One of my friends, like myself, is a guy who does a fair amount amount of DIY projects. He’s a self-taught jack-of-all-trades who has cobbled together a wider skill set than my own. In addition to being able to handle basic plumbing, electrical, drywall patching, painting and minor repairs, he’s also learned how to weld, do engine repair and more.
When something breaks, or when something he owns doesn’t quite work the way he’d like, he starts putzing around with it to see if he can fix it.
His new girlfriend was watching him in action a few weeks ago and said he was a “Master Tinkerer”.
That’s a great description. I’ve been thinking about it ever since. I’m a Master Tinkerer too. There are some projects I won’t tackle and some skills I will never get around to learning. But there are plenty of others to keep me busy.
It’s not just doing the work that make us MTs. It’s that we enjoy doing the work. It is rewarding, challenging and satisfying. It is fun. We appreciate the results even more than if we had replaced a broken item or had paid someone else to do the job.
MTs not only do the work – we want to do the work.
The plumber who replaced my hot water heater is a member of the Master Tinkerers Club too. After his truck broke down, he was telling about its dual fuel pumps and how he had replaced one already and bought a spare so could replace the second one when it failed. That night, I felt sorry for him that he had a broken down truck that he had to repair himself.
The next day, when he returned to my home to finish the job we got to talking and I learned he was a trained automative mechanic before he became a plumber. He told me he still did all of his own auto repairs because he enjoyed doing it. He discussed troubleshooting his broken down truck and was thinking he might have a distributor cap with a pinhole failure. Then he asked to meet my dogs. We started talking abut dogs and it turns out he has 6 hunting Jack Russell terriers that he trains to run “hunt courses” which are a kind of agility competition. He admired my paintings on the wall, called me an artist, and we talked about making art. He doesn’t paint but he sings – because he enjoys it.
I got to thinking about my friend who I’ve known for 30 years. I used to say he was “the man who could fix anything”. Before the internet, anytime I had a home repair problem, my first call would be to him to ask for advice. I’ve known him to fix his car, drywall a house, custom make carved wooden windowsills, load his own shotgun shells, build corn hole boards, replace a water heater, and repair boat engines. Over the years he’s helped me build custom shelves for a sloped floor basement, make major drywall repairs in an attic destroyed by my stepson and provide countless hours of advice on the phone.
Then I thought about another friend of mine who is a master repairman of anything mechanical. Formally, his education and career led him to be a civilian engineer working on nuclear submarines. In his spare time he’s worked on a pit crew for a car racing team, built and flown high-end model helicopters, and has repaired everything in his home from alarm clocks to cars to motorcycles to furnaces to clocks. He even diagnosed the problem with my camper trailer hen I was on the road and provided step by step instructions for repairing to the auto shop I used in bumf**k Arizona to make the repair.
Whenever something mechanical breaks that is beyond my capacity, he is my first call.
As it turns out, each of my friends in the MTC also dabbles in art or music.
One friend was a classical oboist who played in the city youth orchestra. Another plays guitar, sings and was into painting miniature ogres for Dungeons and Dragons tokens. The other would never call himself an artist, yet his woodworking skills are nothing less than magnificent. He has built theater sets for his kid’s plays, corn hole boards that look better than production made ones and redid his entire kitchen by himself.
Five years ago I wouldn’t have called myself a Master Tinkerer. I was just a guy who did home repair projects to avoid the expense of paying someone else to do them. I was a hack, who cobbled solutions together that might not be the greatest, but they worked for me and were good enough.
Doing my road trip and then rebuilding my life from scratch in my current home made me realize that I can do much more than I thought I was capable of doing. I can fix a leak, patch drywall, troubleshoot an electric problem, diagnose a furnace failure, stain cabinets, assess software, plan major projects, paint decent impressionistic nature scenes, keep time on the drums, urban sketch and much more.
Not only that, I enjoy doing it and love when I discover something new to learn.
Even better than that, I am surrounded by clandestine members of the same club.