The brass shim sits on my wood bench and it is thinner than a hair from a horse tail. It has a dull glow and it does not look like a tool that costs more than a loaf of bread but it is the thing that makes a dead pen breathe again. I use it to floss the gunk out of the slit in a gold nib and I do it with a light touch so I do not bend the tines.
The brass shim: A tool whose value lies in its utility, not its perceived rarity.
If you walk into my shop and you see me with this bit of metal you might think I am just cleaning a scrap of trash. But there is a kind of person who comes in and they lean over the glass and they whisper the name of the shim like it is a holy word. They want me to know that they know what it is. They want the rank that comes with being an insider in the world of ink and old pens.
The Hunt for the Hidden Path
I spent a long time being that person and I looked for the hidden paths in every part of my life. I wanted to be the first one to use the new app and the first one to find the site that required a code to enter. I thought that knowing the trick was the same as being a master of the craft.
I treated my phone like a map to a land that no one else could find and I felt big when I could show a friend a new way to move money or a new way to see a film. It was a game of being first and it was a game of being the only one. I realize now that I was just tired and I was spent from the hunt for the new and the rare.
The world treats this kind of knowing like a coin that you can spend to get a better seat at the table. We see a new platform and we do not ask if it is good or if it works well and we only ask who else is there and if we can get in before the crowd. It is a status game that never ends and it has no winner because the secret always gets out.
I see it in the way people talk about their tools and their toys and it is always about the edge they have over the person next to them. I found twenty dollars in the pocket of some old jeans and it felt better than any invite to a private server.
The Private Server
Requires rank, testing, and a constant proof of worth.
The Twenty Dollars
A simple bit of luck. It does not come with a test of rank.
The money was just there and it was mine and I did not have to prove I was worthy to hold it. It was a simple bit of luck and it did not come with a test of my rank. That feeling of ease is what I want now and I am done with the chase for the hidden thing. I want the tool that works and I want the place that lets me in without a riddle.
The Watermark and the King
There is a story about the men who made paper in the old days and they worked in dark mills with vats of wet pulp. They wanted to mark their work so they bent thin wires into shapes like stars or bulls and they laid them on the mesh. These were the first watermarks and they were meant to show which mill made which sheet.
At first it was just a way to track the work but soon it became a signal of class. A king would only write on paper with a certain mark and the mark became more important than the paper itself. The makers spent more time on the secret wire shapes than they did on the pulp and the quality of the sheet began to fall.
They forgot that the point of paper is to hold the ink and they thought the point of paper was to show the mark.
We are doing the same thing with the way we use the web and we look for the mark and we forget the work. We join sites that make us jump through hoops and we use apps that hide their best parts behind a wall of clicks. We think this makes the thing better but it only makes it harder to use.
I want a hub that does not care about my rank and I want a place that is fast and safe without the need for a secret handshake. It is like finding a spot that does not want you to solve a puzzle just to get inside. People look for the new and the hidden but they often end up with a mess of links and broken logins.
Finding a tool that just fits the hand without a manual:
Explore rca77
It does not try to be a secret club and it just does the job of bringing all the fun into one room with no fuss.
When I fix a pen I do not talk about the shim anymore and I do not tell the customer that I used a special trick. I just hand them the pen and I let them feel the nib glide over the page. If the ink flows well and the hand does not ache then the tool is good. The status of the shim does not matter to the person who just wants to write a letter to a friend.
Doing the Trade vs. Knowing the Names
We have lost sight of that in our rush to be the ones who know the most. We spend our days learning the names of new platforms and the tricks of the trade but we do not spend our time doing the trade itself.
I saw a man who wanted to show me a new way to buy stamps on the web and he had to log in three times and he had to use a code from his watch. He felt very proud of this and he looked at me like I was a child because I still use the office down the street.
Logins, watch codes, and digital pride.
The corner shop, a book of stamps, and a cup of tea.
He spent ten minutes showing me the screen and he told me that only a few people knew about this path. In those ten minutes I could have walked to the corner and bought a book of stamps and been back at my bench with a cup of tea. He had the status of the insider but I had the stamps and the tea.
You have to read the blogs and you have to follow the right people and you have to keep your ear to the ground like a scout in a war. It is a full time job that pays nothing but a bit of pride. I would rather be the person who uses the tool that everyone knows if that tool is the one that gets the work done.
I do not need a secret to feel like I am good at what I do. My hands tell the story of my work and the ink on my skin is the only mark I need to show who I am. I look at the brass shim now and I see it for what it is. It is a bit of metal that helps me fix a pen and it is not a badge of honor. It is not a way to be better than the man who uses a different tool.
If I find a better way to clean a nib I will use it and I will tell everyone who asks how I did it. The joy of a craft is in the sharing of the fruit and not in the hiding of the seeds. We have built a world of walls and we have made the walls out of the things we know.
The pen that writes the best is often the one that has been used the most. It is the one with the wear on the tip and the stains on the barrel. It does not have a secret name and it does not live in a locked box. It is on the desk and it is ready to work.
That is how I want to live my life from now on and I want to be the tool that is always ready and the place that is always open. I want to be the twenty dollars in the old jeans and I want to be the simple luck that makes a day better.
The brass shim only works if the ink stays wet and the rank only lasts while the secret stays dark.
I told a friend that I was stoping the chase and he asked me how I would stay ahead of the pack. I told him that I did not want to be in the pack at all and I just wanted to be in the woods.
“He did not understand what I meant but he did not have a pen that worked so I gave him one of mine. It was a plain black pen with a steel nib and it wrote like a dream.”
– The Shared Tool
He did not ask how much it cost or where I got it and he just wrote his name on a scrap of paper and he smiled. That smile was worth more than all the insider tricks in the world. We are so busy trying to be the ones who know that we forget to be the ones who do. I am going back to the work and I am leaving the secrets to the people who have nothing else to show.