Doug Roy, Old Growth, Cut Paper
The Tools of Ignorance (or Brer Rabbit and the drywall knife)
These are what my witty friend once dubbed “the tools of ignorance”:
The six inch broad knife, permanently attached to the taper’s right hand (some of my Mexican friends call it a spatula), the ten inch and twelve inch knife (the guy who trained me called them Thurston knives- nobody else I ever knew did), the pan (some old guys called it a bread pan), the five gallon bucket, a large sponge or two, the potato masher (before the drill and paddle), the pump, the nail spotter, the angle box and angle head, the flat box and handle, the pole sander (80 grit for sanding behind apprentices, 220 for dusting off the work of a true journeyman), dust masks, the hopper and gun connected to the compressor for spraying, the hock and dobber for hand applications, and the stilts to wear for ceiling work. There is also the nailing pouch (equipped with utility knife, tape measure, chalk line, rasp, and nailing hatchet), the four foot T-square and drywall kick, the eight foot step ladder, the twenty foot extension ladder, the plank (a wooden two by ten or, if you’re lucky, a sliding metal plank) a work light for scanning smooth finish and an extension cord or two. All of this will be loaded into an old clunker of a work van with expired plates, a rack on its roof, and some rubber bungy cords, pieces of rope, or scrap lengths of Romex to tie down the ladders and plank. Additionally, you’ll need an empty glue tube to pee in and an empty Beadex box to hover over at remote job sites or any job site back in the days before the port-o-potty became common.
I was working in a lawyer’s house once, pants and shirt smeared with mud (joint compound) and told his teen age kid, “This is what happens when you don’t pass the bar. Better stay in school.”
Be careful what you put your hand to- it may not let you go.
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Keith Hansen