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Christmas came early

Friday, December 4th, 2009

My life has changed! I have discovered the palm nailer.

It you don’t have one of these, you really must get one. (I’d recommend Porter-Cable. I love their tools.) Here’s how it works:

Barry brought us one when he came to visit last week. When he showed it to me, he had a look on his face like it was something really special. Kind of like he was showing a giant chocolate cake to someone who’d never seen or tasted one before. I was thankful for any new tool (he also brought us a nail gun) but didn’t fully appreciate how great this was.

I’d seen some kind of corner nailer on TV and wanted one.  It’s supposed to make nailing into corners easier. It’s a handheld thing that you put a nail in the and then it hammers it in for you. With all the problems I’m having with my hands, I thought it might be worthwhile.

The palm nailer is all that and more. First of all, it’s pneumatic (runs off compressed air), which is essential, because it means it has real power.

It works not only in corners but everywhere. I will use it for almost everything from now on.

The nail gun is great too, but the palm nailer has several advantages to me. First, it’s not remotely dangerous. I can imagine nailing myself with a nail gun (and have heard the story about Doug about a hundred times) but not with the palm nailer. It’s very gentle and innocuous. It’s also a lot lighter than the nail gun, which is especially good when you’re nailing overhead. And of course, it’s super small so you can use it almost anywhere.

For a just a minute or two, I wondered if it was lazy or somehow inauthentic to use a power nailer. Then I thought about accounting. I’m glad I know how to do debits and credits by hand on ledgers. Having actually done that, I better understand the process and how the various accounts work. But would I ever think of running a business without an accounting software package? No.

I think that the nail gun and the palm nailer together will probably save us hundreds of hours on the rest of the building. (Just today, I did some work that I never would have finished in a single day without them.) And the pain and wear and tear on my hands that this will eliminate is incalculable.

Me and my new nail gun

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White shirts, black gloves and knives

Monday, August 3rd, 2009

These are items I’ve grown to appreciate over the last six months or so.

It gets hots here. Little things matter more than they have in my past experiences. White shirts help a lot; much more than I expected. Recently I wore a black t-shirt as a test. Arg!

Black gloves… well gloves. It’s just that I bought a pair of black Mechanix’s brand gloves that I love. They are unbelievably ugly with writing all over them. However, they are the kind of gloves I can wear while doing tasks that require a certain sensitivity that gloves normally lack. I can pick between an 16d nail and an 8d nail from my tool belt without looking. Pretty cool. The main thing is that I wear these glove all the time and that’s what I wanted. A lot less splinters and cuts for me since I started wearing these.

I’ve never been one to carry a knife, though I always like the idea. I never needed one enough to go to the bother of locating (I lose stuff all the time) one and putting it in a pocket every morning. I had a feeling I might before we moved here and I bought a couple. One is a simple flip open and lock style. I use this all the time and feel quite lost without it now. The other is one of those multitool ones with pliers, wire cutters, and a pretty nasty locking blade. I use this one much less often, but when I do it always saves me a walk. I wear this one on my belt which is a bit of a bother to put on each morning, but I always regret it when it’s not there. My only unhappiness with the miltitool is that it has a little clip on its side that would only result in its loss if I used it, that causes it to get stuck in the sheath. I’d like to take it off, but I’m pretty sure it would spring into a million pieces if I ever took it apart enough to remove it.

The list is longer of course. Big leather gloves are on the list too. Oh yea, the big Toyota Tundra is probably the top of the list. We’ve hauled some pretty big loads and it gets us through all the nasty roads around here no problems.

Ice water… did I mention ice water? We’ve learned to keep a couple of plastic jugs three-quarters full in the freezer. When we head to the ranch (or even a long drive) we grab a bottle, add some water and go. It’s stays cold for hours.

-brad

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