Too many tools --  Thursday, April 4, 2013  -- I bought a nut splitter.  I have many thousands of dollars invested in tools,  There are so many tools in the shop that it is almost embarrassing. But, for the boat trailer, I needed just one more.  My wife, Patti, thinks I buy tools like she buys shoes, but she’s wrong.  Getting a new tool is not about buying a possession.  Rather, it is purchasing the power to solve a problem.  In this case the problem is rusted nuts on bolts—more than 30 rusted nuts.  Yes, I could have solved this problem other ways.  The nuts could be removed with a hack saw—labor intensive—about 20 minutes each and gallons of sweat.  They could have been ground off—less sweat but the same amount of time.  Or, one could just slip the splitter on the nut, tighten up the bolt with a ratchet and break the nut free—about 1 minute each.  I spent the first 2/3 of my life trying to make do with the tools at hand—now I just get what is needed.  Life is too short to drink cheap beer, work for mean bosses, or use crappy tools.

Hard to find--but worth it.