Tell us how you got into tools and such

[nmanitou]

Wow, this thread actually had me soul searching deep to find the true genesis of my tool affliction. I really have to credit 3 men in my life.

Grandpa was a "retired" farmer, but still had tractors and lawn mowers. Around 9 years old I was driving tractors and sharpening lawn mower blades. He taught me to always put equipment away clean and greased.

Dad wasn't a mechanic and left when I was 13. I was the oldest child and the "man of the house" so I fixed what I could. I lusted for a 50 cc Suzuki that I finally got and taught myself how to care for and repair it (using Grandpa's code)

My step dad had a Oil distributorship that grew into a mom and pop autoparts store. I worked that store thru high school and college. All along learning how to do basic repair on my cars, motorcycles, and snowmobiles.

As a father now, I try to pass along what ever I can to my son. Last weekend, we changed our first alternator together. Good Stuff!

 

[Dan in Pasadena]

Self Defense! and Survival Skill!

My dad was a very impatient man, to say the least. He'd be under a car when I was maybe 8 or 9 and tell me to go get him (for example) "...a 5/16" box end wrench"

Of course I had no idea what that was, I'd go to his toolbox and grab a handful or wrenchs and hand them to him. He'd curse and THROW the wrong ones on the ground whereupon I had to go pick them up and put them away. Like I said, Survival SKills.

 

[Da Bull]

It was 1979 the headlight on Trans Am burnt out. I went to change it, grabbed my trusty Philips screwdriver and found out it was a torx. I did not have that type of screwdriver. Off I go to my local shop to get it replaced! They quoted me some crazy price to change the headlight. Off again to buy a set of torx screwdrivers and changed it myself. Never stopped buying tools from that day on!! Still have the torx screwdrivers!

 

[Farmall 1066]

Grew up on a farm / feedlot in SE Nebraska in the 80's. Things were tough, for everybody. If you weren't there, you don't understand. Went from having a new line of late model equipment, to stuff getting pretty worn and thin in the span of about 5 years. Had to keep things going, with no money to take it to town. Dad, his brothers and my mom's dad were all pretty fair mechanics and fabricators before things went bad, but we really honed our skills during these lean times, but I guess I had the interest before then. An uncle owned the International Harvester dealership, and another had a garage and filling station, so lots of knowledge gleaned from those guys too. My dad's best friend was a custom cutter, and rebuilt and sold combines in the winter, also had a welding and fabrication shop. Best friends dad had the only wrecker in a 20 mile radius...I guess you could say I was just kind of immersed in it.
No money to buy toys like motorcycles or 3 wheelers back then, so I picked up other peoples castoff stuff and fixed it up myself. Had some really neat old bikes that were worth nothing at the time, but wish I had back now. H1 Kawasaki, Hodoka Super Rat, some old Bultaco's and a 500CC Suzuki 2 stroke dirt bike that fortunately siezed up before it got me killed.
Went to tech school for farm diesel, with plans to return to the farm, and run a repair shop on the side, but unfortunately, dad was forced into selling out, so went to work for the local Allis Chalmers dealer, they went broke, so went to work for the guy who bought out my Uncles dealership...turned out to be a total crook, and kept everyone on starvation wages.
I guess you could say my tool collection and DIY skills were developed out of necessity!

 

[RKA]

I have my dad to thank for this. I was always following him around the house on weekends, passing him tools and learning what I could. But dad was an engineer by trade and was just trying to fix the house/car because it was too damn expensive to hire someone. His meager selection of tools was always an issue (especially when he didn't put them away). My love of cars eventually led to the purchase of my first tools, however it was the house that really did me in. Working at a desk all week leaves me wanting to do something else on weekends. And just like dad, there is a part of me that just doesn't want to pay someone else for something I'm fully capable of doing. So no tool purchase is off limits as long as it saves me time, helps me do a better job and pays for itself in the first few uses. I spent my youth making do with whatever i had...no more! And with tools must come organization...yet another thing that seemed lacking when I was younger.

The tools and toys are one thing, but what I really learned was a sense of self reliance and know how which I'm supremely grateful for. Those characteristics go back to dad who came to this country with the clothes on his back, and my grandfather who started with nothing and made a pretty good life for his family.

 

[pain]

Has anyone had a women influence them? Other than a wife Bitching about things until you have to fix it!

