I have a few things that belonged to my Grandpa Waters. I have his Bible, his wooden blue box, and his candidate’s papers. But there is one thing that has passed on to Philip which I find quite interesting and that’s Grandpa Waters’ square.

I was in Phil’s workshop recently and he was using it – it’s a hardy tool that will be useful for many many years. I wondered as he was using it “when did Grandpa Waters buy this?”… I won’t know. However it lives on in the hands of another skilled carpenter.

It has a number of words and numbers on it and so I was interested in what they are there for, what do they mean. Of course Phil was able to explain what they are for – and how they are used in the building of a roof and setting the angles and lengths of the roof trusses. Fascinating! I would have never known.

Of course I got this from my Dad and I wondered of all his Dad’s tools (assuming he had many) why did he end up with this? What happened to the others?

When we walked into the hardware store in Fort Edmonton I saw all the hand tools and thought about my grandpa and his tools.

It is really quite wonderful to see Phil in the workshop using very new and very old tools.