My dad was pretty handy…

I fix a lot of stuff.  Our house, for example, needed a lot of work when we moved in.  It still needs work, of course, just not as much as it did.  If one wishes to get work done, it requires tools – lots of them.  I am not one of those guys that buys tools just to own them.  I don’t have a router, for example – I’ve always been able to make my belt sander do the job.  If I ever really need one, I’ll likely go out and buy it, though.

Yesterday, my wife lost a screw from her eyeglasses, causing the lens to pop out onto the floor.  No damage to the plastic lens, but the glasses needed immediate repair, and as the house fix-it guy, it was my job to make them right.  Fortunately, the parts were at hand.  I used one of those little kits that they sell at drug stores – the one with a tiny screwdriver and some screws in a plastic pack.   I was able to coax the teeny little screw into the hole and replace the lens.  The problem was that the replacement screw was about 2 mm too long, and it poked out of the corner of the frame.  It looked just a little weird.

How do you fix that?

After thinking for a second, I remembered that I had a Dremel tool in the basement.  After retrieving it, I attached the little cut-off wheel and sliced the protruding end of the screw off flush with the frame.  It only took a second.

As I was putting that useful little tool back in its plastic case, I remembered that my dad had given it to me.  He also gave me my reciprocating saw and a few other tools that I use regularly.   Dad liked to build things and he appreciated good tools, so that’s what I often received from him as Christmas and birthday presents.  Dad’s been gone for years now, but he lives on – every time that I open one of those plastic cases and fix something, he’s a little part of it.

I think that’s cool.