The other day I needed to shape a piece of sheet metal. I spent too much time searching for a metal dolly and sheet metal hammer, trying to get the perfect tools for what I was trying to do. In my annoyance I asked myself, “What did you do before you had fancy tools?”
The answer was that I created tools. I torched, heated, bent and welded things to use in place of the tools I hadn’t yet bought. The results weren’t pretty, but I was able to satisfactorily fix and maintain farm equipment.
Over the ensuing years, I’ve done my best to acquire specialized tools for specific jobs. For the most part, it’s made things easier and been worth the investment. There’s great satisfaction in knowing I have the exact tool or tools needed for a particular job.
But there came a moment of clarity the other day when I needed to bend that sheet metal, when I realized that creativity and innovation had taken backseat to specialized tools. Where I once took pride in doing the most with the least, I had reached the point where I had tunnel vision and mistakenly thought I had to have the perfect tools for a specific job before I could begin work. I’d lost my sense of adventure and misplaced my creativity.
So I returned to my roots, grabbed the steel cap off an oxygen bottle, clamped it in my vise, and used its curved surface and a 24-ounce ball peen hammer to satisfactorily shape the piece of sheet metal. I came, I saw, I cobbled — and it felt wonderful.
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