Dave Merry and his tools have been through a lot together. The tools helped Dave, now 80, repair his home in St. Paul, Minnesota, where he and his wife, Annette Merry, lived for 46 years and raised three children. The table saw, the jointer plane, the drill press, and the dozens of other power and hand tools had pride of place in his carefully organized workshop. "I had a whole setup, and it was beautiful," says Dave, a retired engineer.
But then Annette experienced a stroke (中风) that left her relying on a walker to get around, and the Merrys decided to move into assisted living. Dave's workshop was obviously a minor consideration given Annette's condition, but the family knew that giving it up, on top of everything else, would hurt.
It was the Merrys' daughter who came up with a possible solution. She'd heard about some people who were setting up a tool library—a nonprofit facility that would lend out tools just as a regular library lends books. Might Dad be interested in donating his?
"I said yes," Dave says.
The people creating the St. Paul Tool Library were thrilled. They had expected it would take a year to collect enough tools to make their facility fully functional. Instead it took one day: the day Dave donated his.
The library's founders drove over to the Merrys' house and picked everything up themselves. The library is housed in the basement of the American Can Factory. Members pay an annual fee (from $20 to $120) for unlimited tool use and a varying number of visits to the workshop. And they get an extra benefit: Dave Merry. "Almost every time we're open, Dave's here," says one of the founders, Peter Hoh. "It means a lot to me to be able to go and use my tools," Dave says. "But it means just as much to help DIYers use the tools properly."
As Hoh puts it, "This is his workshop now."
