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I wish I could take credit for having come up with this idea, but I'm
afraid that I cannot, in good conscience, do so. During a discussion with
Scott Dahlgren awhile back he mentioned this concept to me, but for
whatever reason I managed to relegate it to some dusty corner of my mind
and it only jumped back out at me today when Jim Frantz sent along the
photo of his little Tinnerman countersinking tool.
It has probably happened to most of you during the building of your
projects that you have found yourself requiring some tool to do a
particular job, only to discover that it costs $200+ and you're only going
to use it this one time... how on earth do you justify an expenditure like
that knowing that after its use it's going to be sitting in your toolbox
without any imaginable future purpose? And just how many things like that
have you purchased because you're a bit "Tim Allen-esque", a person whose
heart races when being passed by a Snap-On truck, and whose eyes glaze over
when in the Home Depot tool department?
I am sure that we all probably fall a little between the above categories
somewhere, in many instances with more tools than are healthy, but still
usually missing the one special tool that would make this weekend's planned
activities progress as smoothly as a 2000 grit final rubout.
What if we were to put together a virtual communal Tool Bin, and make
various and sundry of our little used (but indispensible when needed) tools
available to fellow subscribers of the LML and LNN on a rental basis?
Imagine that it's time for you to plumb your hydraulic lines... you open up
the ACS catalog and find out that a high quality tubing bender, tubing
cutter, and top-o'-the-line flaring tool is going to run you upwards of
$300. Wouldn't it be nice if you could rent the entire setup for a week
for $25, get all your cutting, bending, and flaring done and then send the
tools back from whence they came, and not have to look at them like some
significant portion of a radio sitting in your tool drawer? I think it would.
Here's what I propose... if some of you with tools out there would like to
participate, drop me a line privately. If there are enough of you to make
it worthwhile I'll setup a Tool Bin on the LML website with several
forms... one for people with tools available, one for people seeking a
tool, the last for an actual tool rental order. I'll prepare and maintain
a table of tools, both available or desired, along with their weekly rental
rates, their shipping weights and the ZIPcodes that they'll come from.
I'll setup a link to the USPS rate calculators so renters can figure out
the shipping costs in advance. If someone finds a tool they want to rent
they fill out a rental form which will include a credit card number for
security purposes... the credit card will not be processed unless the tools
aren't returned, at which point identical new tools will be ordered and
sent to the person who provided them. I can pass the shipping info to the
tool providers and suggest that the best method of payment would be to
include a check in the package when returning the tool. (I could also
process credit card rentals, but I'm afraid that would get really
cumbersome... let me think about it some more.)
I think this would work nicely for everyone out there, and hope that I'll
get some feedback from those of you who would like to participate, or even
from those of you who think it's a stupid idea and that I shouldn't be
wasting our time with such nonsense.
The ball's in your court. I'm open to suggestions and alternative ideas.
<Marv>
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LML website: http://www.olsusa.com/Users/Mkaye/maillist.html
Builders' Bookstore: http://www.buildersbooks.com/lancair
Please send your photos and drawings to marvkaye@olsusa.com.
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