פירוש על כלים 12:8

האולר (a penknife) – like a kind of metal scissors that they prepare with it the writing pen/reed.

A pen-knife, a writing pen, a plummet, a weight, pressing plates, a measuring-rod, and a measuring-table are susceptible to impurity. All of the instruments in this section are metal vessels and are therefore susceptible to impurity. Pressing plates are used in pressing olive.

והקולמוס – of bronze and iron or of silver.

All unfinished wooden vessels also are susceptible to impurity, excepting those made of boxwood. Wooden vessels, unlike earthenware ones, are considered susceptible to impurity even if they are not completely finished. This is because they are usable even in their unfinished state. The exception is boxwood, because its bark is thick and vessels made of it are not considered vessels until they are finished.

מטוטלת (plumb-line) – iron and lead that is hanging from a rope that the builder holds in his hand to see that the wall will not come to be curved.

Rabbi Judah says: one made of an olive-tree branch is also clean unless it was first heated. Rabbi Judah adds that vessels made of olive-tree branches are not susceptible unless the branches were first heated up to remove their moisture.

והמשקלות – a liter or a half-liter.

והכירון (iron tool for crowding olives into the vat) – an iron vessel in which they insert the olives in an adze that they stop them in it. –

והכן והכנא (measuring rod/ruler and measuring table) – the cubit that they draw lines/rule on books/scrolls, and the table that is underneath it. So the Arukh explained.

גולמי כלי עץ (unfinished wooden utensils) – that their work [in forming them] was not completed. As for example that they are missing a rim or a handle, or their base when they sit upon it, or that tone needs to divide them and to compare them, they are called גולמים/unfinished.

חוץ משל אשכרוע (except for the ones made from boxwood/ebony) – We have this reading. And it is a kind of cedar, תאשור which we translate into Aramaic as boxwood/ebony. And unfinished vessels that were made from this wood, are pure, because its husk/skin is thick and hard, but they are not considered vessels until their husks are removed and the work [in creating/forming them] is completed. But the reading of the Tosefta is: חוץ משל פירשע/except for ebony or box wood (see Tosefta Kelim Bava Metzia 2:19), because they are lacking boiling [before they can be used]. And פירשע/ebony or boxwood is a resinous wood. But vessels made from it – their work is not [considered to be] completed other than through boiling, that we bring them into the fire and we remove seething, overboiled matter and furthermore, they are not fearful that perhaps they will split.

גרופית של זית (a vessel made out of a piece of an olive tree) – a branch of an olive is called a גרופית/a vessel made out of a piece of it, like that of a fig which is called a young shoot [of a fig tree]. But if they made a vessel from a piece of an olive tree, it is an unfinished product and it does not become accessible to receive ritual impurity.

עד שישלק – until we bring them into the fire that will remove their seething/overboiled matter. But the Halakha is not according to Rabbi Yehuda.