I have a good friend who I’ve worked with before and who is in a role with the same title as mine but it’s one of those roles where the reality and execution have more to do with the place where you’re working than what it’s called. These roles tend to suit me because I like to go where I’m needed. One day she challenged me about a fork in the road and I told her that I didn’t want to switch paths right now, “But why?” she asked. To which I replied “Sometimes my timeframes are geologic.” but my answer felt weird. I cocked my head to the side, took a sip of my beer and told her “I’ve never really unpacked that assumption though.” She has a remarkable way of challenging me to ask new questions.

My Grandfather trained and shoed horses when he was young. He did a lot of things but as a result of that, after years of being a welder, he decided to take up blacksmithing as a hobby. I remember him making me new S-hooks for my truck’s cargo net after I showed him how the plastic ones that came with it were failing. Now, four years after he passed away I came to have some of his old tools. My father already had a forge and some tools of his own so he sent me home with a coal fired forge, anvil and leg vise.

A blacksmith’s leg vise is an impressive piece of hardware. Meant to bolt onto a table top or stump it has a metal post (the leg) that supports itse weight and a screw to open and close the jaws. When I got it home it was completely covered with rust. It would still open and close but the various bolts and connectors were fused together and, as I told my Dad later, it turns out you can sometimes torque a rusted nut with a monkey wrench and a 16lb sledge hammer.

Rusty Pieces

Slowly but surely I got it disassembled, ground the rust off all the pieces and painted to slow down the rust. I’ll grease the screw threads and make it ready to do work again. Next I’ll restore the forge and then after all of that, like Grandpa, I’ll set up a small working area behind my shed and try my hand at heating and bending metal. There are some things I’d like for the farm and I’d love to build some pretty pieces for my wife. Plant hangers and maybe a new fireplace set over time.

There has been something therapeutic in bringing this old tool back to life. I’d been working on it in my spare time and then found myself with a bit of PTO and put myself to the task for a few days. Today I woke up in the morning to put the top-coat of paint on it and nobody else was awake except the birds. The sun was peeking out and the morning was delightfully cool but not cold. In this setting I found myself putting something back in order. Order, it turns out, is important.

Working with my hands, instead of at a computer screen, pulls on strings like that one. Something about physical labor carves a path straight through my brain. Then the untested assumptions fall out of suspension, lie on the floor and regard me as I regard them. Like the pieces of the vise after I’ve untorqued that damn nut and undid the damage of accidentally riveting the underlying bolt in the course of knocking it out of the vise. Sometimes too, like the vise, it takes brute force to finally get to that point. A hard conversation, or series of them along with some tricky questions or a fork in the road.

So now here I am setting things in order. I’m still far away from seeing the answer to the question that my friend so cleverly posed to me but I’m loosening it up and thinking about the tools that I’ll need to finally pry it free. Sometimes you need an outside opinion so I keep watching videos about restoring leg vises and reading about their history and use. After consulting with a lot of different sources I realized the old spring that holds the jaws apart when you loosen the screw was likely broken decades ago and the replacement wasn’t correct, nor was it working. It also turns out that this is a good beginner’s project for someone starting out so now I have a direction and something to plan for.

Occasionally untested assumptions are just a conversation away, just like knowing what to do with that spring. Something simple might be right in front of you if you don’t have the right frame of mind or if something is holding you back from seeing where to go. I reached out to another friend of mine. Someone who had been a mentor long ago and who I count as a wonderful friend. It’d been a long time since we’ve seen each other and it was great to touch base. I forgot how well he knew me and at the end of the day he didn’t do much more than hold up a mirror and remind me to remember some things that I had forgotten. It was good to remember them and put it all in order. After all, it turns out that order is important.

Assembled