Photography And Half-Thoughts By Mitchell Hegman

...because some of it is pretty and some of it is not.

Tuesday, May 13, 2025

An Important Part?

I’ve been using a variety of tools while installing laminate flooring and some associated wood trim in the loft of our cabin. While working on the project over the weekend, I found a rubber ring on the loft stairway. It looked like something that might have been shed from one of my tools—maybe from a pneumatic air gun or the compressor.

Frankly, the sight of the rubber ring freaked me out. I quickly scooped it up and wandered around my immediate worksite, examining various tools to see if any of them might have shed parts.

My tools proved intact. So, what sort of thing might have lost such a ring?

Then, entirely by chance, as I sipped coffee in our cabin’s unfinished equivalent of a kitchen, my eyes fell upon the butane lighter I’d used to start a fire in the woodstove earlier that morning.

Bingo!

The ring turned out to be a completely unnecessary design flourish that had popped off the lighter. Mystery solved—and no tools were harmed in the process.

The Rubber Ring

The Lighter

—Mitchell Hegman 

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