Aw Geez! Golly dangit. Tools, hand, power, little tools, even tiny tools. Sadness fills my old heart. Aw Man-n-n-n. Yep! I've been to the Harbor. Not much for buying big tools, power tools. I think they are all made in China. Now my sadness is I moved three years ago and had to sell two bandsaws, cast iron winged ten inch (I think, can't even remember now so don't make a fool outa me.) table saw, jointer-planer, lath, drill press, boring press, table sander, well, the list goes on. I could have moved it all, but with the debilitating condition that settled into my declining telomeres; (little shoe lace thingies on the ends of your DNA. They start to unravel over time, a biological thing.) I just can't do the work no more. Pain, ravaging pain; selling all those lovely tools I spent so many hours laboring with and over.
Now everyone who reads this I beg you. Please, really, really absorb what your are doing. Do it with gusto, with love and passion, remember every little detail, do it with patients and care and fussiness and remember every little or big agony the project inflcted on you. You will get laugh later, and enjoy what your hands once built, or repaired, the joy on the kids face, and the smile your wife gives you when you fix something. These are your memories and your personal history--don't loose them into time past, because as time creeps upon you and your fingers don't want to bend anymore, and your feet ach and your legs hurt and your back is in agony, you will have something to show the time when you enjoyed this but no longer can--document what you are doing, take pictures and write about it in a journal. Why would you do all this foolishness? So you can go back and revisit all those projects and read about them and relive the frustrations and the joys of completing the project. The side benefit to this is you can pass it on to your kids or grandkids and they can see and read about what you have done. It is far too late for me, but maybe not for you. Right now I can hardly remember much about the projects I worked on. I remember a toy chest I made for my grandson, but I don't recall all the details. I have a fuzzy picture of it in my mind, but I cannot remember its dimension's. It was pretty good sized, I can remember that, and it was made of birch, and that's it. I don't even recall his face when he got it for Christmas. He had been begging for one to put his toys in rather than a cardboard box.
Each of you are living and creating a history everyday and it is going to the way side. Don't let it get any further, save your history with pictures and words and pass it on so your children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will know who you are... because you are their history.
That's it folks. Think about it. You'll see I am making sense here.