The summer I turned 14 I worked for my uncle and cousin on their farms. I drove tractor and worked summer fallow. I worked the harvest, driving field truck and learned to drive as wheat was transferred from the combine to the truck without stopping. But most of the summer, I worked on the huge project of sanding a combine preparing it for paint. My uncle had purchased a combine that had belonged to a custom combiner and had been damaged in an accident while loading it onto a truck. Combines have large areas of sheet metal and this one had some major crumples. A few new parts were purchased and installed, but most of the square footage of the combine involved sheet metal panels which had been removed, straightened, and reinstalled. My cousin, who had trained as an auto body technician, did a good job of taking out the dents, and left behind cracked and peeling paint. My job was to sand all of the bare metal and all of the painted surfaces so that primer and paint could be applied to make the combine look new again. Between the primer and paint, every surface had to be sanded again. I spent days sanding that combine. I would return to the house after ten hours of sanding and shower all of the dust off myself. We had to take short showers and daily showers weren’t allowed to most family members because all of the water on the farm was hauled in. You learn to be good at conserving.

It was that summer that I began collecting mechanic’s tools. My cousin set me up with a used metal toolbox, which I sanded and painted. I was allowed to keep tools that I found that had been dropped in the yard. My first finds were two 9/16 box wrenches and a 9/16 socket for a 3/8 ratchet. About a month into my summer my cousin brought home a 5 gallon bucket of wrenches and sockets he had purchased at a farm auction. I was given the task of sorting through the tools and replacing all of the missing wrenches and sockets in my cousin’s large toolbox in which he had duplicates of every tool. The tools that were left over were then sorted into three piles. One pile were tools that I needed to fill out a set of wrenches and sockets for 3/8 and 1/2 ratchets. They got put into my tool box. Another pile were duplicates that neither I nor my cousin needed. Any tools that were made by Craftsman were selected from this group to get as many Craftsman tools in my box as possible. If I could substitute a tool I previously had with a Craftsman tool the swap was made. The third pile, much smaller, was Craftsman tools that were damaged. A few wrenches were bent. One had broken jaws. And there were ratchets that didn’t work. These tools were taken to the Sears store in Great Falls where they were replaced with new tools under Craftsman’s lifetime tool warranty. Those replacement tools were the first new tools in my mechanic’s tool box.

Over the next few years, I added to my mechanic’s tools. I obtained punches and hammers and pliers and screw drivers. My father sold tools to family and his employees at half price because he wanted to encourage his employees, especially his mechanics, to have quality tools for their work. I saved money from various jobs, including assembling machinery at my father’s store to purchase tools.

It was around that time when I began to care less about my carpenter’s tools. I think a claw hammer was the first tool to be transferred from my carpenter’s box to my mechanic’s box. Some of my carpenter’s tools were borrowed by my brothers and never made it back into my box. Others were lost. A few were even rusted because they got left outdoors, something that was very much frowned upon in our house. Eventually, my tools all got consolidated. By that time I did not own a crosscut saw. Fortunately my hand plane made it into the drawer in which our father kept his planes and those he had gotten from his father, a drawer which I eventually inherited, giving me a complete set of hand planes. But in the in-between days of my teens and early 20s, my focus was on mechanic’s tools. I don’t know what became of the hand-made wooden tool tote that I had built when I was ten. The tote was built as one of my first woodworking projects. It was very similar to the one my father had made when he was young and the one my grandfather used when working on a job site. I cut out all of the pieces from dimensional lumber with a hand saw. The rip cuts were especially difficult for me. I cut every piece 1/4 inch oversize and sanded the pieces to fit. I assembled the box with glue and nails under my father’s direction. I pre-drilled nail holes with a brace and bit so that there were no splits in the wood. The handle was a piece of hardwood closet rod that was a challenge to sand so that the ends were perfectly rounded. After the entire box was sanded, by hand, I painted it. The first time I painted it, it was red because I liked the color. Later, I painted it John Deere Green in one of my first opportunities to use canned spray paint.

Now, at age 70, I wish I had kept that box. I wish I had kept the gray tote my father had made when he was a boy.

For the past three weeks, I have been supervising my oldest grandson as he makes his tool tote, based on the design of those other boxes. I allowed him to use the chop saw for his crosscuts. I made the rip cuts for him on the table saw. His box is put together with screws in the glue joints instead of nails. I did have him pre-drill and countersink the screws as a learning exercise. He got to use a power driver. I let him use the bench sander to round off the ends of the handle. Next week he’ll apply stain after spending nearly an hour sanding the box inside and out yesterday.

I don’t know if he will value this tote and keep it when he gets older. I do know how valuable it has been for me to supervise his project and teach him skills that have been passed down for generations in our family. I’ve already given him a fair supply of his own tools to put in the box. I’ve taught him a lot about how to use those tools. There will be more tools to come. Like his father, some tools will be new to our grandson. Some will come from his father. And a few, like the claw hammer and the carpenter’s pencils will be gifts from his grandfather. There will be more from that source. I really enjoy buying tools and anyone who knows me knows I don’t need any more tools.