By Susan Tweit
I’ve never claimed to be Tool Girl. Back in college, in fact, my housemates prohibited me from playing with their power tools when we were renovating our old house. As I recall, a small incident with a reciprocating saw and one of my fingers precipitated the ban. Both recovered, though the finger required a few stitches.
It’s not that I’m clumsy or incapable; I lost much of the feeling in my fingers and toes to Raynaud’s Syndrome, a companion to the Lupus I’ve lived with all my life. If I don’t watch where my digits are relative to implements of destruction, I can get into serious trouble before I notice what’s happening.
As a result, I’ve gone decades without much involvement with tools other than those used for cooking, while being married to a guy who knew and loved every kind of tool I could imagine, and many more that I couldn’t.
If something needed designed, modified, re-sized, engineered or re-engineered; or attached, detached, fabricated or built, Richard did it. Elegantly and economically. I watched and admired from a safe distance.
But he’s gone now. And I’m the stubbornly independent sort. So I’m slowly teaching myself to use some of his everyday tools.
Recently, after an embarrassing incident where I surprised myself by finding just the right stemmed wrench to repair the broken faucet sprayer mount in the guest cottage kitchen, but then couldn’t make it work while lying on my back under the sink (and bought entirely the wrong parts), I decided I would pick a really simple project to practice my “tool girl” competence.
So when I went to the hardware store to return the faucet-sprayer parts I didn’t need, I bought a towel ring for the master bath. (Just because Richard could do everything from build a house to sculpt a one-ton granite boulder into a spectacular firepit didn’t mean he always finished the doing …)
Back at home, I raided Richard’s shop for tools, read the instructions, tapped the wall to locate a stud, made a pencil mark where the mounting bracket would go, and then decided to test-fit the towel ring assembly to the bracket before drilling.
It didn’t fit. I looked at the instructions again and placed the parts together the way the drawing showed. No dice. The mounting bracket was too big for the towel bar assembly to slip over it and lock in place. Huh.
I took the two pieces out to Richard’s shop where a friend and his son were working, hoping another eye would see what I was doing wrong. Nope. The two pieces really didn’t fit together. Filing the slot in the mounting bracket would make it deeper, the friend suggested.
I looked at Richard’s box of files, and found my attention straying to the next box over with miscellaneous wrenches and pliers. I spotted a pair of vise-grips with a slender snout. Maybe I could bend the top of the bracket so the towel-ring assembly would slip over it.
I took vise-grips and bracket inside, fastened the former to the latter, and bent the top rim of the bracket slightly. Then I tried slipping the towel-ring assembly on. Close, but not quite. I bent the top of the bracket a bit more: Success!
Bursting with confidence at my re-engineering effort, I hefted Richard’s cordless drill in one hand, positioned the bracket and first screw on the wall with the other, pressed the trigger on the drill – and proceeded to slip and nearly drill a hole in my leg. Okay. Try two. I pushed; the drill pushed back – harder.
I looked at the drill. It’s rotation direction was set to unscrew, not screw. Oh. I reset it, hefted the drill again, repositioned the screw and bracket and – ta da! In went the first screw. A little too tightly. I reversed it carefully. And then picked up the other screw and installed it on the first try.
I slipped the towel-ring assembly over the bracket, tightened the set screw, and stepped back to admire my handiwork. Perhaps it took me four times as long as it would have taken Richard, but still, I was ridiculously pleased with myself.
“Not bad for a beginner, eh?” I said out loud in the quiet bathroom.
I’m pretty sure I heard Richard’s chuckle as I walked out to his studio to replace the tools.
Susan J. Tweit is the award-winning author of WALKING NATURE HOME, A LIFE’S JOURNEY, and 11 other books, and can be contacted through her blog and website, susanjtweit.com