 

[bobadame]

My older sister came out and helped me get an old Crosley running. My friends and I had the carb all screwed up. She went on to become a PHD mechanical engineer. She could figure things out pretty quick.

 

[Heavy Metal Doctor]

Short answer: Dad, necessity and Uncle Sam


When I was a kid, we where broke tenant farmers - if it needed done, we did it ourselves - I was the youngest of 4 siblings, so I was familiar with most tools by the time I was 6 or 7 since there always seemed to be something mechanical happening. Cars to combines....if it broke we fixed it without calling someone in to do it. I was actively wrenching as soon I had the strength to do so. So, I guess I have Dad to thank for that experience.

By the time I was 15, we'd moved to suburbia and I was wrenching on cars for less mechanically inclined friends / family / neighbors -- My older brother bought me an OTC ball joint press to do the ball joints on his pickup truck at that time. Now, over 25 years later, I still use it once a week (makes fast work of 1410 u-joints).
Add in welding and machine shop experience along with 5 years wrenching on heavy junk for Uncle Sam.....

 

[MDSPHOTO]

seems to me as soon as you own a home you start adding them for each project.

 

[BrokewrenchLS1]

Mine started when I was a kid, 7 or 8 years old - my dad was a bricklayer, and during the summer I got to go along to jobs to help mix mud, carry block, and do all sorts of "little helper" things. It stuck the fascination of showing up somewhere with a truck full of tools and a yard full of material, and when the day was over, the tools had turned the material into something else - block foundation, brick wall, stone fascia. There was some invisible energy there (sweat and muscles, but I was too young to really remove the concept from the abstract) that made tools do things to sand and water and bricks, and turn them into something better.

Once I got old enough to be able to work on things myself without screwing up more than 50% of the time, it was, like a lot of other people, a money thing. I didn't have the cash to pay a shop to change the oil in my truck, or do plugs and wires, or anything like that, and my parents weren't in a position to foot my bills. I had a cardboard box of the most basic tools imaginable, but I bloodied knuckles and ripped off fingernails and smashed thumbs and I learned. It was just like laying brick, in a way - you show up with tools, new parts, and a broken car, and when you're done, you have tools, old parts, and a running car.

 

[2mJps]

I found out early in life that if i wanted something that cost very much the easyest way to have one was to find one that was some ones elses junk and fix it up and you needed tools to do that. Most of my relatives were good mechanics and carpenters that had to fix and repair or do without. My dad worked on the RailRoad and was gone alot but i had a uncle that i learned a lot from. He wore overals and could pull the right size wrench out of his pocket when needed.I wonder what he would say about my tool collection if he was steal around today. I have some tools that he gave me when i was a teen.

 

[hotfoot5]

Back to the top!

 

[Lkdelta]

My Grand Dad had a tool room just off the livingroom in the house,...
a shop down cellar for carpentry, metal and small engine,
and a full size tool box out in the pole-barn.

I guess it was required reading at his house to know what it was, what it did, and how to do it properly.

 

[GarageEnvy]

Since I missed this one when it was new......

Like others, it started with my father. He was a mechanical engineer who enjoyed spending more time on the machine shop floor than behind the desk. He was pretty serious about boat building in the 50's. At that point central (and southern) CA was ground zero for the boating industry. That's where the love of boats (especially fast wood ones) comes from.

Here's the last one he built in 1956 in action in the 80's

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uACEqLdDOgM?feature=player_detailpage" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

At the age of 4 I had my pedal fire engine up on jack stands and was "fixing" it. At age 10 I asked for a mini-bike. Dad got me the Sears frame kit and helped me rebuild an old lawn mower engine. By age 14 I had built my first boat. The rest was me trying to match my champagne taste with my beer budget by doing it myself.

 

[chris142]

I started out riding dirt bikes @age 8 in 1977. I often had to change a sparkplug or tighten a chain. By age 10 I was replacing rings and other easy tasks(2 stroke). The little Japanese tools that came with the bike were not doing it for me so my uncle bought me a Cheap tool set and I made do with those until I was about 14. I remember putting hose clamps on the sockets to keep them from spreading

@14 my dad bought me a decient sized Craftsman tool set which was much better than the soft tools my Uncle had bought me.

At 16 I had a summer job doing minor repairs on cars using my boss's Snap-On and Mac tools. By Now I was pretty familiar with good tools vs bad tools.

 

[Outlawmws]

My Grand Dad had a tool room just off the livingroom in the house,...
a shop down cellar for carpentry, metal and small engine,
and a full size tool box out in the pole-barn.

