Dealing with tools and their use and misuse, I must be careful not to be pedantic or even didactic. The message must be subtle, if possible. Some years ago, a friend hired a touring bonsai teacher and as part of the deal the itinerant cutter was to come to my garden to help me see the truth of bonsai... at least as far as his eyes could see the truth. Being basically rude, crude, insecure and a general malcontent, I looked upon the visit with little enthusiasm.

When he arrived, everything he did had to be taped with the proper electronic device. As he began, he complained my tools were all inferior, dull, out of alignment and subsequently not suitable. Sharpening the tools did no good. I then supplied new, second quality tools which were also deemed worthless and even when I provided a new, never-out-of-the-box Masakuni pruner, the visiting master said it was not good Masakuni because it had obviously been made for the export trade. I was crushed, embarrassed, hot, bothered and bewildered.

Some years later I happened to be in Japan showing a collection of American travel agents around some of the more famous gardens and bonsai collections. On one free afternoon, I called the bonsai man who had visited me and when I arrived at his nursery, I saw him using the most nicked, sprung, dull and rusted bonsai tools imaginable. He said he was preparing commercial grade bonsai so the tree didn't require a good tool. I don't know what all this means other than the usual homey aphorisms that can be applied.

Back in 1964, when I got my first authentic concave pruner, (and I always like to put this in), I paid $9 for the concave and $4.50 for the Masakuni scissor. I was told by a man, I later found was the salesman's brother, that if any damage should come to the product, it could not be repaired or sharpened and would not be replaced even if the tool were found faulty. Each time I used the tool I examined the branch or twig I was to remove. My, what slow progress. I likened the pruning to a zen koan: what is the sound of one jaw cutting? As my greed, enthusiasm and desire arithmetically progressed with each tree, I saw I was cutting, whacking and twisting with the fervor of an amateur conducting the "William Tell Overture."

What else? The concave pruner dulled and when cutting an elm or a benjamin fig, I noticed that it wouldn't cut clean, always leaving a thin, tenacious hair attached to the loped branch which would lie torn and jagged. If my then wife knew that I had paid $9 for a pruner that gets dull, I'd never again have the peace of my zen koan.

The scissors fell to the same result. I thought...if not indestructible, at least they could be infinitely sharp. I always admired Tom, a man in my king of his creator, Mark Twain neighborhood who could sharpen anything but his wit. A dull sluggard of a man taken to grunting rather than speech; he sharpened my tools, but would never say how he did it. He seemed to respect the technology that went into my bonsai tools, but really felt a good saw would prune anything better, faster. I, like you, dear reader, had and have to learn tool maintenance; however, it is surprisingly easy to learn to sharpen and repair tools, despite what the manufacturers say.

Along with the other frustrations of tools and all their quirks, you see, I was educated to draw, paint, read, write and not to use tools made of base metals. But I had to use tools and only the right tools, you know, the ones really good bonsai men use. I had a sales booth at the first BCI Atlanta convention and what did I discover? John Naka was doing a big demonstration and was using a Boy Scout hatchet disguised as a "bonsai hatchet." I had four people later ask me if I could import one. You see, proper tools are essential.

The stories are endless. The late Ed Porter of GuIf Breeze, Florida, and I were in Japan one summer and although our motives were exalted, they really boiled down to finding a scissor like the one John Naka or Tosh had used. It was a metal latch, spring loaded, long-nosed scissor imported by Kobe Trading years ago. Naturally enough we went to every bonsai shop, nursery, garden center and department store with no luck. We went to every cutlery shop, even to every hole-in-the-wall hardware store. I used my nearly extinct longshoreman's Japanese with no luck. One bachan seemed to know what we wanted and gave us directions. I thought to myself, 'Ah Ha! Down two blocks, left, then the third street on the right." No so. Bachan seemed to think that I really understood her. Her instructions went something like, "Down that way a little, toward the old, not the new bridge, stay along the side of the street with trees until you see the tea shop where the old man who sells swords used to live."

We didn't find the scissors; we didn't even find where the old man used to live. My last excursion into the tool trade occurred in the fall of 1995, when I found hordes of small hardware stores in Kanda, a Tokyo district. What gems we found: tools so dusty the prices couldn't be deciphered. We bought scissors for $7 and root hooks for $3. Customs agents are a lackluster bunch. Opening my suitcase and showing them I was bringing in the finest batch of dirty watering nozzles, root hooks and scissors, seemed to make their heads shake and slightly audible sounds come from their mouths.

Oh, but as the old saw goes, "Every day must show some profit." Again being on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I had been fighting sleep for some miles and decided to pull into one of the many scenic vistas for a brief snooze. Having a small truck and possessing a large frame, I could only put my head over on the passenger's side of the seat to rest. Poor judgment: I used my old tool bag as a pillow and heard a hissing sound, but as I nodded off, I dismissed the sound. What a revelation when I awoke and found as I lay on the tool bag my weight had opened the valve on a can of WD40. And there you have it. I had just invented the first automatic self-oiling tool bag.