Off Campus

03 May 2005

Work shoppin' advice

Pressed for time, and unable to find the right tool for the job, one must occasionally improvise. This is true in the classroom, the workshop or broken down on the side of the road. With so much of our lives becoming digitized, unless a fix can be downloaded off the Internet, we're becoming clueless around the workshop. We're not longer mechanical MacGyvers that our fathers and grandfathers used to be. Had to be - building and maintaining their homes, cars and whatever other excuse kept them in the garage on "Jell-O Salad" night. We have got to exercise this gene, lest we lose it to some living history museum devoted to the ingenuity of the all around handyman and jerry-rigger.

So with that in mind, a wobbly chair to fix, and too little experience behind ourselves, we set out to see what we could "fix."

After half an afternoon rummaging through the house, breaking a couple of dad’s tools and nearly breaking a sweat, we've learned the following about substitutes for a saw and drill:

A toothbrush will indent wood.

A Snickers will not cut wood.

Wood will not cut wood.

A meat thermometer will scratch wood.

A hollow-point bullet will cause trouble.