No. 7: A plane in October

The workshop is cold again, which means the bench is the best place in the building: the vice holds the heat of your hands.

This week

I have been planing a board of ash for a shelf. It is a long, boring job and exactly what I needed. A sharp plane in ash comes off in a single curl so thin that you can read the grain through it. A dull one comes off in crumbs, and I can now tell the difference from the sound alone.

I am writing, for next Monday, an essay about why I now spend the first ten minutes of every job at the stone. It is called “Sharpen First”, and it was an excuse to write about Walter, who taught me, and whose stool I made badly in my first week and still own.

The stool

It wobbles. I made it from ash in a week, with a drawing, a borrowed saw and the chisels that Walter had made me sharpen first. One leg is a few millimetres short. I have never fixed it, and I have never been able to explain why.

One thing to do

Look at the tools you own and pick one that you have never maintained. A knife. A pair of scissors. A garden spade. Spend ten minutes on it with a stone or a file. Compare the first cut and the last.

A small thing. The long essay goes out Monday. If you read only one this month, I would like it to be that one, not because it is the best but because it is the one I most needed to write.