I thought a shared tool library in our town would just turn into a pile of rusty junk, then Ray lent me his tile saw | Community Tool Library

Anna Green · 2026-10-09T13:35:05.960889+00:00

Three years ago I sat in a city council meeting in our town of 9,000 and said out loud that a tool library would never work here, people would just keep the good stuff and we'd be left with broken junk. Last month my neighbor Ray, who runs the little branch on Oak Street, handed me his wet tile saw for a bathroom job I had been putting off since spring. I finished the floor in two weekends and spent $0 on rentals, after getting quoted $58 a day at the place over on Route 4. What actually changed my mind was seeing the checkout log, 41 people had borrowed that same saw in the past year and every one brought it back wiped down. I still think we need a better way to track who has the chain saw, since two people swore they returned it in June and it showed up in someone's shed in August. So for folks running one of these, how do you handle the expensive stuff, deposit, sign out sheet, or do you just trust people?

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I thought a shared tool library in our town would just turn into a pile of rusty junk, then Ray lent me his tile saw | Community Tool Library - The Community Guide