What I have noticed is, even writing these short notes, how many other things I actually remember, that's why sometimes it becomes just a memory dump.
Just dumping stuff on paper ( or word) is one thing, tieing it all in so it flows is another.
Then it has to be interesting, sometimes exagerating an event can make it exciting, as can leaving stuff out. If it was a complete life story, it would include the sad times, sometimes you don't want to go back there, too many hurts, but it's all the things in your life that had made you you.
Yes there are things that you wish you had done differently, things you wish you had said, things you wish you hadn't.
One thing I never understood with my parents is, my mum was given the housekeeping, no more no less every week, with that she had to feed a family of 4 and pay the bills etc. The remaing wages were my dad's to do what he wanted. There were times my mum couldn't make ends meet, and the number of times I raided my pocket money, or even my post office savings book, never to be returned. Times were hard, money was tight in the late 50's early 60's.
These memories still hurt, but it changed me. When I met my wife to be, we set up a joint bank account, boy was this hard to accept, but it has been a great foundation for us anyway for all our married life. This doesn't work for every family, and still people have " housekeeping" or different ways of sharing or contributing to bills. However this has worked for us. It also helped us through the not so good times, if I was made redundant, or I was unable to work for health reasons, what money was left was always ours.
My wife is never one to go out and spend hundreds on handbags or shoes, although her wardrobe would say differently, in the sameway, I was never one to spend hundreds on garage tools, unless I could justify it. Well you need two trolley jacks don't you lol. When I was heavily into DIY I could justify buying a particular tool for each project, lots of chipboard to cut... need a circular saw, lots of edging or detailing to do, need a router. Mind you tools like this come in handy, use a router for sinking butt hinges, a doddle.
Anyhow over the years I justified a generator, we often had regular power cuts in our village, and great for taking to the boat as it could run the vax and power tools, , welder, justified that if an exhaust fell off, I could bodge it for another week, until the weekend, then fit a new one etc, air compressor, compound sliding saw, this was needed to cut decking and support joists, and all the noggins were square and exactly the same length.
I wanted 10" table saw bench, couldn't justify that, but found a broken one on ebay, well not broken as such, it was a customer return, the box had been dropped and the blade was so far out of alignment, it was catching the sides.
I stripped it down and I found 4 allen headed bolts that clamped the motor sub assembly, the motor had shifted, so slackened the bolts, re alligned the motor, bingo, everything was running true, the blade wasn't bent either.
When I built the conservatory I needed some hard wood trim, 40 mm x 5 mm well B&Q Wickes etc wanted £6 -£8 for one strip, I needed at least 8 luckily I had a few hardwood frames, so on the saw they went, ripped them down to 40x5 one pass with my elecric plane ( justified on another project lol), and the saw cost was easily saved on one job.
What is the best tool, in my box?
I would say, for woodwork, my Aldi multi tool, it has a blade for cutting, you can get ito some difficult places, if say you have a batten on the wall, and it's too long, how do you trim it, without removing it, damaging the wall, or your best hand saw, but also want a neat square edge, then this tool is ideal. It's next task is to use the scraper tool, I can get behind the wooden quadrant trim holding double glazed panels in, and remove the trim without damaging them.
Next best tool, the 4 1/2" angle grinder, cutting metal, grinding, and with a stone cutter blade, thin concrete slabs.
I also have a dremel type tool, handy for profiling small items, plastic or other wise.
The key to having and keeping good tools is looking after them, I try to keep smaller tools in their original boxes. No point in having a grinder, if you can't find the spanners for removing the disc, or of you can't find the chuck key for the drill. lol
Rustic
