My son purchased a new home that came with a workshop. Now he isn't exactly what you would call the do it yourself type of guy and so for that reason I sort of took possession of that. It will become my domain! I've been renting an upstairs apartment for well over twenty years now and my only shop has been the attic. It has served well for most projects I have done over the years. I'm not building anything of any great size just little things that interest me. Over the years that attic has been filled up with my "tools of the trades." Having been raised in a home where you fixed it yourself or did without I did learn a variety of trades. As a result I need departments!
I have begun transferring my tools to this shop. That in and of itself will be a project taking up most of the winter months. It isn't just moving them from one pace to another, it is the sorting out, the organizing of all that. It's an amazing thing, the amount I have collected over the years. It can become a sickness, this do it yourself business, as I began acquiring specialty tools as well. When you are aware of those tools that will perform the task so much quicker and easier than using conventional tools, you just start buying them, many I have only used once or twice but I might need them again one day.
And therein lies the problem, I might. I suspect that is what every hoarder and collector says and feels, I might need that some day. I do question the need for a few hundred socket wrenches. But then again they are in three different drive sizes, and the sockets themselves are six point and 12 point, and of course you have to have deep well. So, yeah, they are all necessary. Fifty screwdrivers? Well, I might need that one some day. As far as woodworking tools you just can't have too many of those. You need plumbing and electrical too. I don't have too many, I wonder if I have enough? I might need that saber saw, miter saw, skil saw, bandsaw, table saw or scroll saw at any moment. And I of course you need some manual ones, who doesn't need a key hole saw. I might.
I have never really had a serious hobby of any sort. What I mean by that is a devotion, a concentration of performing a specific task. I have dabbled in just about everything there is, trying my hand at that. I have found nothing that I excel at, nothing that holds my undivided attention for more than a few hours at a time. But I'm not discouraged by any of that because, I might. It's never too late, look at Grandma Moses. She began painting at 78 and was famous by the time she was eighty. Did she find that talent or was it simply the rest of the world recognized it? I haven't been recognized yet, but I might.
In the meantime I am enjoying transferring and sorting through my tools. It's a man thing I suppose. It takes me back to my roots. My father was a jack of all trades and in my eyes a master at all of them. His only shortcoming, by his own admission, was in electronics. Even then, he showed me how to test vacuum tubes, examine the wiring and what capacitors looked like and to avoid them! In a child's eyes he fixed the television on more than one occasion. He went his whole life unrecognized, that is my feeling. It was known however if you needed something fixed or built he was the man you wanted to do it. He was admired by those that knew him for his skill with tools of all sorts. Perhaps one day that is what will said of me, he could fix things. A real renaissance man. Well, I'm not that, but I might be, one day. I just need a bigger shop and more tools.
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