chisels that could be used for either, but not in my workshop.

Looking back on this, I ask myself why I had such a strong reaction?  Why would any serious woodworker have such a strong reaction.

Let us explore this.

There is a mysterious relationship between Man and the World. Man has a power. It is the power of creation with the Word.

A scalpel lying on a table is just a shiny object by itself.  If a caveman were to walk into the room, he might be attracted to it because it was shiny.  He might accidentally cut himself with it.  Given time, he might be able to use it as a weapon or even a tool.

A surgeon, by way of contrast, could immediately use it to save a life.

What is more, if there were no scalpel, the surgeon, having been educated, would be able to take a piece of metal to a machine shop and have a scalpel made to his personal specifications and then use it to save a life.

When I try to imagine how our ancestors invented the knife, my guess is that somebody came upon a piece of flint that had been broken in some manner and discovered that some pieces were sharp.  She discovered that the flint shard could be useful in cutting things into smaller pieces.  Eventually it was discovered that you could break the flint yourself and form it into more convenient shapes: knives, axes, spearheads, and chisels.

At some point they quit thinking about these things as being just sharp pieces of stone, and put specific names to them.  With the name came a lot more than just a label.  The name comes with the idea of how to use it and various levels of skill in various different traditions, changing with the particular user.

I guess what I mean to say is that the name of an object points in two directions: one is to the object and the other is to the practice of using the object. I’m loading a lot on the word practice there because there are a lot of ways of doing anything.

I find myself as a member of a woodworking tradition that makes use of the chisel.  Within that tradition, importance is given to the chisel being sharp.  There are those who use whetstones, those who use diamond stones, and even those who use sand paper. During the course of a project, if I find the edge of my chisel getting a little dull I will stop and take it over to the leather strop to burnish the edge a bit.

Those particulars aside, in this sense a chisel lives in the people who know how to use it as much--or more--than it exists in metal.  A chisel is a human thing.  I began this article saying I was happy when I thought my grandson wanted to come into the honorable brotherhood of chisel users but horrified when it was the wrong kind of chisel user.

Well.

Well, today I will be making a trip to Home Despot[sic].  While there, I think I will go over to check the price of the stone chisels. It might not hurt to have one around.  And if someone learns how to use one tool, it might lead to using another.

Who knows?

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like” the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube.