A cutter who does not weigh first

He has been cutting for thirty-one years and works two sessions a day, morning and late afternoon, avoiding the middle hours when the light through the window changes too fast to trust. The workshop is one room with three wheels, two of them idle.

The first thing he does with a new piece of rough is not to weigh it. He holds it against the window, turns it, sets it down, and comes back to it later — sometimes the next day. The scale comes out only after he has decided roughly what the stone is going to be.

The reason

Asked about it, he said that once he knows the weight he starts protecting it. The number gets into the decision, and he finds himself orienting to keep it rather than to find the colour. So he postpones knowing.

This is not a philosophy he would state unprompted, and he was faintly embarrassed to be asked. But it is the clearest description we have heard of the trade-off at the centre of cutting, and it came from someone who has never written any of it down.