Money Couldn't Buy the 34 Tools Every Appalachian Grandpa Needed in 1965 (I Burned Four)

My grandfather owned about forty tools when he died, and I could not have bought a single one of them with money at any store. Not because we were poor. Because they were not for sale anywhere, at any price, to anybody. In this video I count out thirty four of them and tell you exactly where each one came from. The axe helve he shaved out of hickory that had dried two years in the loft. The wooden maul, and the gluts that went with it. The shaving horse that stops people when they see it. The twelve foot workbench he built into the wall, and the sawhorses that outlived him. The hay hook. The knife he made out of a worn file, which is the one I want you to remember. The froe he forged from a wagon spring, the chisel from a Model A axle, the punch from a horseshoe nail, the hoe he cut down out of a worn out shovel. Then the ones another man made for him: the tongs Elmer forged with my grandfather standing in the room, the post vise, the anvil that never went through a sale, the foot powered grindstone. Then the ones that came down the road when somebody died: the brace and the bits that were his father's, the drawknife, the spokeshave, the wooden jack plane with the laid steel iron. And the ones nobody thinks of as tools at all: the wooden square, the plumb bob he cast himself in a block of maple, the chalk line on its wooden reel, the froe club, the gambrel, the singletree, the whetstone he carried in his pocket, the long spouted oil can, the bench hook, the winding sticks, the mortising chisel and its mallet, the scribe, the story stick, and the bench itself, which is the only tool on the list that recorded who used it. I do the arithmetic at the end: twelve he made out of wood he cut himself, eight out of steel that was already broken and thrown away, six that came to him because a man died, five that a man made for him with him standing there, and three he bought. Three, out of thirty four. I also tell you the part that costs me something. Four of those story sticks were on a nail in that shop when I cleaned it out, and I burned them, and I have never gotten over it. That is the most expensive mistake I have ever made and it did not cost me a dollar. The video gives you the verdict. The manual gives you the method — the ten of these you can still make yourself this month, in order, with the angles and the steel and the timings written down. https://burlsizemore.com