Toolympics

I was happily using one of my favorite clay tools recently and started composing a blogpost solely for it. And I guess because the Olympics just ended I thought about giving it a gold medal. And then I started thinking of other good tools I have, and figured I would round the whole idea out with bronze and silver too.



So, here we go. The Bronze goes to the hand-held Wire Cutter, which is not only useful for turning your big chunk into many little chunks, but also is indispensable for getting your finished pieces off the wheelhead. Honorable mention goes to the wire cutter attached to the wedging table at a 45 degree angle. Because when you are faced with a 25-pound cube of clay, there is no cleaner, better way to dissect it.






Silver goes to this Wood Modeling Tool I may have picked out of the lost and found, but has proved itself to be perfect in so many situations. I use it when I want to clean up the base of my thrown pieces before cutting them off the wheel, and also find it extremely useful as a modeling tool when attaching handles. I have used it so much in fact that it is starting to wear down to a perilously fragile point and I was never able to read the name of the company that produced it, only faintly impressed on the side, and thus haven't been able to buy any replacements.




Gold goes to the Fettling Knife! Oh, fettling knife. You might try to cut through a clay slab with an xacto or a plastic butter knife, but I think really, the fettling knife has the best dimensions for the job, with its slim, long blade that is sharp, but not overly sharp. Its narrow rounded tip can get into corners where most modeling tools can't, and if you have a glaze drip, this is the best thing to shave it off. I even keep one around the house to open the mail.




There are so many ingenious tools out there to help artists work with clay, now I am sorry for the ones I've left out (sorry, tools!). But while tools by definition are specialized for certain uses, it seems I have a particular admiration for tools that are reliable doing multiple jobs. Like Olympic All-Around gymnast Mary Lou Retton. Or Decathlete Bruce Jenner. The Fettling Knife is like the Bruce Jenner of clay tools.