For a craftsman like my father, nothing is more exasperating than to witness tool abuse. In particular, I remember a steel tape measure he gave me after I had somehow managed to lose the first twelve inches of it. – Richard Menzies, “If I Were A Carpenter,” RDMenzies.com, 2011

The civil law cannot provide but by common measures… all their rules are made by as common a measure as they can, and they are the best rules that have the fewest exceptions: the best Carpenters make the fewest chips: but some there must be. – Jeremy Taylor, Ductor Dubitantium, or The Rule of Conscience, 1659

Good workmen never quarrel with their tools. – Lord Byron, Don Juan

Who answers when you knock on wood? – J. Drummond, People, 1969