He can tell, at a glance, whether something was made with care. It's the whole reason he does this. Which is exactly why the merch made for him is so insulting: another pun, another default font, another joke about sawdust. This is a nineteenth-century trade-catalogue plate instead. A bench chisel, every bevel and ferrule band engraved in fine linework, one long shaving curling away beneath the blade: the ribbon only a properly honed edge will give you. Beneath it, the oldest instruction in the craft: KEEP IT SHARP, and under a hairline rule, the specimen caption FIG. 9, THE BENCH CHISEL.
The design wraps both sides, a quiet, serious plate that reads the same whichever hand picks it up.
It's the mug that sits on the bench between cuts, or the one a partner or a daughter can hand over at Christmas knowing it will land: admiring, never sentimental, and impossible to mistake for a gag gift.
Made for the maker, not for the joke about him.
