Bent nails

 Memorable Automobiles from our Past:

 

Jamaican Orphan busses in our driveway when we loaned our home to them for a week a few years ago, they were on tour in the USA and are very talented singers and dancers.

For today:

For many years growing up, my dad assigned me the job of straightening bent nails. The nails came from a collection of construction jobs and especially remodels to parsonages and churches. Those nails were saved for reuse. That stuck in my mind for years.

I even had a part time job once ‘cleaning old boards’ for reuse and also the nails. That went away for many years, nails were less expensive and no one straightened nails. Of course ‘OLD Weather beaten BOARDS’ are still cleaned today, but to be used in the more modern homes to make ‘accent walls’.

On my first real job as a carpenter’s helper, my boss (and mentor) Luke Tucker saw me picking up nails I had dropped. He stopped what he was doing to make a point. “Jackie, how much am I paying you?”

“75 cents and hour sir!”

“That is right, I am paying 11 cents a pound for the nails. Do not drop them on purpose, but never pick one up. That is not efficient in today’s building market.”

Life and priorities change out of necessity…. Since I am retired I will sometimes straighten a nail. LOL.  The one thing I do practice, is saving wood screws. They lend themselves to reuse.

I never will forget seeing a carpenter driving screws like a nail. The boss yelled at him, “Don’t you know what those threads on the screw are for?”

“Yep, I ain’t that dumb, they are there to remove the screw!”  (NOTE: Every carpenter has driven a screw on occasion! That was long before screw guns.)

There is one in every occupation!

NiteShipslog

PS: They say you can buy anything onthe internet, now I believe it: