You have every reason to suspect.
Your loved one has been hoarding hacksaws, searching for sockets and pining for pliers. His trips to Builder`s Square have become excessive-and so have his purchases. Hammer time is all the time; last week he hosted a meeting of the Bob Vila fan club.
No sense denying it. You`re living with a Tool Nut-the type of guy who dons a hard hat and safety goggles to watch ABC`s ”Home Improvement,” the new situation comedy starring comedian Tim Allen as a tool-toting Detroit do- it-yourselfer.
Here, we`re revealing the secrets to understanding the Tool Nut in your life.
MANLY, YES. BUT I LIKE THEM, TOOL. First, it`s important to realize that not all Tool Nuts are men. Just ask Amy Fried, a 26-year-old Ypsilanti, Mich., welding store clerk who is studying to be a welder.
As a kid, Fried hung around her dad`s workshop ”building swords and guns and tanks, playing army, building birdhouses.” She ripped apart a manual typewriter when she was 7 because she was ”curious to see what was inside of it.” Her dad didn`t care that she couldn`t put it back together.
She rebuilt a `67 Volkswagen Beetle the summer after she graduated from high school.
Fried loves tools-especially the 14-piece Craftsman ratchet set (nine metric sockets!) she got for her birthday 10 years ago.
”You can do just about anything with a ratchet set. That and a good pair of pliers will get you through the most dangerous situtations.”
NO TOOLS? FOOLS. Ask most Tool Nuts if you can borrow a hammer, and you`re asking for trouble. Eyeball their sockets, reach for their wrenches or hanker for their handsaws at your own risk.
Most Tool Nuts don`t share. They don`t believe in tool pools. Their relationship with their tools is a monogamous one.
”I wouldn`t loan a saw to my own son because he`s not mechanically inclined,” says Cletus Turner, 65, a retired funeral home handyman who has between $10,000 and $12,000 in tools and doesn`t like to think about anything bad happening to them – especially his favorite tool, a 1,200-pound 16-inch-blade radial-arm saw he calls Big John.
”I can`t produce for those I love unless I have the tools,” adds Turner, who builds furniture out of junk. He has seven homemade china cabinets in his west side Detroit house – including one fashioned out of an old stove- and a few months ago he retrieved a doctor`s examination table from the alley behind a nearby clinic and turned it into a work bench.
”It`s not that I`m selfish. I love my tools. I don`t loan my wife out.” Occasionally, there are exceptions to the no-sharing-tools rule. Rex Brissette, 37, an unemployed sheet metal worker is one of those exceptions- which is probably why he`s always losing tools.
A couple of years ago, he lent a coworker a special clamp. The coworker lost it. And never apologized. ”That`s what hurt me,” Brissette says. ”He loses it and then doesn`t say, `Hey, I`m sorry. I`ll get you another one.`
It`s an insult. It`s a low blow.”
Now Brissette has his name branded on most of his tools.
”You just do it to keep the honest people honest.”
People who lose borrowed tools go to Hardware Hell.
POWER TOOLS. Whether they`re building bookshelves or ripping apart an engine, most Tool Nuts report a surge of power and self-esteem when they work with their tools.
It`s nirvana with nails.
They are in control, they are creator, they are MASTER OF THEIR UNIVERSE. ”More than anything else, I feel confident,” says Lawrence Black, a 32- year-old auto mechanic from Detroit whose ultimate tool is the Snap-On air ratchet he bought several years ago for about $200.
Says Amy Fried: ”It`s like, here I am, I`ve got this hammer and I`m beating away … I`m making a deck. It makes you feel good to use something and step away from it and say `That`s what I did.”`
It`s a sense of accomplishment, a sense of self-worth.
DUAL TOOLS. Tool Nuts spend their lives preparing for the worst. They worry about tool shortages. They fear their table saws will break, and they`ll be left without a spare. For them, six hammers are better than five. Four toolboxes are better than three. Two oscillating spindle sanders are better than one.
”I don`t need all the screwdrivers,” confesses Brissette, who estimates he has about 50 in his collection. ”I could probably get away with one. But what happens when I break it? I`ve got to run to the store.”
Most recently, he bought a pair of horse hoof nippers. He doesn`t own a horse, but thinks he might be able to use the tool in his sheet metal job.
TOOLIN` AROUND THE HOUSE. Tool Nuts never get tired of working with tools. Even after a week of working on other people`s projects, Black, the auto mechanic, likes to dust off his circular saw when he gets home from work. He spends his weekends doing ”a lot of little things around the house.”
