Tindo

A tindo - the heavy cold chisel with a moulded hand guard that masons and plumbers across Kenya use for breaking into hard material. Struck with a hammer or club, it chips and splits concrete, stone, brick, block and mortar: cutting chases for pipe and conduit, breaking out openings and old plaster, dressing and splitting stone, lifting tile and screed, and opening up a wall to get at services. The guard is not decoration - it is the part that saves the hand holding it when a hammer blow goes astray, which over a day of chiselling it eventually will. Dress the head with a grinder when it starts to mushroom over, and never strike a mushroomed chisel; the burred edge throws fragments.