Mattock matters

At last! I’ve found my mattock! I’ve been searching for it for years, this perfect mattock, and I finally found it in Bluff of all places, a great little second hand shop on the main drag opposite the wharves. I’ve been on the lookout for a well made mattock, adze, grubber call it what you will, ever since I saw one in the hands of a waka carver years ago. I’ve no ambition to adze out a log to paddle – I want the mattock for carving off weeds from around trees that have been planted in areas where the growth of grass and other vigorous plants threaten their future and there’s nothing better for the job than a well honed, perfectly weighted, strongly shafted mattock. This one was leaning nonchalantly against the window on the footpath outside of the store but not for long, once I’d laid eyes on it. I made for the counter, picking up a beautiful handsaw and a pair of crisp-closing hedge clippers on the way. Oh frabjous day, my luck just doubled! (I’d accidentally incinerated my son’s precision clippers last year and had been keeping an eye out for those as well).
Back home, I began the pampering process that follows the purchase of any tool of mine – primping with sand paper (the hickory handle curves just right and has a jaunty air), oiling with boiled linseed, wire brushing the blade (rubbing oil into the ‘iron mark’ so that I could read ‘pampa’ and see the ostrich stamped into the metal), then re-honing the edge of the blade with an angle grinder (Adam did that. I’m a hand-file-only kind of workshop guy), then out into the orchard to test it out. The beautiful thing exceeded all of my expectations. It cut a swathe through the weeds (actually cow parsley and alexanders, but for the moment they were weeds that had to be removed) and felt like a natural extension to my arms. I took great care not to sever my feet with the newly sharpened blade and thought about the great cultivations that ‘adzey’ and I might perform in the years ahead. Is it a male thing, this adoration of tools? I think so and I’m all for it.