It’s Easier to Replace Money Than Body Parts

Sometimes I wonder which of the following two things are true.

1. I spend too much money on tools, and I should just tough it out with what I have or pay other people to do things.

2. I don’t spend enough on tools, and I make my life unnecessarily difficult.

I just bought a 35-pound jackhammer to bust up rocks in my yard, and Juan Paxety said this in a comment:

The car guys on npr used to say the stingy man pays the most. He buys low and buys up until he gets what he originally needed. You know you need a Cat D-8.

I responded and said I wasn’t listening, but of course, I am.

Over the last day or two I’ve been thinking about one of my basic principles, which is that you should never risk hurting yourself when a tool purchase or hiring a tradesman can keep you safe. How true have I been to this principle? Maybe not true enough.

I strained my back twice in one week, removing boulders from my yard. I didn’t think I was exerting myself too much, but I did pick up a couple of fairly heavy rocks. I spent a good deal of time shoveling smaller rocks and dirt. For some reason, shoveling seems to be hard on my back, even when I’m not lifting a lot at any given time. I think it’s impossible to shovel with good posture. It’s just the nature of the activity. It seems to invite problems.

I got myself some splitting wedges and feathers. I don’t think I harmed myself by using them, because they don’t require much effort, but I did have to get down in the dirt and hunch over in order to install them, so it may be that I aggravated whatever problems the shovel caused.

Now I’m about to start using a jackhammer, which is what I should have used to begin with. I should be able to crack the rock up quickly without a lot of bending. If I had bought the hammer to begin with, would my back have been strained? Maybe not.

I have been considering the big chunks of rock I’ve been pulling out of the hole. They need to be moved. Even if I use the tractor, I’ll have to lift them onto the forks or into the loader bucket somehow, and lifting large objects that are very close to the ground is a bad idea. When I thought about the problem, it reminded me that I don’t have a decent hand truck.

A long time ago, in Austin, Texas, I bought myself a Home Depot hand truck so I could load a U-Haul and move back to Sodom. I mean Miami. It’s a great thing to have, but it’s not perfect. One of the Chinese welds on the crossmembers broke, and I had to redo it. It has inflatable tires, and that means they’re always empty when I need the hand truck. Inflatable tires on a hand truck…very bad idea. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to reinflate them.

I want to get a new hand truck that works better. I figured I’d go to Home Depot and spend eighty bucks. Then I started looking at reviews and complaints. There are a lot of problems with cheap hand trucks. First, you have to eliminate all hand trucks with inflatable tires. Then you have to look at reviews and see what people say about hand trucks falling apart. I read up, and the conclusion I drew is that a person should invest, once in his life, in a good hand truck.

I wanted to spend less than a hundred bucks, but I think I’m going to blow over $300 on an aluminum hand truck made by a company called Magliner. They’re made for daily use. The one I want can be opened up so it holds things at a 45-degree angle to the ground, or horizontally. It has fenders on it to keep things from rubbing on the wheels, which are made from foam and can’t deflate. It has a thing that lowers to allow you to put bigger objects on it. It will stand up to hard use, and because it’s aluminum, it will be easier to lift than a steel hand truck.

It seems crazy to me to spend that much money on a hand truck, but then I thought about the product’s main purpose: to prevent idiots from hurting themselves. Injuries are not fun, and they can be expensive. They can be permanent. If I hurt myself seriously trying to move something, I would feel great about receiving a successful treatment for $300, so why not pay that price in advance to avoid the problem?

There are some tools I can live without. I didn’t need the Harbor Freight planishing hammer I bought because they had a crazy sale. I didn’t need my third angle grinder, really. Tools for moving things are different. You need them. They are safety equipment. I see now that it’s important to put safety gear in a class by itself when I think about obtaining new stuff.

In a way, the jackhammer is safety gear. It will reduce hazardous exertion. My pole saw is safety gear. It allows me to put six feet between me and trees when I make risky cuts, and it allows me to cut from a ladder or cut over my head without risking death. Jackstands and chocks are safety gear.

I don’t know why I didn’t see this before.

Now that I see things correctly, a $300 hand truck doesn’t seem like a silly impulse buy. It seems like a prudent investment in continued wellbeing.

I should go ahead and put a 1000-pound electric hoist in the shop. They’re cheap, and one would certainly make it easier to yank the 300+-pound deck out from under my mower. I could lift the front of the mower and pull the deck out with the tractor, like an intelligent person.

The difficulty with installing a hoist is finding a way to support it. I have flimsy truss chords in my workshop, so it’s not like I would trust one to hold a hoist up by itself. I’ve read that you can sister them (fasten additional pieces of wood to either side) to prevent disaster. I don’t know if it works.

My garage in Miami had stronger trusses which were 5 feet shorter. I threw a 2×8 across three and hung my chain hoist from the middle of it. No trouble at all with loads over 500 pounds. I think that would be risky here.

Northern Tool sells a 2000-pound gantry crane cheap, and they also sell electric hoists. I suppose a mature person would buy a gantry instead of hanging a hoist from trusses. I don’t like gantries. They have feet, unlike a truss-mounted hoist. Always in the way. It’s probably a smart idea, though, because I could lift a ton instead of a few hundred pounds, and it could not pull my roof down.

I’m looking around the web as I write, and I just saw a great suggestion for moving relatively small things around: a Hoyer patient lift. This is something I should have had the common sense to buy for my dad. It’s like a garage engine hoist for a person. They will move 400 pounds from 30″ off the ground to 78″. That’s hard to beat. Someone on Craigslist is trying to get rid of one for $50, and they ordinarily sell for close to a grand. That’s a perk of living near Ocala. I hate to say it, but people die at an enormous rate here because of all the retirement and assisted living communities, and their stuff has to be liquidated.

I look forward to receiving my jackhammer, and I plan to be more open to spending money on things that will protect me from exertion.

Man, a bulldozer would be fun.