Geekfoolery

In a previous post, I plumbed the depth of my ignorance about power tools. I am trying to make amends, and I have begun the long slow road of learning the basics and investing carefully in the precious metals come from Bosch, DeWalt, and Craftsman.

The first lesson has been a task nagging at me since I moved in to my house nearly ten years ago. The garage hasn’t had a car in it for about half that time–part of it is the accumulated junk that needs to be tossed or donated, but even with all that gone, there is still a bunch of stuff that needs to be put somewhere, so the simple answer: Get some 2×4s and some plywood and build some shelves. This weekend I did it.

As a good student, I did some Googling for garage shelf plans and there were plenty to choose from. I knew I would need a circular saw as the first quality power tool for the garage. I did some homework. I picked a up a power tools buyer’s guide from the newstand to get an idea what I should be looking for–top contenders in the market were Bosch and Milwaukee. Home Depot was sold out of the Bosch, so the Milwaukee circular saw it was.

After I had the plans, I did some further homework by playing around with my planned design in Google Sketchup. I made a rough outline of the garage and imported some of the fixed items I knew I had and then made a design for a 3-level set of shelves and imported that to see how it would work. Although the shelf I actually ended up building turned out smaller than what I drew in Sketchup, it was still an important exercise.

Enough preliminary crap. Time to take the truck and get some wood and tools. Grabbed my geek son and off we went.

One tool I was looking at for this job was probably a serious case of overkill–but I wanted one anyway. I wanted a nail gun. Partly because I knew that any job requiring me to hammer more than 4 nails was going to be time consuming and frustrating, but the other part of me was in full on tool lust. First, there is the whole Tony Montana aspect. I mean, it says “gun” right in the name of the thing. The problem is that most nailers for what I was trying to do–namely, a “framing” nailer as opposed to a “finish” nailer–seemed to start at $200 and up, and most of them were also air-driven and I don’t have a compressor. So I headed over to the Tool Rental section.

They hooked me up with a Plaslode cordless framing nailer that runs on a canister of propane or butane or something–they weren’t actually saying. The smallest box of nails you can buy is about ten thousand, probably normal for someone who is going to use one to build an actual garage and not a dinky set of shelves like me. What the hell. You only live once.

So I head home with a load of 2×4s and plywood, a new circular saw and nail gun. Cool.

Normally my home improvement projects get about 15 minutes in before I realize that something is going to be much harder than it looks, or that I don’t have the right tool, or some piece is being stubborn and annoying, and I am in for a couple of hours of wrestling with something that a normal craftsman could do in 10 minutes.

What a difference the right tools make. I set to work with the little geeklings hanging around to help me measure and clamp, while I got to run the saw and the nail gun. I have a couple of crappy saws I use occasionally for mild demolition, but straight lines have always been elusive. Not so for this job.

And the nail gun….”Kerchunk!” Nothing is so satisfying as getting to the point in the job where I have to unload a whole clip of nails as I went around the shelf and pinned down the plywood.

The shelves are done, and we’re looking at where to put the next ones. I have about 9,500 nails left, so I think I’ll knock out a few more projects this summer, all the while thinking….

Did I nail that stud six times or only five?

Go ahead…. make my shelves.

Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!

Hasta la vista, baby!

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