Being reminded of my own mortality

[Michael G]

Over the last few weeks I've been subject to a number of (medical) tests to "rule out the possibility of ...". I must admit to being relieved that everything has come back negative but I also must admit to have a few moments of "what if" as well. (My family history does run to a few nasty fast developing conditions)

One of the things I thought about was my workshop and all the bits of tooling I've collected over the years. My son has shown no interest in metal work so I was left wondering what would happen to it all. I think I remember reading in a copy of MEW of a bloke who was asked to do a shed clear-out for the widow of a close friend of his, and after doing this last service resolved to compile lists of all he had and locations (down to reference labels on drawers) so that it was easier for anyone doing this for his widow.

I'm not planning on going that far and cataloguing everything but having been perplexed about this myself would be interested to know if anyone else has thought about it, has any idea of where their gear would go (or where they want it to go) and what arrangements they have made.
My larger stuff is 3 phase, so an ad in Gumtree is unlikely to get the same response as if it was a little Hercus (and there is the vexed question of if it is sold, how do those selling know what it is worth or how much it should realise). I did wonder whether model engineering clubs are interested in this sort of equipment but not being a member of one of those it's hard to say...

Michael

[Bryan]

Michael, I've read similar stories and have thought I should at least document what goes with what, approx values and suggestions for disposal. But it's one of those things that's hard to actually do. But let's face it any one of us could be hit by the proverbial bus tomorrow. I think I'd want my stuff offered to forum members via the marketplace section.

[ian]

Have only recently completed cleraning out my father's shed.

In the end, rather than try and sell stuff for a fraction of its true worth, I gave most of his stuff away to people who would appeciate the value.
Apart from a few high value items, I'd like the same done with my tools when that time arrives.

[Ian Smith]

Michael,
Just been through a similar experience. Spent a couple of weeks trying to suppress thoughts of the "worst case " and finally got to see a specialist on Wednesday who has ruled out the all the nasty possibilities.

Can I suggest that, if you haven't already done so, you all get off your collective behinds and get the following things in order:


An Advanced Health Directive
Your will
Appoint executer/s and enduring power of attorney
A letter of wishes.

If you do all these things it leaves very little doubt in the minds of your surviving family how you wish to treated, who you entrust to handle your affairs, how you want your assets distributed, and if there are any specifics, such as your woodworking stuff, what you would like done with it.

It's all stuff we'd rather not think about but makes it so much easier for everyone, and it's peace of mind for you, if they are able to make all the necessary arrangements knowing that this is what you wanted rather than trying to guess after you're not around to ask.

Ian

[chambezio]

I don't like "Clearance Sales".....you turn up to a property and join the long procession of lookers going up and down rows of stuff (A man's life's work/tools) layed out for the vulchers to pick over.
My wife remarked a couple of years ago that I should at the very least put a value on my shed stuff and preferably make some sort of note telling her who/where the stuff should go.
My eldest daughter has just go engaged to a deadbeat whom I definitely don't want to die knowing this bugger will end up with it. He wouldn't use any of it, he is too damn lazy, but I am sure he would cash it waste the money on him self!
I'll bet any one of us here on the Forum will have a story attached to each tool we have acquired over the years. Really I suppose the stories are a personal thing but they mean something to us
To put a cash value on our stuff today, really doesn't mean much if we don't regularly update the figures as time goes by.
Just thinking about the daughters fiance makes me want to live forever. I don't know what she sees in him......I'll shut up now

[BRADFORD]

I don't like "Clearance Sales".....you turn up to a property and join the long procession of lookers going up and down rows of stuff (A man's life's work/tools) layed out for the vulchers to pick over.
My wife remarked a couple of years ago that I should at the very least put a value on my shed stuff and preferably make some sort of note telling her who/where the stuff should go.
My eldest daughter has just go engaged to a deadbeat whom I definitely don't want to die knowing this bugger will end up with it. He wouldn't use any of it, he is too damn lazy, but I am sure he would cash it waste the money on him self!
I'll bet any one of us here on the Forum will have a story attached to each tool we have acquired over the years. Really I suppose the stories are a personal thing but they mean something to us
To put a cash value on our stuff today, really doesn't mean much if we don't regularly update the figures as time goes by.
Just thinking about the daughters fiance makes me want to live forever. I don't know what she sees in him......I'll shut up now

I have three daughters and they all are either married to .or living with no hopers, my son wouldn't mind having my gear but his wife wouldn't let him out from under the thumb long enough to use it.
I do have a teenage grandaughter who just loves coming to our place and working in the shed.
Think I will have to wait a couple of years before I make a decision about all this stuff, and there is a lot of it, 50 years of collecting.

