ST. PAUL, Minn. — When the founders of a new tool library in St. Paul put out a call for tool donations, they didn’t expect their shop floor to be filled by one man.

When the individual, David Merry, donated his entire massive collection of woodworking tools, the tool library gained, in a single donation, an inventory it thought might take a year to complete, KARE11-TV reported.

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“It was an amazing donation,” said Pete Hoh, a member of the library’s local advisory board. “I’m still flabbergasted.”

The tools are significant to Merry because he considers them a link to his brother George, who died of a brain tumor at 21, when Merry was 15. He and his brother built a tool shop together on one side of a chicken coop on the farm they grew up on in South Dakota.

“I thought a lot of George and it was really tough for me,” Merry said. “He was the one who got me started on doing things with my hands.” Related Articles St. Paul City Council agrees on no levy increase

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Merry has also donated his expertise as the 78-year-old helps the tool library’s less experienced members with their projects. Members pay $55 a year to work in the shop and check out tools.

Merry said there is nowhere he’d rather spend time than a place where building is being done.

“If we go into a restaurant one of the first things I do is, I tend to look at the table and see how it’s built,” Merry said.

The tool library was getting ready to open its doors in March as Merry and his wife were moving to assisted living, where there wasn’t room for the tools, due to her declining health.

“My parents lost so much in the last year and a half that we really didn’t know how to help him lose this too, so to not have to lose this it means the world,” said Sharon MacFarlane, Merry’s daughter.