I do not consider myself a carpenter. It's not something I ever had an interest in. My favourite self deprecating quip was "Give me a piece of wood, I'll give you back a pile of sawdust".
I prefer metal work, and working with machines. Many years ago, when my interests were motorcycles, I had a set of department store wrenches that were OK, but not good. Sadly, I kept breaking 13mm sockets. The cheap ones from Canadian Tire just weren't good enough. So I bought a good set of tools, and never broke another wrench. What does this have to do with carpentry? Because it wasn't something I had an interest in, I didn't have good woodworking tools. I had a cheap Black & Decker circular saw, a cheap drill and a worn out hammer that my dad gave me that I used for everything from bashing stuck bolts to driving nails to setting tent pegs. I couldn't cut a board straight, I could never get two pieces of wood to line up square, I basically couldn't do anything decent with wood, whether I wanted to or not. But I digress...... I couple of years ago, my wife and I decided we wanted to renovate our house. We hired a contractor (sadly, root word of this was "con", but that is important to the story, as well), and started work on the house. Anyway, the job went on and on, and finally, on Thanksgiving of 2003, the conman walked off the job, leaving us with a condemned building, nowhere to live, winter coming on quickly, and no funds to hire out the completion of the job. I had to learn a lot of things quickly. I had to learn plumbing codes and how to solder copper pipe (rule 1: don't stand right under your work. I have the solder burns on my chest to show what can happen when you do....) I had to learn how to wire a house, and how to do those two switch light circuits that don't look like they could ever work). None of this I found difficult, I like working with metal, and really, understanding basic house wiring is child's play. But I had to learn how to do woodwork. I had baseboards to install, trim to cut, walls to build, lots of things that required accurate cutting. I decided that if I was going to do this shit, I was going to have good tools for it, since the ones I had were old and beaten up anyway. I bought a thousand dollar table saw, and a 200 dollar circular saw. I bought a 1/2 inch drill to replace the 1/4 inch B&D that was worn out anyway. I bought an inexpensive cut off saw for the baseboards and trim (more on that later). I discovered that I have the potential to be a pretty good carpenter, too. All of a sudden, I can cut two pieces of wood, and they fit together, squarely and tightly. I built the vanity for the bathroom, and it is more square and level than the room it is going into. I couldn't find a 78 inch door (stupid conboy framed all the doorways 2 inches shorter than standard, so I built a nice door instead. But I still can't cut a decent miter joint. It turns out that the cheap saw I bought has some built in inaccuracies that make it almost impossible to get a cut accurate enough for trim work. Eventually, I'll get a good quality sliding compound miter saw, but for now, painters caulk is an unfortunate fact of life. So, for me, good tools have made a hell of a difference in my life, and I really do think that the tool can be the difference between a quality job and a mediocre one. My experience over the past couple of years has really brought this home for me. William Robb
