Tools

This is our sixth SOWER project.  We’ve served with several couples in prior projects who take all their own tools along.  Big totes full of power tools, batteries, chargers, and almost any other tool imaginable.  While that would be nice, we simply do not have the room as we are living out of a very small space (and it seems to get smaller the longer we live in it), so the tools stay home and we rely on the host’s tools to do our work.

Here at the ranch, there is a large wood shop in one building, a metal shop in another building, an auto body shop in another building, and still other buildings for such things as small engine repair and blacksmithing.  And these shops are enormous and equipped with nearly every tool imaginable.  So much so that it’s a little hard to get around.  Unfortunately, finding a working tool can be a bit challenging.

Today I started to install the trim that I have been making and painting for the last couple of days.  First challenge, the miter saw I had only had a seven-inch blade and would not cut all the way through the piece. All the 10-inch saws are rather permanently affixed to stands in the shop.  So I have to lay the piece flat and cut through the face, requiring the blade to slide back and forth.  The slides are somewhat rusty so it takes some effort.  And the blade is getting dull, so it takes more effort.  But I have arrived at an uneasy truce with the saw and am making it work.

Next challenge was the nail gun.  It just gushed air and didn’t work.  I took it back to the shop to look for another one.  There were a few but none for this kind of nail.  I took it apart to see if I could fix it and found a blown O-ring.  I asked Steven if we had another nail gun and we eventually found one: an ancient thing that was missing the air hose nipple.  Probably cannibalized for something else.  We scrounged up a nipple, but found out that this nail gun didn’t work either.  Back to the original one.

We tried to cannibalize another nail gun for an O-ring but it was the wrong size.  Finally one of the other guys found one in a supply of O-rings that he had.  We finally got it working.  Time spent: nearly all morning.

It makes a lot of sense why others take their own tools along.  Just for this type of situation.

I spent the afternoon cutting and installing trim.  This process was slowed by the fact that the saw is outside and I’m working on the second floor, so I made a lot of trips up and down the stairs today.  Tomorrow I will probably run out of trim so I will end up back in the wood shop to make more.  Deb finished sanding some of the patching she did and then painted a bedroom.