We’re fairly careful with saws around this Woestman household after The Incident in the Boundary Waters two summers ago.

However.

Several weeks ago, I stopped being able to get anything out of my Prime Time foundation primer, but I just knew in my soul there was still something left in the bottle.  So I set it aside until I had a few free minutes, because I was going to cut that bottle in half, don’t you know it, and scrape out all the renegade primer.

Because I didn’t want to waste any pennies unnecessarily.

Joey was gone to pick up a pizza, and some friends were coming over for dinner (if you can call it that when we eat order-in pizza) and to help Joey study for his ordination exam on Sunday.  But I had a few minutes before they arrived, so I dug the hand saw out of the tool chest and set to work.

Plastic wasn’t designed to be sawed through with a cheap hand saw, that’s the first thing I learned.

The second thing I learned, was that it’s a good thing I didn’t saw my left fingers clean off.  Plastic is slippery.  Not to mention extremely thick.

Ten minutes later, I had dented the plastic container and made a channel for the saw blade.  There were little plastic shavings covering our patio, and I was occasionally making un-ladylike grunt sounds while I tried to force the saw to go back and forth over the gnarled up plastic container.

Then, it finally broke through.

Halfway.

I brushed off the saw and carried my now extremely damaged Prime Time container to the kitchen…where I discovered that I could have just used a pair of kitchen shears in the first place and the entire project would have been over (and with quite a bit less danger to my left hand) about as soon as I’d begun it.

The good news is that I retrieved quite a bit of primer from the bottom of the container.  I think I probably saved myself $4.00 by doing so.  I deserve a medal.

And when Joey came home, he said…”You used a saw on WHAT?”

Hey, at least I didn’t fall on it.