I guess it was required reading at his house to know what it was, what it did, and how to do it properly.

Grand Dad wasn't married at the time was he?

 

[MegaManny009]

When harbor freight opened up I couldn't stop spending money there. They make it affordable thats how I got into tools

 

[matty d]

I always liked my dad's workbench. I went to a college prep high school and eventually to grad school, where being handy and into tools wasnt really looked up to. My uncle was a cabinetmaker however and I really appreciated his tools and shop he had for personal use in his own garage. Its also nice being handy, getting the chance to say to a girl once that I got a flat and changed the tire by myself...very impressed look on her face!

Fast forward to 2 years ago. For Fathers Day I got 2 pieces of Gladiator Track and some hooks when my wife was pregnant. She/we lost the baby 8 months into it; with some of the frustration, anger and grief that came out of it, i decided to Gladiator my whole garage. I could have put other brand components, but its sort of like a tribute to the baby that didnt come out alive. Im almost done except for the floor. My wife gave to twins 1.3 years ago.

 

[Bib Overalls]

Every male in my branch of the family tree has a strong mechanical inclination. I have been into hot rods since I was 10 or so. That would be 60 years now. One brother is an aircraft mechanic and the other is an electrician. We were raised to be inquisitive and self reliant.

 

[caspian65]

Peer pressure and ridicule! A good friend has a massive snap-on tool collection and ragged on me every time he came over to help with a car project. Eventually I started swapping out and then bought a krl triple bank. Don't buy much these days, have pretty much all I need for my auto restoration hobby.

 

[thightower]

Born in to it. Dad was a diesel mechanic, after arthritis took over he bought his own truck when I was about 9 years old. Both grampa's were farmers, working on thier own stuff. So it is kinda in my blood line.

 

[nanofrog]

Curiosity combined with my dad, who was an electrician and diesel mechanic.

Started taking things apart and putting them back together as soon as I could hold a screwdriver. So my dad took me to work in the summers (family run business), and taught me from the ground up (gopher to nailing boxes, ...).

With mechanics, same thing (another Mr. Fixit mentality, which I inherited). Usually something like "Hand me x, then get under/in here and watch what I'm doing", and he'd explain it as he went. Learned a lot, then taught myself even more, particularly in electronics.

He also taught how to asses value, tools or otherwise. Of all of it, this has probably been the most used advice he ever gave me.

 

[Lkdelta]

Has anyone had a woman influence them?

My Grand dad had the tools, but Gram was a team leader at GE.
And at home ..She was always saying... "do it right, or don't do it at all"

Thanks Gram.

 

[Lkdelta]

My Grand Dad had a tool room just off the livingroom in the house,...
a shop down cellar for carpentry, metal and small engine,
and a full size tool box out in the pole-barn.

Grand Dad wasn't married at the time was he?

I wish I could get back to that house and get the pics
It was originally a 2 family house that my grandparents took over completely

The motorcycles stayed in the downstairs dining room for the winter

 

[MJA502]

Grew up in N.J. in a rented 2 family with a dirt floor cellar. My dad would spend a lot of time there fixing stuff and collecting scrap metal and stripping copper wire he would find along the tracks by our house. We didn't have a car and my parents bought me one on my 17th birthday(1969). They didn't know very much about cars and "we decided "on a nice family car. 1700 hundred dollars later I owned a used 1967 389 tri power GTO. Well it got stollen parked at my high school( in Newark) and I got it back stripped to the bone. Worked in gas stations for the next few years to put it back together and learned a little something about cars and growing up. Owned a business for thirty years and have retired to florida. I have a pretty nice garage now and spend a lot of time there, but I understand a wood bench on a dirt floor is all you really need. Thanks for listening.

 

[cashishift]

Definitely started with my grandfather.. I've been surrounded by tools my entire life. He was a craftsman in every sense of the word, incredible wood worker, made plenty of toys for myself and my sister. He had a workshop in his basement that I always played in when I was younger. He taught me how to use a hammer properly When he passed away, my father inherited all of his stuff, and I had my own little shop at home now. Well I took that and ran, tinkering with all sorts of stuff. Taking alot of stuff apart to see how it worked, and rarely getting it back together.

