High Tech Defects

I have written before about my preference for simple tools that last. They may be crude, humble, and require some degree of training to use them properly, but they usually are durable and are devices that you can depend on, year after year.

However, the lure of acquiring a new, high-tech gadget becomes irresistible at times. The latest fancy tool can often do a simple tool’s job much faster and with an ease that is enticing. A gasoline-powered hydraulic wood splitter can quickly render a pile of recalcitrant logs into a heap of slender splits that make fire starting a breeze. A motorized garden rototiller can quickly churn over a plot of land and render it ready for planting. Both of these devices are incredibly efficient and accomplish their task in a fraction of the time it requires me to split wood by hand or turn over the garden beds with a shovel.

Yet, as I've lamented before on this blog, these complicated high-tech tools have an exasperating way of breaking down—causing one to face an expensive repair or to buy a replacement. Too often the broken machine must be consigned to the landfill. When I surrender to the siren song of a new tool, I often soon regret giving in and participating in this game.

So here's yet another tale of my yielding to the purchase of a neat high-tech tool, and later coming to regret it. Every four days my wife and I luxuriate in the healing waters of an outdoor wood-fired bathtub. It's a simple, primitive process that is rejuvenating to body and soul. The challenge of properly preparing the bath is to get the water temperature close to an ideal of about 101^o F (38^o C). A couple of degrees higher and we quickly overheat. A couple of degrees lower and it's just a bath—not a healing ritual. That perfect 101degree temperature allows me to soak in the healing waters for an hour or two.

I've used an old-fashioned thermometer over the years to achieve that ideal temperature. It works, but it's become increasingly difficult for these aging eyes to read the numbers—especially in the low-light levels of a winter's evening. Thus, I was lured into buying an infrared digital electronic thermometer a couple of years ago. Oh, it was nice! (Notice the use of the past tense “was.”) The readout was illuminated, so I could see it in the dark. It offered large numbers for my aging eyes, and it was easy to use; just point and click the trigger. 

I even had fun pointing it toward many other objects and measuring their temperature. Beep, my dog's ear was 85^o F (29^o C). On a cold winter evening I could measure the ground temperature that, beep, was 30^o F (-1^o C). Beep, the stove pipe was 240^o F (116^o C). Fascinating! I kept looking for targets to beep.

Then one night my high-tech infrared toy failed. Instead of heating the water to 101^o F, it got up to more like 112^o (44^o C). My poor wife nearly scalded her legs, before she leaped back out from the cauldron. So now we are back to the old primitive analog thermometer. I need my glasses and a flashlight to read it, but it is dependable... and has endured for a couple of decades.

Good Ol' Tools

When one lives a life close to the land, good and sufficient tools are a necessity. The word tool has its origin in an old Germanic word that means “prepare.” In the kind of life I live I constantly work with one type of tool or another, and being prepared by having the right one for a task is important. It's not feasible for me to run to the store quickly and get either a replacement tool or the latest gadget. I'm out in the boonies and need to be ready to tackle the job at hand.

Modern technology offers us a plethora of gadgety tools. Peruse any tool catalog or handyman box store and you'll see a mind-blowing variety of tools—many of them powered by electricity or gasoline—to bring any task to a quick and noisy conclusion. There are many inventive companies that dream up all kinds of fancy implements that will fix anything and convince you that your life is incomplete without them.

But the problem with many of these schemes is that the tool too often does not do the job as easily and perfectly as advertised, and if it does, it will soon be in need of replacement or repair. How else are we to support those industrious folks who need to keep inventing newer and better widgets that we simply must have, if we don't scarf up their latest gimmick?

One lesson I've learned over the years of trying to forge an independent and sustainable lifestyle is the deep sense of satisfaction that comes from using a long-lasting, basic tool over the years, and literally having it become an old friend. Many of my most-used tools were acquired as long as 50 years ago, when I was a young man. It's great to still be using them. My tools and I have settled into a relationship here on the homestead that is straightforward and low tech. A good file, or pliers, or hammer, or chisel, or plane, or screwdriver, or wrench, or handsaw are implements that have almost become an extension of my body. They fit just right, do the job well, are safe, and can be depended upon to endure—all attributes that I value over speed.

Treasured even more (although not used as often) are a few tools handed down to me from my grandfather—some of which are over 100 years old. It is a joy to pull out one of Grandpa's tools and find it still useful and comfortable in my hands, or find out that it does the job better than any new-fangled tool. It takes me back to when I shadowed him around the farm as he did his chores and tackled carpentry projects, teaching his four-year-old “helper man” valuable lessons of self-sufficiency.

Another feature of old tools is how they teach me about patience and pacing in accomplishing many of my tasks around the homestead. Maybe I could polish off a job much faster with a modern power tool, but that speed often comes at a cost: a botched and rushed job because I went too fast; or buying a pricey toy that works well for a few times but then begins to malfunction; or adopting practices that just don't allow me an old-fashioned appreciation of a skilled job well done.

Old tools lead you into the slow lane, where you can become more intimately connected to the task at hand, and take the time to appreciate the sensual aspects of projects. There's a lot more to life than swiftness.