Tool Making

I was thinking today that custom toolmaking likely is making a comeback all over the world. When mass production came into being in the 1800s often it was cheaper to buy a tool already made somewhere using mass production techniques than to make it yourself. So, this was a shift away from custom building of rifles, pistols, shovels, rakes, knives, plows and other tools.

Even when I grew up in the 1950s there were many people I knew who still built or repaired their own tools because that was the only way to survive for most people during the 1930s during the Great Depression and tool making had always been big in the U.S. That is one of the reasons why we were always known for innovation. Innovation was how the people who settled here and didn't die survived. Only through ultimate efficiency in every way did the people who came here survive. The rest just died. That was how it really was.

Now with 3D printers coming online building plastic things and metal things out of plastic and metal almost anything can be built including most small tools, plastic guns etc. So, I think worldwide you are going to see a tremendous resurgence of toolmaking worldwide because of this. Also, energy was much cheaper earlier in this century (especially before the 1970s). So, it was possible to waste energy and build things extremely cheaply. But that is no longer true today on earth. So, one of the ways to make things less expensive is for people to be powered at home by solar or wind and to repair or build some or all of their own tools worldwide. So, I think making your own tools in combinations with plastic or metal 3d printers along with larger things (too big for your printer to print being custom made by hand. So, I think more and more worldwide you will see people building whatever they need tool wise at home, growing their own food more at home in order to financially survive the upturn in all oil based fuels in price.

For example, since it is now the same price or less to generate electricity with wind or solar over any other fuel in California, India and China, you are going to see a lot more solar and wind and geothermal electrical generation all over the world because of this. In the end oil products will mostly be used for lubrication and plastics and almost all electricity is going to be from solar, wind and geothermal.

The history of toolmaking goes back historically over 250,000 to 275,000 years to the Neanderthals. But once our own ancestors became growers of food instead of just hunter gatherers like the Neanderthals we could have more children that survived. I recently was watching something I believe that was on the History Channel about how the did studies genetically and found that everyone on earth has Neanderthal blood from 1% to 4%. The lowest level of Neanderthal blood is in Asia and the highest is in Tuscany in Italy. The higher level of Neanderthal blood the better your immune system works. So, because of genetic tests it is likely that Neanderthals were bred out of existence from breeding because they were so vastly outnumbered by Homo Sapiens like us.

If you think about this from an anthropological point of view this makes sense because a hunter gatherer would be much more likely to die than a farmer for a variety of reasons partly just that a nomadic life is harder and more dangerous generally than a farmers life. The gaps between eating would be greater and the likelihood of dying from one of these gaps of eating would be higher for a Neanderthal. So, only the very strongest DNA of Neanderthal would survive which is why the higher level of Neanderthal blood you have the better immune system you likely have as well.

Some of the tools made from flint 275,000 years ago were as sharp as many of the metal knives made today because of their excellent chipping methods which created sharpness. This sharpness helped them in skinning animals they killed to eat so they could better make clothes from the fur and skin from those animals. So, the point I'm trying to make here is toolmaking has always been a part of human survival for at the very least already 275,000 years.

Afterthought: As I was thinking about writing this I sort of burned up one of my 100 foot outdoor cords that I have used on weed eaters, leaf blowers, electric chain saws and the like to maintain the yard outside my home in front and in back. So, my last weed eater which was a Black and Decker finally burned up so I was sort of frustrated by this and went online to price new ones so that I could get something that didn't burn up very soon that was also electric. I thought about buying online (which tends to be much cheaper) but wasn't willing to wait for the delivery. So, I just went out to Ace Hardware carrying 5 pages of the highest recommended weed eaters in the country. However, when I arrived they had none of these.

I realized I didn't want to get a battery powered rechargeable one because my yard is large and I didn't want to be doing work on many succeeding days. However, if you are older and have heart problems or aren't used to working hard physically maybe a battery powered rechargeable one might just keep you alive. So, I guess that is something to think about too. I wound up with a Black and Decker because my last one had outlasted 4 other ones I bought over the years and the new one had two lines 180 degrees from each other so they would cut every half turn and tear up a lot more weeds faster. Also, I noticed my cord plug in where it connected to the weed eater was smoking at first. My old Black and Decker did this towards the end too so I just kept going. But later I looked at the box it came in and realized this was a 6 amp weed eater which meant I might need a heftier cord to carry the line electrical load. So, I looked through my garage of my tools and my Dad's tools which included also some of my grandfather's tools (since both of them were Electrical Contractors) and both were capable of making tools since they were very handy. So, now I have tools from the 1800s to the present because of my father and grandfather. So, anyway I found a 3/4 inch thick black cord from the 1980s and I tried plugging one of my tools into it and it worked so I knew something as thick as a welding cord would be fine to use with my new 6 amp weed eater which really works great so far as long as I periodically clean the weed pieces from the cooling vents near the motor. So far it works great.

One of the things I got from my Dad which was from his Dad is a single sided hatchet blade that I made a handle for. It is much easier to sharpen only one side so I see the value of something like this even though it tends to pull to one side a little when chopping wood for a bonfire while camping or something like this. Another tool I like is  really huge vice that weighs around 50 to 75 pounds. I can clamp almost anything in it and it will stay stable so I can cut, drill or whatever I need to do to it. I can remember when I was about 3 or 4 years old it was in my grandfather's shop in Lake Forest Park Seattle because I lived with my parents on my Grandad's 2 1/2 acres of apple trees, black cherry trees, boysenberries and blackberries until I was 4 years old when we moved to California.