The Battery Charger Shuffle

 

I don't know when it happened, but somewhere along the way I became the unofficial battery manager of my workshop.

You'd think being a carpenter means building things, measuring twice, and cutting once. Nope. Half the battle is figuring out which battery is charged, which one is dead, and which one somehow ended up in the truck three days ago.

I've always heard that it's not the best idea to leave batteries sitting on the charger all the time. Whether it's completely true or not, I try to take mine off once they're fully charged. Maybe it's just me, but I like knowing they're ready to go without spending their entire life plugged into the wall like a teenager glued to a phone charger.

My routine usually goes something like this:

Put battery on charger.

Hear charger beep.

Tell myself I'll take it off in five minutes.

Forget about it for two hours.

Remember it exists.

Act like I planned it that way.

The goal is always to keep a full charge on them. Nothing ruins a productive day faster than grabbing a drill, pulling the trigger, and hearing that sad little "ugh" sound that says the battery gave up before you even started.

Of course, no matter how many batteries I own, somehow they're all dead at the same time when I need them most. It's one of life's great mysteries. Right up there with where my tape measure disappears to and why a tool I just put down is suddenly nowhere to be found.

I've got batteries for drills, impacts, lights, saws, radios, and probably a few tools I forgot I even own. Yet somehow, when the job gets serious, I'm standing there staring at a blinking red light like it's personally offended me.

So I keep charging them, rotating them, and trying not to leave them on the charger forever. It's a system that mostly works... at least until Monday morning when every battery I thought was charged suddenly isn't.

Such is the life of a carpenter.

You don't measure time in hours. You measure it in battery bars.

And when all else fails, you grab another cup of coffee and wait for the charger to do its thing.

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