47/2025: In the Company of Tools

Image © Jose 2025

For many years, when I travelled anywhere I’d make sure I found out where an art & design store existed and made sure I visited, the larger the better. I remember very well the first time I visited Eindhoven; proximity to a design college is a guarantee that these stores are full of stuff for the design geeks. My first trip to Japan was memorable, many hours spent in their stores, same in London and Milan. These stores carry tools for the designer, and I have a fascination for writing instruments of all kinds, from pencils to pens, thin and large nibs, calligraphy, permanent and water-soluble, chiseled, ink-based… and with them the cartridges, the small bottles of ink, the infinite nibs. And paper, different paper weights, notepads, small and compact. I still have a box of notepads I never got to use, but many more boxes of notepads I did use. And I still have many more writing instruments than I could ever use in my lifetime. In the end I have resorted to favorite things that I use for a long time, and then one day you use the last pen, that last one you love using so much, and you can’t find it anymore – not online, nowhere – and you start using something new, and that stays with you. These were for many years the tools of my trade, but to be honest, not sure my trade demanded so many of these tools, but I loved and still love collecting and using them.

I grew up with a small toolbox with a hammer, a couple of screwdrivers, and a cutter. I had little flasks with two or three types of screws and nails, some tape, not much more. As I started doing more around houses, I started adding up, but these were always hobby tools, not exactly IKEA, but almost. I remember when I showed a small plastic level I had to my brother-in-law before we started doing the deck, he laughed out loud and told me he was going to make sure I had “men tools” from now on. And now I do have more tools than I had in my entire life, and they do make a difference.

As I sifted and sorted all the tools around the house, I now have far too many tools, and I needed to make some decisions. I will have a bag of tools in the house, which should allow use by the lady of the house; another set of tools in another bag that can go places when needed; and the rest of the tools will end up in the workshop slash ceramic studio, since the other half of the garage is going to be exactly that, a car garage. Still, I have too many tools, too many of all types of tools, and so I needed some criteria.

I decided to keep three of each that I have repeated: a small hammer, a medium size with nail remover, the large one I was granted when I “became a man” (according to my relative). This works for most cases, but in some it doesn’t because I don’t need three large hand saws (I have five), just as I don’t need ten screwdrivers or multiples of many more tools. So, the second criteria is to keep the newest and most professional one, and the oldest and most worn-out version, as long as it still works (I do have a box for tools that don’t work anymore but I can’t seem to throw them away).

And I have a third criteria, which is to keep the oddities, the rarities, at least to me. These are tools I have never seen before, or have but not in this format, or have but not of this quality. In some cases, these are tools I don’t know what they do exactly, or when there would ever be a need for them. I give you six of them.

Enter the pruning saw, used to cut wood branches and rough lumber. The blade is very coarse, it looks nice and vintage. Then a pair of old metal shears to cut thin metal sheet, love the industrial look of these. Then there is a funky scratch awl, just a simple tool to score, scrape, clean joints; the bent tip was probably done to serve some specific purpose, not sure what. Then we have a tool I didn’t even know existed, an adjustable pin spanner, apparently used to loosen/ tighten the nut that secures grinding discs, and I have found dozens of these discs since he used to cut stone as a sculptor. You have a gorgeous, heavy center punch, reminding me of some of the heavy pens I love to use, great to mark metal or wood before drilling, very practical. And then the beautiful locking grip plier with the animal-like specialty jaw, great to pull wires and grip things in tight spaces.

These are just six of the tools I have encountered in my process, and they will continue to be stored in the same wooden boxes the previous owner used to store them, cleaned up, rust removed, labeled, but probably living a quiet existence in some cases. Because to be honest, I am unsure when and if I will get to use them. But they deserve a home, and they have one.