The other day, Gary and I visited Mike’s workshop, a rented space near Mike’s house.

Unlike my garage, Mike’s workplace is neat and well-organized.

What impressed me most, though, were Mike’s homemade tools, particularly some clamps he fabricated by gluing clothespins together.

A builder never has too many clamps, you know.

Poor Bite. Clothespins are cheap and useful. But they don’t open very wide, and their grip, optimized for a clothesline, is often flaky.

Mike made them much more useful by extending the jaw opening and gluing flat wood pads for a better grip.

He made lots of them. He’s also made clamps from clothes hangers, but I liked the modded clothespins the best.

I’ve now started making my own.

Future Archeology. One day a thousand years from now, archeologists will sift through the rubble of my garage and Mike’s workspace and find these things.

“Look at these primitive tools,” they’ll say. “What did they use them for?”

If they don’t know about clothespins, these are gonna baffle them, with their superfluous grooves, ridges and curves.

Meanwhile, though, they’re quite handy.

Tags: Tools.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Elsewhere. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.