[azzrock]

i was planning on getting buried with all my stuff

[Scott]

Can I suggest that, if you haven't already done so, you all get off your collective behinds and get the following things in order:

An Advanced Health Directive
Your will
Appoint executer/s and enduring power of attorney
A letter of wishes.

If you do all these things it leaves very little doubt in the minds of your surviving family how you wish to treated, who you entrust to handle your affairs, how you want your assets distributed, and if there are any specifics, such as your woodworking stuff, what you would like done with it.


Very pertinent Ian and well written. I'd like to expand in the Advanced Health Directive. Have we all had a talk with our families about this? My wife and I are both nurses and I have expressly stated that if I end up brain dead, a quadriplegic or anything that would drastically affect my quality of life that she MUST withdraw treatment and allow me a dignified end to my life. Easy to talk about, hard to do.

[Dingo Dog]

I have started a data base on everything that I have. Make it easier for the Dragon to give all to a local "men's shed". We have no kids, so it was an easy call to make.

SSAA get the rest, only family I have ever known.

DD

[bwal74]

Hi,

My wife had our fourth son this morning. So hopefully one of them will be man enough to want my tools when I'm gone.
As for our daughter (14) I'm turning up baseball bats as we speak :((!

Ben.

[azzrock]

congrats ben . you've done well. im shore theu must keep you busy


Hi,

My wife had our fourth son this morning. So hopefully one of them will be man enough to want my tools when I'm gone.
As for our daughter (14) I'm turning up baseball bats as we speak :((!

Ben.

[whitey56]

Well done Ben congratulations to you and the missus i'll have a beer for the little fella tonight, Umm isn't it 6 beers for the fourth son! Ok then

[Gerbilsquasher]

A great deal of humour in regards to a serious issue- ### do we do with our prized possessions when we can no longer use them?

Just over 2.5 years ago I was rendered somewhat crippled by a sudden onset of Cauda Equina syndrome. If I hadn't been rushed into emergency back surgery I would now be a paraplegic...

Own fault really, taking on projects which were too big, thinking I was indestructible, and working too hard for certain family members who played the 'poor me' card without, as it turns out, any real reciprocation when I needed help, but that's a different story...

So here I am on a gurney waiting to be rolled over and have my spine surgically reconditioned. I asked if I could write a will..... mass panic and lots of sudden concern and attempts at re-assurance and counselling, but these are nurses and doctors, not social workers.... they thought that I was panicking. I tried to reassure them that I was trying to be pragmatic, and that if I didn't do something now I would die intestate and the government would get 30% before my wife and kids.... and they have taken enough from me already.

Obviously the surgery went okay, I'm not the man I used to be, but still functional, still working, still making my home brew, still making chips on my old school machines. At the time I thought the surgery and the recovery was inconvenient, but sometimes life has to teach you a lesson- use the muscle on your shoulders first :D

Back surgery is not terminal by any means, depends on your determination.... after 15 hours I told them to take away the PCA machine (I did press the button to see what it would do....:rolleyes:) and three weeks later I did a circumnavigation of the outside of Casey Hospital on crutches.

However it is that human spirit that desires, perhaps, that the things we gave our life to will be appreciated by someone else, despite the transience of life.

My children worship my tools and my machines nearly as much as they worship their father... but things can change. At the end of the day if my stuff was melted down and turned into Hyundais (or worse still, a Toyota Prius :oo:) it would be disappointing, and such a loss to the human race in terms of embedded energy, intelligence and learning opportunities. However, what can I do? I'll be dead.

I suppose the best you can do is make sure your stuff goes to someone who deserves it and will look after it, even though it will upset your family if it is someone unrelated, and they might even contest the will even if they don't want it.

I have joked occasionally that if my kids don't want my tools, my last request will be to have my body thrown into the crucible with all my stuff to create a single ingot of the hardest alloy known to man- Roscotanium. Then my family can sell it to the Victorian Government, and it will be placed next to the Yellow Peril.

