GUEST COLUMN
New tools bewitch and intoxicate me
October 24, 2009
Bill Taylor
SPECIAL TO THE STAR
Consider the "condo hammer" – perhaps the quintessential tool for the times as we stack our homes one upon another and space becomes ever more a premium item.
"A compact hammer," says the Lee Valley Tools blurb. "But one that still has authority.
"For most household jobs you have to grip a regular hammer close to the head to get the needed control, yet the handle is designed to be held at the other end. This hammer eliminates the problem, allowing fine control with an ergonomic, shock-absorbing handle; it also requires half the storage space of a regular hammer."
All for $6.50. And you thought that when you downsized from your house into a one-bedroom-and-a-den apartment in the sky, your puttering days were over.
("Putter," says the Canadian Oxford Dictionary: Work or occupy oneself in a desultory but pleasant manner ... dabble in a subject or occupation.")
Tools should come with a government warning of their intoxicating and addictive properties. Walk into a place like Lee Valley, Home Hardware or Canadian Tire and you may walk out with more than you bargained for.
A good tool, even if you're not sure how to use it, carries with it a sense of things about to be accomplished – furniture to be built, mechanical devices to be repaired, worlds to be set right.
Whether or not they actually wind up being done is almost academic. What counts most is the intention; the therapeutic impact of puttering. The end result is secondary.
It may be nothing more than putting together an Ikea bookshelf and getting it right first time.
Prehistoric man picked up a rock or a tree branch and felt himself to be a mighty slayer of animals. That principle continues in the conviction, however erroneous, that if you invest in good tools and good materials, they'll come imbued with the skills you need to get the most out of them.
This reporter flunked high-school wood shop quite woefully.
But when I bought my first house in Philadelphia, there was a recessed corner in the living room that cried out for bookshelves. Almost without thinking – certainly without rational thought – I went to the local lumberyard and ordered wood. Then I went into the adjoining store and bought tools.
Somehow, it all came together. I built those shelves and fitted them lovingly into the recess. They looked good.
The tools had bewitched me; the lumber had me in thrall. I ordered more and put together bunk beds for the spare room. They were good, too. My blood was up and I had some wood left over. I started on a stereo cabinet. It was a disaster. I'd challenged the gods of do-it-yourself with my ultimately ham-fisted hubris.
Thirty years later, I still find it touch-and-go to hammer a nail in straight. But still, when I hold a bright new chisel or a plane that is in itself a work of art, the feeling comes back that anything is possible.
Lee Valley offers a wide variety of seminars. Many of the ones dealing with the basic use of tools are aimed at women.
But even the most experienced of handymen – as opposed to handypersons – might be hard put to name all of the planes on display: Block planes, scrub planes, jack planes, compass planes, something called a gent's plane ... Some are so tiny, they wouldn't be out of place in the basement of a dollhouse. Simply picking one up is inspirational. Which leaves the question hanging: Which came first, the tools or the impulse to use them? The urge or the means to putter? Chicken or egg?
Toronto Star