Yep. The old, "If you can't make it yourself, best to learn how to do without it". If you're going to buy hammers, buy the ones with wooden handles. The heads are made so broken handles will be easily replaced.
And as for planes...the blade of one would be a good 'hide scraper' with just a little bit of ingenuity...
Instead of nuts and bolts, a piece of metal rod cut the right length, pushed through the hole and bradded on both ends will work. As good as a nut and bolt? Depends on how good at bradding you are.
I can cut sheet metal with a hammer and cold chisel faster than most people can cut it with tin snips...and have just as smooth an edge, too. Proved it to my SIL during my last power outage recently, too.
If you have 'junk' tools, just don't push them beyond their limits. And if you pay attention to them, they will tell you when they are reaching that limit.
I have just completed making a 'Hillbilly Yard Art' 'whirligig'. I used pliers, wire cutters, files, hand jig saw, hammer and nails and a gimlet. Here is its description...It is a man, sitting in a boat, fighting a big fish on the end of his line. When the wind blows and turns the propeller, the man rocks back and to, and the fish rocks in time with the man's rocking. The driveshaft is a piece of wire clothes hanger. The propeller is made from old venetian blind slats. The man, fish and the 'box' they are fixed into are just pieces of scrap wood I had laying around.
Has anybody made a 'putt-putt boat'? It's a toy boat that uses a very ancient type of steam engine to drive it throught the water. I have built a 'slightly modernized' one and done given it away. I am now 'in the middle of' building a steam engine big enough to drive my bicycle. And all of these projects are being done with hand tools.
The most important 'tool' to have in your 'box' is your mind. You are limited only by what limits your mind can come up with.
God bless.
(I *do* enjoy these kinds of threads.)
