One of the things about taking on a new trade is re-tooling yourself to benefit from the know how.  It is never cheap, usually done over a period of years, but not in these times.

The globalist that run this world have been papering over a financial collapse for several years now, which has eroded the faith in central banks the world over.  One of the results has been the emergence of crypto-currencies as an alternative.  These are now being used for international trade settlement, and the US dollar is beginning to be refused. The US currency reserves which used to be held by foreign nations for this purpose are not needed, and are starting to be returned.  The result is inflation.

Economics 101: If you have an over supply of something, you’ll get less for it.  The over-supply is dollars, and what you can buy with it is going down.  Our world is on the doorstep of a wave of inflation the likes of which we haven’t seen since the 70’s, but worse, so everyone who has an inkling of this is buying up all the “real goods” they can, while they can.

Segway to the topic, I have been putting more money than I’m comfortable with into that effort knowing these are the best tools I can find, and are a better purchase now on credit than they will be in the future after inflation.  It’s a lot easier to lock in a price than it is a raise.

It began with the drills, and a set of batteries from Peavey Mart, but after the store manager called the cops on me for not wearing a mask, then tried to stall me at the counter while his lackey in the back dawdled looking for the tool, I haven’t been back since.  You can’t locate the sale item in the back?  Riiight.

The true tip-off was when he followed me outside a few seconds after I left and was looking all around, left and right for something or more likely somebody.  Well, fuck you asshole.  I won’t forget.  Regardless, I got a good price on the tools, and tucked them away as a start.

A few weeks later I added the Hackzall, which is an utterly beautiful tool.  Single handed cutting, low vibration, brushless…  just a damn nice tool.  Then came the grinder, which was nothing special, but makes a good addition to my corded one in the garage.

After the first snow fall here came in like a lion, blanketing everything and everyone with over a foot of snow and drifts, shovelling out from it gave me a repeat case of tennis elbow which has yet to go away.  Knowing that an apprenticeship in gas-fitting has a lot of threading involved, and only a manual threader to do it with, this tool looked better and better each day.  Nevertheless, several weeks went by before I committed to this beast.  It came with two 9 AH batteries, charger, clamp and case, and the case weighs in at some 30-40 pounds at the handle.  I don’t really know but it’s heavy.

Here’s a video for you –> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=486f3Z5C8n8 so you can see for yourself.  As I said, it’s a beast and I do believe the money well spent.

With that out of the way my nuts could descend, and I got a few niceties which I’ve found to be essential in daily operations.  A quality set of stepper bits is a must have.  ‘Nuff said.

When it came to the light, there are all kinds out there, but the lantern style is the right tool for most things.  It sheds a light all around, is small enough to put most places, and versatile in that you can hang it, direct it, spread it, or whatever.  Others I have seen are as bright as the sun, but too focused.  This one just seems to get it right.

Where do you go from there???  So far I’ve made no mention of the fact that many of the items are becoming hard to find.  That lantern was the last in the store.  The threader was the only one in Edmonton… once it was shipped here by Home Depot, whom I utterly hate giving my money to, but to ‘have it’ was the point rather than complain that their competition couldn’t even order it for me.

This one here is where it started getting really difficult.  That is the ONLY Super Hawg in Edmonton, and one of only 4 in Alberta.  It came off the wall, they had to search all around for the box, they searched for the chuck but finally had to take one off a smaller unit, and the last time they could order them was in May.  Home Depot doesn’t even have this.  It will twist your arm right off if you are not paying attention.  The 9 AH batteries from the threader will make 6″ holes a cake-walk.

Finally, you need something to put them all in, and that was the biggest beeeyaaach of them all.

Here it is all put together, but getting my hands on that rolling pack-out was a run around like you wouldn’t believe.  The price went up $50 while I was trying to get my hands on the first three pieces, and once again I had to break down and go to Home Depot to get it because KMS Tools had no stock, and none on the way.  I had to go back and forth between the two locations to get all you see there.  The 6′ tall stack of thin parts organisers at KMS was sold out in a single day, so again I found myself at Home Depot, and got the two instead of one.  Wow.

Anyways, it’s a relief to have that part of it done.  What remains are hand tools for the most part.

To think it all started with the bag on the table at the right.  It remains to be seen whether or not clients will still be spending expendable income on niceties such as AC units come the spring, but there are always people out there with more money than sense.  Judging from the number of ‘true believers’ out there still, I think we’ll do just fine.