Many, many years ago, I was adding a bathroom in an old house. The design was unusual and a bit tricky to execute; the bathroom had to straddle a stairwell. I was doing a lot of work in other parts of the house, in addition to working full time as a design engineer for a computer peripherals company. I decided to hire a contractor to execute the bathroom project.
I came to think of the contractor as having a circular saw grafted to his arm. He was never without it, and seemed to use it for everything. Pounding nails? Yup. Marking material for cutting? Yup. Demolition? Of course. I think he actually had a few other tools, but I don’t remember seeing him ever use anything but the saw.
Mr. Skilsaw hired a subcontractor. By contrast, this subcontractor had a special tool for each individual task. I rarely saw him actually building anything. Instead, he was always “going out to the truck” for another tool. Hand tools. Electric power tools. Air tools, with both ⅜-inch and ½-inch air supply hoses (using two separate compressors). Cutting a board would often take two different saws, each of which would require setup. He never just drilled a hole, but always drilled a tiny pilot hole first, then (using a different drill, natch) drilled the final hole to size.
Mr. Skilsaw’s rough work was good. His finish work left a little to be desired, as when he trimmed cove molding using the same combo blade on his circular saw that he used for ripping 4’ x 8’ plywood underlayment. He got stuff done, but I often had to re-do it after he left to get the level of finish I wanted. When the subcontractor somehow managed to finish things (I’m not really sure how) his fit-and-finish was excellent. He’d then spend at least 45 minutes at the end of every day putting away the smorgasbord of tools he’d gotten out to do the work.
In spite of it all, the bathroom got finished. I remember that dynamic duo whenever I’m trying to decide whether to just-do-the-thing with the tools to hand, or make the long trek back to the garage for the specialty tool that would do the best job.
—2p