Friday, September 8, 2017

Using tools


Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all.
―Thomas Carlyle

If the above quote is true and using tools is an integral part of being human, I guess I am some type of alien life form because I am pretty much hopeless at using them.
The interesting part of this is that my husband has a Snap on truck (he sells tools for a living) and I pretty much have access to any type of tool you could imagine for any type of farm project. That being said I have always been the type of person that hangs pictures by hammering screws into the wall with the heel of my shoe.



A giant (fake) set of sidecutters
Yesterday's project was putting up a screw eye to hang hay nets in my horse paddock. In my typical fashion I tried just slamming it into the wall, and then hammering it in with a rock...unsurprisingly both of these things were unsuccessful. 

Tools on the Snap on truck
John said the problem was that I had to pre-drill a hole for the screw eye and handed me a fancy new type of drill off the Snap on truck. I set off with drill and screw eye in hand and tried to drill the hole. This was a really expensive drill with all the latest in drill technology (which is apparently a thing). The drill would not make a dent in the wood, so I tried pushing harder on it which did not help. I tried cursing at it as well which was equally unhelpful. Eventually I gave up and walked back down the hill, handed the drill back to John and exclaimed "this drill is terrible, it can't drill through anything!"

John's response: that's probably because you have it in reverse.