Move Over Bob Vila

In 9th grade, my favorite class was wood shop, but I was in the college track and there would be no way for me to pursue my interest in high school. I often said that if I hadn't gone to college, wood working would have been my path of choice.

Well now that I am retired, that path is open to me. For the past 40 years, I have had to made do with the basics. I had a decent collection of hand tools, a power drill, circular saw, table saw, but that was about it. If I had a job to do, I used what I had, borrowed, or rented, but now it's time to get the right tools for the jos which I'll write about in an upcoming post

Between garage sales, Craig's list, Amazon.com, VermontAmerican.com, Home Depot, and Lowes I've added a 9" band saw, a table sander, a full set of cordless hand tools, a router and router table, a Dremel with assorted bits, a drill press, router table and plunge router attachment, and an Arrow ET200 electric brad nail gun. I'll talk about my projects in another post.

Literally every one of the tools paid for itself after the first or second use, including the nail gun, but the nail gun was the only tool that turned out to be a huge disappointment.

It jammed once or twice and I always had to finish the last quarter inch of the nail with a hammer, but hey what do I know. I never used a nail gun before and figured since it's electric rather than the professional air compressor type, that's not unusual. It was still a hundred times better than driving them in by hand.

Two days ago, I was using it to build some storage bins. About a dozen brads into the project a spark few out of the top and the gun died. I took it back yesterday and exchanged it. A half dozen nails later, the new one broke.

What's going on here. I told Jill and being the ever practical shopper that she is, she suggested that I check it out on the Internet to see what the story was. I found 30 reviews on Amazon and 24 of them were negative, with 21 of the 24 gaving it one star. I have never seen a product that badly reviewed.

So it was back to Home Depot to get the right tool for the job. It was the $59 Arrow vs the $189 Porter Cable air compressor and brad gun combination. I wondered how much difference the extra $130 would make. After using it, I would guess it made at least $200 worth of difference. Aside from the nail gun, there are loads of other uses for the air compressor.

I spent another $15 and got the tire inflation kit. Hey and if I get a tire changing machine and lug wrench gun I can complete with Mr. Goodwrench. Hmmmmmm... I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in need of some sort of intervention.