A lot of Scouters I know seem to be the Do-It-Yourself types, I know I am. At the OA Conclave, my chainsaw was having problems so another Scouter had a look at it. 'Looking at' also included taking it apart which resulted in a lost bolt. We had scouts helping us scour the ground, but no luck.

Fortunately, I had the nut and found a 70 cent bolt to replace it at the local hardware store. That was a cheap fix. I've been involved in other 'fixes' that weren't so cheap. For example, our furnace stopped working a couple years after we moved in. I played with it and discovered that the ceramic starter was broken. For $55, I got a replacement part but in my clumsiness of installing it, I cracked it. I swear I barely touched it, but as they say knowledge is power and if I had known how fragile it was, I could have done better. As it turned out, I bought a second one and installed it just fine. The cost of two parts still saved me about $75 over having someone else come and take care of it.

I think that might be why the kind of folks that scout also do things themselves. We like to believe we are self-sufficient and I think that 'thrifty' comes into play there quite often. It's amazing how many scoutmasters keep old gear working and operational long after 'normal' people would have thrown it out. The same goes for their homes - why buy new when I can get this thing fixed?

There are thousands of articles about home improvement projects on various web sites. Whether you want to repair your troop trailer or get ideas for Eagle Scout projects, it doesn't hurt to read a bit before tackling the task. If you're more of a Watcher than Reader, getting an instructional DVD can also improve your results, it probably would have helped me with my cracked ceramic starter.

Scout On

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