I don’t know how crafstmen survived before power tools.  I imagine they brought their hand tools and the tools to sharpen their hand tools with them to the job. Without power tools, they must have taken hours or days to finish a project that now takes us little time at all.  I’m sure the secret to their success was keeping their tools clean and sharp.  No running to a big box hardware store like Home Depot, Lowes or Orchard Supply if a tool broke.

I started work on a project today.  It turned out I didn’t have power tools for this project; a Dremel would have been so nice.  I completed the project the old fashioned way using a hacksaw, cross-cut file, single-cut file, and sandpaper.

I had to reshape a metal part to fit the contour of another part.  At my last job, there was a lot of part fabrication so there were many power tools on hand.  You might say I got kind of spoiled with access to power tools on-demand.  There were multiple Dremels with all kinds of grinding and polishing attachments. They also had belt sanders, drill presses and many other tools on hand.

I’m starting to realize that I need more power tools to make my life easier.