Brian Marshall
~ Elite 1000 Member ~
I'm gettin' emails from forum participants who haven't been around since the "beginning of time", and who have no freakin' idea what the "potato thing" is all about.
Leonard Haraga keeps it going, and it doesn't look like he's planning on letting up on me, so... here it is - for the last time.
It was printed in the FEGA magazine some years back, but I've no idea what issue? Andrew? (Sam may want to put this copy in the archives, to save me repeating it again some years down the road?)
It goes like this:
I first met the silversmith/engraver Victor Vasquez in 1968 - I think. Someday maybe I'll tell about that experience. It's a whole story on it's own. But the incident we are concerned with here happened sometime later on. Maybe summer of '69?
Victor had his shop in the basement of a 50 or 60 year old house in San Jose, CA.
I lived and worked at the time as a saddlemaker in Pleasanton, CA. I think it was a little over an hour away. I would've been 18 that year.
Anyway, by the time this occurred I had gotten in the habit of driving down to Victors place every Friday night and pestering him in the shop all day Saturday and Sunday.
He put me to work doing grunt work around the shop. Cleaning, sweeping, sawing out parts, some soldering, backgrounding pieces he had already engraved - stuff like that. Much like what I do with my own apprentices these days.
So one day I was struggling with the sharpening of a flat bright cut graver. At that time we made these from railroad hacksaw blades. The one in this story is probably still around here somewhere...
He had wanted me to begin cutting simple rope edges on various sterling products. Conchos, bracelets, moneyclips and the like. Having shown me how to make the blank and temper it, he showed me how to sharpen it. Several times.
We did it freehand back then. No fixtures or jigs or diamond lapidary wheels. (Like Bram
I could not seem to "get it". I'd been trying for a coupla weekends and he always had to come over to my bench and do it for me.
So finally one Saturday at the end of the day, he told me he would tell me a secret shortcut to having a sharp graver.
He told me to go upstairs into the kitchen and ask Joyce, his wife, for a potato.
So I did. I noticed that Joyce seemed to be grinning a lot... but I thought it was because of the puppy on the floor.
Went back downstairs to the shop and handed Victor the potato. He said "Here's what you do. Every night before you shut down the shop, you stick the dull gravers in this potato. Then when you come back in the morning they'll be sharp."
Somehow this didn't make sense to me, so asked him why this would work. He gave me some long complicated reason about how the chemicals in the potato would etch the edge just enough in 10 or 12 hours to make it perfect in the morning.
Now, you gotta remember, I was 18, knew nothing, and anything Victor said was like from god. Everything he had told me for over a year was absolutely correct, though he made me figure out as much as I could before he'd answer my questions.
I slept out in my camper at nights, and Joyce would come wake me to come in for breakfast. We ate and I suddenly remembered the gravers stuck in the potato. Ran down to the basement, chucked up a bracelet that needed a rope edge and started cutting.
I was totally amazed! That graver had never cut that well since the day I made it!
Victor came downstairs and grinned at me. "Worked, didn't it? I told you it would." and went over to his bench. Thinking back on it, he never faced me for the rest of that day...
So, time went on. I came on the weekends and went back home during the week. The potato trick always worked.
One day Victor told me he wouldn't be around the next weekend because he had to go to a roping. He told me to take my tools and a couple of bracelet blanks and cut them at home for later.
So I did.
After a couple hours the graver seemed to get dull. I went into my kitchen and got a potato and stuck the graver in it, figuring it'd be fine in the morning.
Next morning I went out to my tiny shop. Pulled the graver out of the potato and started cutting. It was NOT anywhere near sharp! Wondered if maybe you had to use special kind of potato? Joyce had always handed me red ones and all I had around my kitchen at the time were the white ones.
Luckily I had the phone number of the ranch where Victor was supposed to be roping that weekend. I called and asked someone to see if they could ask him to call me when there was a break.
A couple hours later he called. I told him what happened and that the potato wasn't working. Asked him if it had to be red?
Sounded a lot like he was choking for a minute or two...
Finally he told me, between more choking sounds - that what he'd been doing was going back downstairs at night, sharpening my gravers himself and then putting them back in the potato.
So naturally when I pulled them out each morning they were perfect.
It was right about this time that I realized he wasn't choking. He was busting his gut laughing!
20 or 30 years later, when I finally got over being embarrassed, I told the story. Someone wanted to put it in the FEGA magazine...
So now you know.
