Talking Tools Manchester CT

Source: TOOLS OF THE TRADE Magazine
Publication date: June 4, 2007

By Rick Schwolsky

As hard as it might be to imagine, when I'm not testing tools, writing about tools, reading about tools, or seeing how tools are made, I seem to be talking about them–all the time.

I'm not complaining. I love talkin' tools, which I guess you'd expect from the editor of a magazine called Tools of the Trade. It comes naturally to me; I've been talking about them since I was a boy sneaking my dad's Yankee screwdriver out of his toolbox. (In fact, my mother told me recently that my first word was "Amp," but that's another story.)

When I was finally in the trades and on the job, I used to have to cram my peanut butter and jelly sandwich into my mouth during the last five minutes of my lunch break–because I'd spent the first 25 minutes jawboning about tools with my buddies. Then, of course, it would take me another hour to get the peanut butter off the roof of my mouth and nobody could understand a word I said.

Things haven't changed since then. Tools follow me everywhere, even when I'm off the clock. Just last weekend, while dangling on a chairlift 75 feet above the soft spring snow in the back bowls of Vail during a fantastic last day of the ski season, I found myself locked in with a total stranger debating the pros and cons of lithium-ion batteries. I have no idea how this happens. It wasn't like

I was wearing a Tools of the Trade ski hat or anything.

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