Well, by this time my folks should be in New York helping my aunt Betty move her stuff to her new apartment. My fiancee drives a truck, so I know what it’s like to be asked to help when someone’s moving, but doing a cross-country schlep in a van from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to just north of NYC is quite a trek.
As a bookend to a bigger journey it’s quite understandable. Mom was coming down to help her mom with taxes, and for Christmas Mom and Dad had given me a gift certificate redeemable for fifty hours hard labor on the bathroom remodeling project. And once they were here it’d be just as far back as it would be to head on over to help Betty. Besides, it’s her birthday next week and it’d be nice to catch a Broadway show with her or something…
Before they left home they got a couple of maps to try to figure out the best route to New York from here. The two options were cutting across Canada or going through the states. The routes differed by only six miles or so. On the way back, they’re not stopping off here, so they’re likely to take the shorter route through Canada. The big concern is Customs.
Y’see, coming down here, Dad loaded up the van with every tool he thought we might need. So if they raise any red flags at the border, they’re gonna have a not very fun time loading everything back in once the customs folks have unloaded it all and searched every toolbox.
One tool that Dad didn’t bring was his saws-all. It’s sort of a jigsaw on steroids. He used it on a roofing job out at our camp (that’s a cabin in the woods for those of you unfamiliar with the yooper dialect) and it sawed a nail cleanly in half. The long way.
On Wednesday night we realized that we had a job that might need it. The new subfloor was in, and the soil pipe for the toilet was sticking a good three quarters of an inch above the level of the floor. There was still flooring and tile to go in place, which would bring things even, but then we’d add the PVC mounting flange to the top of the pipe. This would leave the bottom of the toilet at least a good quarter inch above the surface of the tile. We needed to take off the top of that pipe, and we didn’t have the saws-all.
Fortunately, one of the tools I got earlier in the week had potential. It’s a Rotozip rotary saw, sort of like a combination drill and router. The one I got came with a ‘Zip Buddy’ attachment that lets it mount little grinder discs and saw blades. I got it so that we could cut tile later in the project, but it came with a cutting wheel labeled ‘Metal.’ It was late at night, and we weren’t sure what kind of metal it was designed for, but we decided to give it a whirl (no pun intended).
I put on gloves, glasses, dust mask and earplugs and went to work. There was a very satisfying shower of sparks, and in a surprisingly short amount of time the quarter inch thick cast iron pipe was trimmed back.
And the best part was that it was FUN. I was all ready to go cutting through all sorts of metal things… I had the ultimate slicing machine at my disposal and I was itching to use it! But that was it for the night. Time to put stuff away…
So is there a point to this particular ramble? Kinda. I can see how doing that sort of work can be fun. And if you run out of stuff of your own to work on, you could easily find yourself volunteering to help someone else, even if it involves driving a couple dozen hours to get there.
This Memorial day my Fiancee and I are planning on heading up North to help my folks put in a sauna out at camp. Maybe there’ll be something big and metal that will need to be sliced up.
I can always hope…