Victor is gone now, but I will bet you that he's still grinning wherever he is.
Leonard sure seems to get a kick out of it...
Leonard Haraga keeps it going, and it doesn't look like he's planning on letting up on me, so... here it is - for the last time.
It was printed in the FEGA magazine some years back, but I've no idea what issue? Andrew? (Sam may want to put this copy in the archives, to save me repeating it again some years down the road?)
It goes like this:
I first met the silversmith/engraver Victor Vasquez in 1968 - I think. Someday maybe I'll tell about that experience. It's a whole story on it's own. But the incident we are concerned with here happened sometime later on. Maybe summer of '69?
Victor had his shop in the basement of a 50 or 60 year old house in San Jose, CA.
I lived and worked at the time as a saddlemaker in Pleasanton, CA. I think it was a little over an hour away. I would've been 18 that year.
Anyway, by the time this occurred I had gotten in the habit of driving down to Victors place every Friday night and pestering him in the shop all day Saturday and Sunday.
He put me to work doing grunt work around the shop. Cleaning, sweeping, sawing out parts, some soldering, backgrounding pieces he had already engraved - stuff like that. Much like what I do with my own apprentices these days.
So one day I was struggling with the sharpening of a flat bright cut graver. At that time we made these from railroad hacksaw blades. The one in this story is probably still around here somewhere...
He had wanted me to begin cutting simple rope edges on various sterling products. Conchos, bracelets, moneyclips and the like. Having shown me how to make the blank and temper it, he showed me how to sharpen it. Several times.
We did it freehand back then. No fixtures or jigs or diamond lapidary wheels. (Like Bram
I could not seem to "get it". I'd been trying for a coupla weekends and he always had to come over to my bench and do it for me.
So finally one Saturday at the end of the day, he told me he would tell me a secret shortcut to having a sharp graver.
He told me to go upstairs into the kitchen and ask Joyce, his wife, for a potato.
So I did. I noticed that Joyce seemed to be grinning a lot... but I thought it was because of the puppy on the floor.
Went back downstairs to the shop and handed Victor the potato. He said "Here's what you do. Every night before you shut down the shop, you stick the dull gravers in this potato. Then when you come back in the morning they'll be sharp."
Somehow this didn't make sense to me, so asked him why this would work. He gave me some long complicated reason about how the chemicals in the potato would etch the edge just enough in 10 or 12 hours to make it perfect in the morning.
Now, you gotta remember, I was 18, knew nothing, and anything Victor said was like from god. Everything he had told me for over a year was absolutely correct, though he made me figure out as much as I could before he'd answer my questions.
I slept out in my camper at nights, and Joyce would come wake me to come in for breakfast. We ate and I suddenly remembered the gravers stuck in the potato. Ran down to the basement, chucked up a bracelet that needed a rope edge and started cutting.
I was totally amazed! That graver had never cut that well since the day I made it!
Victor came downstairs and grinned at me. "Worked, didn't it? I told you it would." and went over to his bench. Thinking back on it, he never faced me for the rest of that day...
So, time went on. I came on the weekends and went back home during the week. The potato trick always worked.
One day Victor told me he wouldn't be around the next weekend because he had to go to a roping. He told me to take my tools and a couple of bracelet blanks and cut them at home for later.
So I did.
After a couple hours the graver seemed to get dull. I went into my kitchen and got a potato and stuck the graver in it, figuring it'd be fine in the morning.
Next morning I went out to my tiny shop. Pulled the graver out of the potato and started cutting. It was NOT anywhere near sharp! Wondered if maybe you had to use special kind of potato? Joyce had always handed me red ones and all I had around my kitchen at the time were the white ones.
Luckily I had the phone number of the ranch where Victor was supposed to be roping that weekend. I called and asked someone to see if they could ask him to call me when there was a break.
A couple hours later he called. I told him what happened and that the potato wasn't working. Asked him if it had to be red?
Sounded a lot like he was choking for a minute or two...
Finally he told me, between more choking sounds - that what he'd been doing was going back downstairs at night, sharpening my gravers himself and then putting them back in the potato.
So naturally when I pulled them out each morning they were perfect.
It was right about this time that I realized he wasn't choking. He was busting his gut laughing!
20 or 30 years later, when I finally got over being embarrassed, I told the story. Someone wanted to put it in the FEGA magazine...
So now you know.
Victor is gone now, but I will bet you that he's still grinning wherever he is.
Leonard sure seems to get a kick out of it...
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