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At a certain size, you start letting the experts do the measuring. Boats – believe the manufacturer. Homes? Your realtor’s bonded. Anything over 50 feet or s0, you’d rather see a pair of guys in hazard-orange tunics and hardhats fiddling with lasers than trust your own wits and tools. Mis-measured real estate lands in court, and poorly calculated building-materials orders leave you with either holes in your house or an extra truckload of fancy firewood. This is a tool for settling disputes, a spring-steel peacemaker on a reel, clad in leatherette and trimmed in chrome. It’s a Keuffel & Esser Co. Favorite Wyteface (Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.) They go for about $10 on eBay, which is a damn sight cheaper than you’ll pay for a new Stanley that size.
I collect heavy little things.
Tools, for sale parts, toys, instruments, tchotchkes – the weight of some new thing in my hand, often small, metallic and well machined, compels me to add it to my life.
It’s instinct by now. I can’t say why these things are important, or why I haven’t bothered cataloguing them until this day – they almost litter my office, my pockets, my car, my home. But this is as good a place to start as any.
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The archetypal heavy little thing.
The drivetrain crapped out on our decrepit Schwinn tandem. I yanked this off to replace it, and it’s been sitting on my desk ever since. Put your thumb through it and spin it. It makes a pleasant, hushed clicking noise.
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This atomic-age relic has a mystic weight to it. Almost two pounds, despite being no more than nine inches long.
The ammo-box-styled latches open to reveal the guts – a transistor board, D-cell battery cradle and a rather unremarkable thick cylinder that must be the radiation-detector itself.
The sickening neon-green enamel covering the ammo-box-style case with cast-aluminum handle is punctuated by several things:
- Large gauge measuring 1 to 5 R/hr
- CD – Civil Defense emblem
- Black bakelite selector with the settings:
- CIRCUIT CHECK
- OFF
- ZERO
- XI00
- XI0
- XI
- X0.I
- Zero knob beside the handle with extruded metal shields to prevent accidental misadjustment
- Strap lugs
I bought it from a burly, convivial transsexual CGI animator named Kristin who worked at my wife’s company, the now-defunct Centropolis, and collected Geiger counters, in between turning out brilliant animation and playing for a women’s rugby team. She was (at the time) at least 6’1″ and wore cobalt-blue hair dye and shirts with aphorisms like, “It takes leather balls to play rugby.” The pride of her collection was a red-and-white plastic child’s Geiger counter, which actually worked.