When I was a child I was obsessed with tools. My Grandpa was a carpenter, and he had passed a lot of that knowledge onto my dad. I used to "help" dad a lot with woodwork when I was a kid. I loved all the tools, but there was a few that were more special than others. First and foremost was dad’s saw: "Black Prince" – that was my favourite tool as a kid (although I was never allowed to use it – probably why I was so fascinated by it). Secondly was his pocket knife – basically all the useful tools sitting in one convenient little package.
I remember dad going away on business when I was about 5 years old. As the oldest child, I was left "in charge" of the house – I had to look after mum. Dad let me hold onto his pocket knife while he was away – a symbol that I was in charge. Predictably, this ended in disaster – I cut my self several times with it (nothing bad, just a knick here and there on my hands).
When I was a bit older, I was allowed to get a pocket knife of my own – the one pictured here. I bought this with my birthday money just after turning 12, and it’s been heavily used for nearly 20 years now. I’ve used every tool on this thing many many times, and while I have proper tools for doing most of what my pocket knife can do, nothing beats the practicality and portability of these things – especially because I spend a lot of time out in the bush and can’t carry every individual tool with me.
So this photo sums up a lot about my child hood. It’s something I bought as a child, and symbolises that fascination I had with tools as a kid. I pulled out the saw blade because I remember so clearly how much I loved that damn saw as a kid (something that was also disastrous – I got a small saw for my birthday one year and proceeded to cut up various bits of furniture). The background in this photo is the wooden top of a coffee table, unfortunately not one of the ones that dad or I made, but I wanted to have a wooden background because I think it was more than just the tools I loved, it was the idea of being able to make something. One day I’ll have my own house with a big shed and be able to return to that childhood obsession of building things with my tools.
This was a cool theme. I look forward to seeing what everybody else did!
HMM Flickrites 🙂
