I’ve Got a Tool for That

I love tools. If there is such a thing as a tool addiction, I have it. A good friend likes to say, “I’ve got a tool for that.” And then he’ll trot out the perfect tool for the job. However, I’ve rarely been able to say that myself. I must confess that I genuinely envied him for his outstanding stock of tools. My passion for having a store of equipment like that has grown over time. And lately, my ability to have the right tool for the job has increased dramatically. Let me tell you how that happened.

We must go back about sixty years to find the beginning of my infatuation with tools. This story is about three boys living in the prehistoric time before gaming consoles. Television existed, but on the ranch in North Idaho, only one channel came over the mountain when the atmospheric conditions were right. The bane of childhood, boredom, had to be held at bay by our own devices with no help from electronic screens. For my brothers and me, that meant “fort-building.”

Fort-building is a term that loosely means any full-sized construction undertaken by children. What adults only see as a pile of trash lumber and sticks, children quickly identify as a medieval fort, a pirate ship, or a moon base as needed. Mature sensibility was optional and not particularly wanted for fort-building. Grownup ideas about proper technique and safety only inhibited the process. However, this meant we were on our own to scrounge for materials and tools. Fortunately, scraps of boards abounded around the ranch, and the woods were full of saplings that fell to our axes. An ax was the one tool Dad equipped each of us with at an early age so we could help him with logging.

The issue most inhibiting our fort-building was that nails and hammers were in very short supply. We didn’t even bother asking our parents for them because such a request would go against the code for the enterprise. This code we’d been espousing since age three when we first said, “I want to do it myself.” The situation completely stymied us until we discovered the burned remains of a large bonfire where Dad had disposed of several dilapidated outbuildings. We found all the nails we needed for our enterprise in the ashes. Granted, they were rusty, scorched, and inconveniently bent, but they were ferrous treasures to us.

Hammers, however, were restricted from unsupervised use. This draconian practice may have arisen because our attempts to plant their predecessors had yet to result in the hammer trees we claimed to desire. I learned later, with my children, that losing tools is a prerequisite for growing up. Although grumpy about lost tools, I hope I was gentler than my Dad. Please don’t ask my children since I’d rather not know the truth.

You may wonder why we didn’t just use the backend of our axes for hammers. Again, Dad’s proclivities about tools stood in our way because he had supplied us with double-bitted axes. One bit was to be kept ultra sharp for cutting in clean wood. We kept the other edge steeply beveled for situations when the ax blow might end in the dirt. Nothing about our axes helped pound nails.

We solved our hammer problem in the same pile of ashes that yielded our nails. During the last century, opening a window involved using a counterweight hidden in the window casing called a sash weight. These were cylindrical chunks of cast iron about twelve inches long and nearly two inches thick. Window makers tied to a sash cord that ran through a pulley at the upper corners of a window to counterbalance the sliding section and make it easier to lift. The buildings that went into the fire had windows in them. Although Dad had safely disposed of the glass, the sash weights lay in the ashes alongside our precious nails. Hard and heavy, those sash weights became the first tool in our box, a hammer of sorts.

A person’s construction experience is incomplete without trying to both straighten and drive nails with a sash weight. There is a good reason why my very favorite tool is a 20 oz steel-shank framing hammer. Pinpoint precision is needed to successfully strike a nail with the rounded side of a sash weight. But where pinpoint accuracy failed in our adolescent carpentry, we were not picky about driving another nail beside the previous one. Sometimes, this resulted in a unique spreading nail decoration feature.

Forts abounded in the woods across the road from our house. We boys remember three separate places they sprouted among the trees as catwalks and crow’s nests higher than I would ever let my children or grandchildren build them. My two brothers insist I was a bit tyrannical in leading our fort-building enterprises. I thought of it as being an enlightened foreman. My job, after all, was primarily vision and planning. Right? Although I remember this one catwalk, about twelve feet in the air, that stretched nearly fifteen precarious feet between two trees. I can still see my brothers laboring high above the ground, building it according to my specifications. I clearly remember providing quality supervision from below, where I did my best to encourage them through their silly fears about safety. Dad condemned that catwalk out of hand when he caught sight of it, and I have to admit that I never actually tested it.

We brothers have long since grown, and we’ve gone our separate ways, but the fort-building has never really stopped. You know what they say about men and boys and the price of their toys? Well, it rings true for us in spades. Our fort-building has resulted in a family retreat center with cabins, bathrooms, and a kitchen. However, nothing was built with sash weights or bent rusty nails, not even for nostalgia’s sake. Suitable tools that fit the tasks accumulated over the years around the projects. We learned to use appropriate implements to complete the job faster and better. We learned to love tools. In my case, it was a growing infatuation fueled by sash-weight-hammer frustration, even after many years.

The tool affair has taken a quantum leap in the last couple of years. We have built and equipped an actual shop. Our ancient logging equipment was the catalyst for this development. The family’s personal mechanic, who previously maintained this machinery, has suffered a significant physical decline. To help us compensate, he sold us many tools needed to repair critical machines, like our 1982 John Deere 450C dozer and the vital 1962 John Deere 2010 tractor. This influx of new tools required an appropriate place to store and use them, so we converted our 30’ x 50’ pole barn into a mechanical, woodworking, and metal fabricating paradise. Our starting point with rusty, bent nails and sash-weight-hammers may skew our assessment of this facility. Our wives certainly would not include our shop in any paragraph with the word “paradise” in it. To them, the shop is a dirty, dusty, greasy mess, making it perfectly paradisiacal to me. I rest my case.

Now that we have installed a concrete floor in the new shop (See Making it Concrete), we have a firm platform for repairing critical machines, processing wood products from our little sawmill, and making all kinds of stuff. Admittedly, it took several thousand dollars to equip the work benches sprouting along the walls and the large tool chest rolling over the floor. A monstrous air compressor chuffs away in the corner to power the lineup of air tools and attachments that I only used to dream about. Bright, shiny tools hang from every available wall space. Grinding, drilling, cutting, planing, and sanding equipment stands ready for any task. It’s a thing of beauty, no matter what my wife says.

We are a long way from when three little boys, equipped with sash-weight-hammers, marched out into the woods to create forts designed to stave off the coming apocalypse. But have things changed all that much? The desire to make valuable and appealing things has only grown stronger. Our imagination has become only more helpful. Though not limitless, our ability to acquire the necessary resources has become much more feasible. And frankly, it just feels good to say, “I have a tool for that,” confidently. And there’s not a sash weight in sight.