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Had a talk with an old timer at the lumber yard last week that got me thinking
I was grabbing some 2x4s for a deck job and this retired carpenter in his 70s starts chatting me up. He said something like 'you young guys rely too much on those nail guns, you forget how to read the wood.' At first I brushed it off, but later that night I thought about it more. He was talking about how he could feel a stud was wet just by the weight and the way the hammer bounced. I have been doing this 15 years and I never learned that. It hit me different because I realized I have a lot of gaps in the basics that came from jumping into power tools too fast. Has anyone else felt like they missed out on old school tricks that still matter?
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cameronwest13d ago
Kind of feel like people romanticize the old ways a little too much. A good carpenter 50 years ago would have swapped his hammer for a nail gun in a heartbeat if they were reliable enough. It's just tools man, you can be a pro with a gun and still know when a stud feels off.
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jesse98813d ago
That part about feeling the moisture in a stud just by weight and how the hammer bounces is wild. I never even thought about learning stuff like that, I just grab the gun and go.
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