Tools

I believe that with the right tool and the right plan it is possible to fix or build anything. This belief has led me to do many incredibly expensive, dangerous and stupid things.

My first misadventure with tools that I can remember (I still have the scar) was when I was about 4 years old and got hold of my Grandpa’s pocketknife when he wasn’t looking and almost cut off my thumb. But once healed this accident did little to deter me in my fascination with Grandpa’s tools.

Down in our basement Grandpa Joe had two of the most interesting places in the house. In an enclosed space under the steps he had about a dozen large earthenware jugs where he aged his homemade wine. And in a dark musty corner room was his workbench covered with an amazing collection of hand tools, some of which he very well may have brought with him from the old country, as they looked like they had been forged in another century. There were awls, rasps and hand planers, as well as an assortment of screwdrivers, hammers, saws, along with an ever-present jug of Grandpa’s homebrew.

For many years Grandpa had been a welder at a local truck plant, and while he may have been very good with that particular tool, his skill with some of the ancient specimens in his collection was often suspect. Since no one else in the family had any real expertise with tools, whenever something broke and needed repair Grandpa was always ready to attempt a fix. After a few botched projects the fact that he really didn’t know much about modern plumbing or electricity finally convinced our cheapskate Dad to hire experts when things went kerflooey in those areas, before Grandpa had time to make things worse. But we still deferred to him when it came to carpentry, the area where we believed he actually was competent. Looking back, it was probably this belief that led to many of the struggles our family suffered with tools in later life.

Our upbringing watching Grandpa hammer, saw, and nail things together eventually led, first my sister, then my brother, to attempt to build their own houses. As they were each more than a decade older than me, I grew up thinking it was normal to live for years in a house with exposed pipes and naked wiring, plastic sheets where windows should be, and areas of the floor marked off with yellow crime scene tape to ensure that visitors didn’t fall through the open hole down into the unfinished basement. The theory of both my siblings about building was that, rather than trying to finance their projects with a bank loan and hiring a contractor to move things along, it was better to try to do everything yourself, and in the end wind up with a house that was completely paid for instead of a 30 year mortgage. Even if it took 30 years to finally finish building their houses.

When I got old enough, I did my best to follow in my siblings footsteps by first acquiring a nifty $99 set of “Guaranteed for Life” Craftsmen tools from Sears (including a toolbox) along with a series of repair manuals and how-to books. When I was in college, two friends and I acquired an old International Harvester school bus, which we intended to outfit as a Magic Bus/Camper and take on the road in the summer. But first we needed to rebuild the engine, which was only getting 3 miles to the gallon, and burning more oil than a chain of Kentucky Fried Chicken shacks. True, we didn’t know what we were doing, and we didn’t even have a garage to work in, but we did have a manual and tools, and after only a couple of months, and a series of scraped knuckles and near decapitations we took our newly retooled bus on the road to find that it now got 6 miles to the gallon! Twice as efficient! Unfortunately, this project took place in the mid 70s, right when the OPEC oil embargo happened, and the price of gasoline had more than doubled. So, we were basically right back where we started, but with less black smoke spewing out the tailpipe.

A few years later my wife and I decided to become homesteaders and build our own house. Having at least learned something from watching the experiences of my siblings, and from helping them in their never ending home building projects, we got a place that already had a furnished house trailer to live in. Then before attempting to build our dream house, we decided to build a little one room cabin first, to practice our techniques.

We chose a remote site on our property, completely off the grid and hundreds of yards down a muddy dirt farm road. Then the project began getting bigger and better. Instead of a small artist’s loft, it turned into a two story guest cabin, complete with full length screened porch, and wiring for the eventual cheap solar electricity that we were sure would arrive in only a few years. We were only off by a few decades. In order to facilitate the efficiency of the eventual solar panels, we built the roof to have a 60% slope on the south side.

I still have nightmares about being up on that roof, hammering in shingles in the blazing sun, while being repeatedly bitten by sweat bees, doing my best not to slip and fall off into the multiflora rose thicket below. Suffice to say that, like my siblings, we never completely finished the cabin, although it’s still out there, in the middle of nowhere, serving as storage shed and wasp sanctuary for the current owners. But we did learn enough about building to realize that if we ever wanted our own home, we’d better start saving up money and buy one that someone else had already gone to the trouble of building.

I still have my old set of tools, including some of Grandpa’s, and I will occasionally tackle a do-it-yourself project, but only when I’m fairly certain that the worst consequences will only be a few bruised knuckles or wounded pride and not a lifetime of living with a leaky roof or having to trek across the yard in the middle of the night to use the outhouse.