Ramblings
Sometimes Life's About Timing
The thing about not having a project going on the house is that I find myself looking for little projects to tinker with over the winter. Such was the case last weekend when I went to The Tool Box just to browse like I usually do, and found out that life is indeed...all about timing. Let's get into it.
Timing
There I was, an early Saturday morning visitor to The Tool Box and just finishing up browsing for about 10 minutes, and chatting with the old Coast Guard veterans running the place. Just as I was pulling out $2 to pay for a 50-cent knife sharpener, and a $1 multi-head screwdriver (something like this)...
...something caught my eye. Outside the store window, an SUV pulled up and a family of 3 popped out. In a wink, they opened the hatch of the SUV and started to pull out...wait for it...tool boxes!
The Booty (git yer mind outta the gutter!)
Without skipping a beat I told ol' popeye behind the counter that maybe I'd wait a couple minutes before checking out. In a flash, our hero family deposited two beautiful tool boxes and three large plastic totes, took their donation receipt and faxed away into memory. Anxious, but not wanting to be rude, I waited until they left before I and two pretenders swooped down on the fresh carion!
People talk about perfect timing, but I think everything is perfect in its moment; you just want to capture that. - Eddie Huang
While the others headed for the totes, I knealt beside those boxes. The first box just had a few odds and ends, but the other a Waterloo, had a nice assortment of had tools.
Such a sweet assortment, a Perfect Handle ball peen hammer, screwdrivers, sockets and so much more!
There was such a variety of tools, I knew instantly that I wanted the tool box - tools and all. I offered told the old Coastie that the box and it's contents probably amounted to more than a $20 value but that was all the cash in hand - he said, "It's yours!"
So he figured out the price point including taxes so it would amount to that lonely Jackson in my pocket. That's how these guys are. I thanked him and told him that if there turned out to be anything of significant value I'd give pay up a bit next time I stopped by. He waved me off.
Unpacking
As soon as I got the toolbox home I took everything out and looked it over. Everything was in very good shape, and one thing I thought was really cool was the boxes that you've seen in the pictures above and below. These are the tops and bottoms of the old packaging for English Leather Cologne! So these boxes are actually of that old wood and are in really great shape!
And there were some tools that I didn't have including an adjustable wrench, which is now the largest adjustable branch that I have - so that was exciting.
A few of the tools were bit grimy so I threw them in purple cleaner for a couple days.
Because these tools are in such good shape, it's not likely I'll have to do any restorations. That being the case, you'll likely only see them again in future posts as incidental to some random project here at 173.
And that's the story of how I picked up a very nice tool box and a bunch of random hand tools for $20. Hey, thanks for stopping by - see ya' next time!