Once I started getting older, I was light years ahead of my friends in some aspects with how things worked and understanding what the right tool for something is. In my late teens I got into car stereo, and the geometry i hated doing and thought i would never use came back to bite me.. but the woodworking skills and garage full of tools made me the go to guy.

As an adult I own as many or more tools than my father, and many of my friends.. With a few more purchases my friends joke I could probably start a contracting company, lol. But I pick stuff up on craigslist, or for gifts.. and fix stuff friends dont want or cant fix.. picked up a free DuoFast framing nailer that didnt work.. i tinkered with it a bit, it works fine now.

 

[Man of Many Vices]

When I was 12 I sneaked into the Simi Valley Swap Meet with a family of walk-ins. I didn't have a cent on me. I found a dime on the ground, bought a Craftsman wrench, sold it to someone else for a quarter, used the quarter to buy a 3/8 Snap-on breaker bar, which I sold to someone else for a dollar.

I've been buying tools over the 45 years since then, but haven't sold any. It cost a lot more than a dollar to replace that breaker bar. I can't bear to part with them, but will soon be forced to.

 

[drummer5359]

My father was "handy". He always had a home repair project going on, he worked on his own cars and those of our family and friends. I was the youngest of a family of three boys and a girl. My oldest brother had no interest at all, my middle brother had the aptitude, but not as much desire to get his hands dirty. That means that I was enlisted to be the helper, go-fer and extra hand from a young age.

This worked out well for me. My father passed away just after I turned twenty. I started working in a garage earlier that summer. I soon ended up in management, but that doesn't mean that I ever stopped getting my hands dirty. Continuing the legacy and being "the handy one" in the family was fine by me.

 

[MarkG]

I drive a '96 Nissan pickup!

 

[Clubber]

My granddad always wanted a garage but couldn't afford it raising eight kids. So he dug out a basement using basic hand tools under the house. That became his "shop". My uncles were all handymen, one a machinist, one a mechanic, one built his own home (literally dug the basement set the bricks framed the walls, etc). Only help was setting trusses. 6th grade education worked 3 jobs and died a millionaire. The only one who wasn't was my dad who had an electronic engineering degree and didn't care to work on things. I like working on projects but my son is far more talented than me. He wanted a dirt bike when he was 3, so I told him he had to ride his bike without training wheels. He took my pipe wrench and took them off, learned to ride that day. Got a KTM 50 for his fourth Christmas, he tore it apart more than he rode it. He's been that way ever since. The "TrackOne" thread on GJ has inspired him to work towards a similar path.

 

[waggie]

Great grand father was a pipe fitter, grand father/father/uncles built (from ground up) and all the tools that were needed. From furnace, high pressure natural gas burners, to annealing conveyor belt and everything in between. As far as I know, only the molds were farmed out to a local machine shop. I guess by now, I'm sort of completing that package by learning machining on my own.

During the winter, we kids were allowed to sleep next to the glass furnace. It's a family owned factory, and there's no such thing as OSHA back in the days (this is in Taiwan, btw). By 3 years old I was a mold operator. I open and close the molds for the glass blowers. They'll tap their foot when they're done, that's how I know to open the mold again. So, from age 3 to 5, several days a week, I had gobs of molten glass not more than 2 feet from my face. All the workers were very careful, as I was the first grand child of the owner, after all.

I remember my dad bringing me to the local machine shop. We weren't able to make our own mold, so we farmed it out to. After seeing repairs of glass-making-tools, a machine shop was very new. I was probably 4, I remember my dad asking the machinist to make the handle extra long, so it won't burn my 4-year-old hands. (Molten glass in cast iron molds makes the mold really hot.) The machinist thought my dad was kidding, letting a 4 year old kid run the molds... good times.

Now we live in the States, I tinker around in my garage shop and have my own mill, lathe and welders. While i dont do any glass work anymore, every time i cut, notch or weld round tubing I think of my great-grand father.

So, my family went from pipe fitter, pipe brazer, to glass makers, and now back to welder again. It's come a full circle.

 

[uniballer]

Dad always worked on other peoples cars in the afternoons. Hand me this or that, learned as I went on, he go me china **** from yard sales til he thought I would take care of stuff. He has given me craftsman stuff, well now he gives money! But he always give me mowers to take apart and go carts, taught me engineering and how to figure out how it works.

