Christmas has come and gone, leaving behind (in my case) new tools for the shop. Of course, it helps that I dog-eared the tool catalogs for my wife. That way she has a number of possible gifts across a wide range of prices.
I appreciate mice and their place in the ecosystem. I just wish they didn’t want my place, too. I try to mouse-proof the house, but every year a few get in. Outbuildings are often more of a problem.
Three of my favorite things in life are travel, flea markets and trade shows. All three are adventures into the unknown.
Even great ideas can have a downside. As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, I’m making the transition to a shop remote from the garage, where it has shared residence with vehicles and assorted storage bins.
I was talking to an engineer one day, and as he described a project he was working on, he began explaining it with examples of the body’s musculature and skeleton. The more he described, the more I realized how similar the study of engineering is to the study of anatomy.
If we want our tools to last, we sharpen and maintain them. If we treat them right, they endure. Best of all, it only takes a small amount of time every time we use them to keep them in good shape for the next time we use them.
I am a sucker for the tools section of any hardware or big-box store. I can’t help but look at those chop saws, drill presses, band saws and table saws and wish they were mine.
Last week, David from Omaha commented on how often we don’t take a minute to find the right tool and use something else instead. He’s very right about that; however, sometimes the right tool just can’t be found.
When my cousin Curt forwarded a virtual copy of the Tool Dictionary, I appreciated the humor and irony in the definitions. In case you haven’t seen the list, it takes common tools from the shop and applies twisted definitions to them.
Last week, I picked up my handmade 16-inch, 12 ppi, hybrid-cut cherry handle tenon saw. Mark Harrell, owner of Bad Axe Tools and saw maker extraordinaire, handed it to me and set up a wood scrap so I could try cutting a tenon.
