Ah man, gotta push back a tiny bit on the beam wrench thing though. They can drift out of calibration too if you drop em or they get banged around in a toolbox. A properly maintained clicker that gets checked yearly is still totally fine for most jobs, just gotta trust but verify with a test before you use it.

Wait was he actually using the digger when it happened or did he just sneeze wrong the next morning? I gotta know cause I've seen both scenarios play out myself and honestly the sneeze one is way more common than people think. Did he at least finish the hole he was working on or did he just leave it half dug like a monument to bad timing? That type of work is brutal on the lower back no matter how careful you are, I've learned that the hard way.

Forty dollars for a tube of filler? I had no idea it got that bad out there in Boston winters. @tarajenkins your sock analogy really hits home though, I learned that lesson the hard way with cheap boots that fell apart after one season. Guess you really do pay for what you get with this stuff.