 

[Super Sport]

When I was 15 I inherited my father's and grandfather's tools. My father didn't have much, but my granddad was a woodworker by trade. To store the tools, I bought a Craftsman tool box. From there, I decided I wanted to work on my own cars, so I bought a Craftsman tool set. After that, it was a downward spiral. I've always liked cars, and that passion got me into fixing up the space to store them in. I've been a garage junky since my mid teens living at home.

My uncle was a bit of a handyman, but other than that I've pretty much learned everything I know on my own through books, magazines, the internet, etc.

 

[Slednut]

My dad was a mechanic at a Ford dealer for 47 years. He always went back to work for a couple hours after eating dinner, a lot of the time I would also go. I sure do miss him.

 

[dbonne]

I was the son of an engineer, but not a mechanical engineer, an aerospace electronics type geek. I was introduced to circuits and electronic compoments at an early age, but was more interested in the drill we used to make the breadboard for the components, and then the soldering iron, and then I got into saws and stuff, and then I started taking stuff apart. I didn't always put it back together, but I enjoyed the dis-assembly and assembly process.
Once, when I was about 6 or 7, my mom and i were at a store, maybe a dept store or a variety store, but they had some cool stuff. I was sitting in the aisle with a screwdriver from the tool section, taking apart some kind of electric appliance, when a store employee showed up to reprimand me. Minutes later, my mom walks up, and tells the guy "relax, he'll put it back together when he's done".

I got my first paper route at 9 years old. You were supposed to be 10, but I lied. As soon as I had money, I started building a better set of tools than my dad had. I bought a set of double box-end Craftsman wrenches, a hand-impact driver, and a big file with a wooden handle (my dads files had tape wrapped around the handles).

Holy Balls, Steevo, we might be long lost brothers. Your story (with a few changes) is mine also!

My parents had to hide things in fear that I would tear them apart and marry them together and make some crazy device!

Pain: I am proud to say that my DAD is my mentor!!

EDIT: My MOM had something to do with it also, I guess I didn't realize that her sewing machine and sissors are tools for dissassembly and reassembly!!!

 

[mudhog]

It was easy, I'm too cheap or poor to have someone work on my stuff, so I try to do everything. I'm building my second shop right now with no help. I tend to buy used over new and then keep it running until the wheels fall off. I have not sold a vehicle with less then 200k miles on it in the last 25 years.
I built my first hot rod motor while in high school on my only car that I bought mowing lawns, my dad said I'm wasting money when I put some chrome wheels on it, he never understood putting anything on a car unless it improves mpg.

 

[HTGTS350]

Grandad was a blacksmith, Dad was a mechanic, myself and my brother are both tradesmen, and a saying I often heard was "a tradesman without his tools is nothing but a f%$#ing ornament" tools have been a part of my life from when I was born.

 

[pepi]

For me I have always just fixed things, no matter what it was. My father being a sheet metal mech. for EAL had tools at home. It was natural having access to them for me to pick them up and use them. Of course I never put them back where he left them, and got the old WTF. But they were never lost and always in the tool box just not in the last seen place.

40 some years later I still have and use the Craftsman tools that were given to me for Christmas. Of course the amount of tools and machines I own has changed considerably along with my skills.

It is not a matter of being a cheap sob that I choose to do my own repairs. I do it for several reasons it is interesting and a challenge. Another quite a few repair or service techs, more then you would want to know, do not understand how the very thing they are fixing works.

Frankly there is a load of rigging, and cherry picking that goes on in the repair business. Guess what the customer is paying in spades. I love the guy that see parts he left out, and because the thing operates he tosses the left out parts and goes his merry way... Well it works, yes but for how long ? Anyway as with anything in life some should not have tools LMAO....

 

[NUTTSGT]

I haven't read the thread yet but I will.

I guess I got into tools at a young age looking at the Sear Wish book. While flipping through the tools section thinking man would I love to have a set of tool and box like that. Little did I know that I'd use them to work on my own stuff 30 plus years later.

 

[stingry]

Grew up on the farm. My father was a good hard-working farmer, but not much of a mechanic. Our tool selection consisted of several crescent wrenches, hammers, pliers and a screwdriver or two! If you couldn't fix it with a crescent or a hammer, take it to town!! Then, after college, I enlisted in the Army National Guard and went to heavy equipment maintenance school in Ft Belvoir, VA. Here I was introduced to big, clean shops with painted cement floors and toolboxs after toolboxs of tools! All organized, with a place for everything and everything in its place! Also, welders, hoists, special tools, etc. I WAS HOOKED!!!!

Cheers
Steve