:roflmao2::roflmao2::roflmao2::roflmao2::roflmao2::roflmao2:

[BobL]

One thing I have sort of gathered up along the path of my life is that for me material objects are just one way to generate experiences and for me experiences have begun to matter much more to me than possessions and what eventually happens to them. Perhaps this is different for collectors where the experience is just the possession of an object.

It sounds daft when I say to people that I have milled over 120 logs and have bits and piece of these stashed up all over WA but I would not be that devastated if they were all to all disappear. I enjoyed the experience of milling them so much that the timber is in some ways just a bonus.

The same applies to my tools including the dozens I have made. I will probably tell my family that if no one can use my stuff they can donate it to a mens shed but I have no illusion that they will be treat the tools in any special way.

[ian]

My wife had our fourth son this morning. So hopefully one of them will be man enough to want my tools when I'm gone.
As for our daughter (14) I'm turning up baseball bats as we speak :((!
congratulations, :2tsup: but FIVE kids !

how do you move them all around?
two cars ?
a small bus ?

[bwal74]

Tarago.
Traded my Hilux 4x4 SR5 for it a couple of years ago.

[eskimo]

i was planning on getting buried with all my stuff

could they dig a hole big enough with out bringing in a excavator from BHP

[Ben Dono]

Thats a tough subject! I'm only 33 and have been thinking about my huge and ever-growing workshop. I told my lass that if I die at 90 standing up in my workshop, I was a happy man!

I was offered to go through a workshop and help myself not that long ago. A family friends father passed away leaving a substantial empire of a shop behind to his wife and daughters to sort out. I had never met this gentleman but was shown some of his work. He was schooled in Italy in the 40s in fine joinery and brought it with him to Australia.
I could not bring myself to even walk into his workshop. I felt like a vulture at the thought of it. Had I met him, an they were his wishes I think I would have felt different.

Make a plan on who it will go to as it really tortured his family for about a year after it.
If money is an issue then explain to them that it is to be sold.
If I don't have anyone I can hand the shop over to, I plan to donate it! Pass it forward! It might be the making of some young punk that isn't even born yet!
When I was just starting out, All the oldies I met and asked questions ended up handing me a few bits and pieces to get me
started.

[PDW]

I don't really care what happens to my stuff after I die. I bought it all to play with, some of it has paid for itself many times over, other things never have and never will. I didn't buy it as an investment, I get my pleasure out of it now. It's all sunk funds just like drinking or gambling, just with a much larger 'residue' to dispose of.

Told people to sell it, give it away or do anything they like with it. I won't care at all. Let's not get too precious...

My library, OTOH, has instructions attached. It's probably a lot more valuable than my machine shop and I certainly value it more highly. Shrug. Whatever.....

PDW

[acmegridley]

Make sure you mark everything as to who gets what,sister in Taree, her mother in law died a few years ago, the house was mainly built from cedar ,which grew on the property,bro. in law owns a dairy farm fifteen hundre acres in the old money,at one stage 5 families were getting a living out of it and there were 5 houses on the property,alas no more he struggles to make a living out of it ,he has two sons, one is a nine to five farmer who wont work weekends, so he has to work seven days a week, getting older, has past reirement date,the other son not interested at all in dairy farming.Anyhow to cut a long story short after the will was read with everything being left to the sister and bro in law ,all the relos started turning up, "Mum promised me this, Mum promised me that" ,house is full of beautiful old cedar furniture all hand made.
In the end my sister has to order them off the property at the point of a .22 rifle,she was really shat off with the lot off them,so make patently sure who gets what to avoid any family arguments.

[ian]

Make sure you mark everything as to who gets what ... to avoid any family arguments.Better yet, make each member of the family a keep sake box

place a note each the box listing what items the family member is to get

[Ueee]

Congrats Ben! Now where's my beer (or 6 was it??)

I spent last week at my Grandparents place in Taree. My Grandfather passed away last year and left his shed to his only son (my uncle). He took the dust extractor and the triton superjaws. He was going to sell the rest if it wasn't for me........He left the place a right mess, didn't even look for the spare superjaws jaws or dust bags (which i found) I feel very lucky to own some of my Grandfathers prized possessions, his wood lathe, turning tools, bench grinder etc (abot and ashby made 1979, 2 new bearings and she's smoother than a new chinese one).

If my kids or grandkids (if i have any) aren't interested then mens shed or even just anyone who will use everything. Anything to stop my gear being scraped basically!