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ongis mutan logo with hammer and point, tooth and blade chisels.    About Ongis Mutan    ongis mutan OM 3D logo.

    My grandfather was a blacksmith in central Texas like his fathers before him. His fireplace chimney was made of large limestone blocks that showed the marks of the tools that cut them from the nearby quarry. He made those hammers and chisels and saws in his shop. He began teaching me about tools when I was four years old.

    One summer I took an old claw hammer and flat bladed screwdriver and started to carve designs into those limestone blocks. First with great difficulty. On the second day I carved all day long. My grandmother tolerated my hammering noise like she did the cold winters and the woodburning kitchen stove and the one cold water faucet in the house.

    After a week my grandfather asked me to stop using his tools improperly, and explained. I asked for a heavier hammer, and real chisels-- some sharp ones and a pointed one. He said I'd have to first learn how, then make them for myself.

    He showed me how to heat old steel rods in the coal fire, hammering them and reheating them until they picked up carbon, cutting them red hot on the anvil and hammering them into rough shape. I used a hand-cranked grinding wheel and a file to shape them. I tempered them in oil. Every day I grew stronger.

Ongis' anvil where he made his first hammers and chisels in 1953 at age six.
    By the end of summer I had two good hammers and five good chisels and an old file to sharpen them. That summer I carved his chimney with designs of no particular significance. I loved cutting rock with steel.

    I've carved stone continuously for 51 years. In school I became a science prodigy. Then in 1965 after presenting a physics invention, President Lyndon Johnson asked the Secretary of the Air Force to give me a laboratory.

    The next year I joined the interesting social group Mensa. By 1974 I had become a Director of the world's largest technical society. For 25 years during the Cold War I worked alongside the most senior scientists on the most secret tasks. My many arcane inventions are woven into the mysterious fabric of that secret and awesome era.

    During that era I travelled and lived all over the world, always carrying my hammer and chisels along. I gave away my stone carvings to those around me, and left them on boulders in the steep mountains and deep jungles of Asia and Oceania. In 1995 I became a full time professional stone carver and started selling most of my carvings.

    Now I buy the finest tools in the world from the best makers, who often make special tools that I design. Every month I forge special chisels to suit my needs or curiousity. Tools are themselves among the greatest works of art.

    I often close my eyes and see those limestone blocks and hear my grandparents speaking lovingly, softly through the veil of time. Evening fireflies blink as they call me to supper, and I hear the cicadas again, now "three cicadas" later. When I return from the dream the stone and steel are waiting. Only the stone can live forever.