I love tools. Big tools, small tools, tools that take a crew to install, tools that are as relevant today as they were a century ago. From bullet proof German brands like Stahl-Wille and Hazet, to brands still made in the USA like Snap-On, Mac and Craftsman, I love tools. For measuring close tolerances there is even a place in my heart for the Japanese brand Mitutoyo.
Other shops and dealerships often impress me with their tooling. I find myself scanning their inventory and calculating the tooling expenditures as if I were working for the IRS. Snap-On cabinets neatly filled with Snap-On everything, Nussbaum auto lifts, a complete Hazet tooling set-up. Some shops give the impression that without their special edition Nascar Snap-On tool wall a job will simply not get done properly.
As much as I envy the professional, homogeneous tooling set-up, I wonder if it has an adverse effect on creativity. When I go for a 17mm open end wrench to crack virtually any nut on a Mercedes-Benz, I use the same Craftsman wrench my mother gave me for Christmas when I was 18 years old. It was available at the Sears in the mall, It was affordable, and it is a damn good wrench. It does the thing I need it to do every time. And somewhere in this shop, in a mismatched tool box from a big box store, or an old metal tool box, or even an oil stained wooden cabinet, I can still find that old 17mm wrench. A wrench that lives among relics from the past, gifts from family members, specialty tools created for a singular purpose and the 'professional' tools that I now justify investing in.
I think that our shop thrives in a place where the past is revered in the same heartbeat in which the future is embraced. Like a family farmhouse where relics of the past share space with beacons of the future, we are surrounded by our own mechanical heirlooms and technological marvels.
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