I need a bit of advice. I recently moved into a new house with a big
garage that I've made into my workshop. My next door neighbor is a really
good guy and comes over to shoot the bull every now and again and I show him
some of the new things I've made (adirondack chairs and tile inlay tables).
While he's there I'm sure he scopes out what I have and after a while comes
to ask if he can borrow my tools for a project he's working on. I always
get the "I'll bring it back in a couple of hours" statement, but it's
usually the next couple of days. I've never lived anywhere where a
neighbor needed any of my tools, so this loaning out of tools is new to me
and I want to be neighborly. But now he has my level, palm sander, one of
my two pipe clamps, and an extension cord that has now been strung across
his backyard for a week in the rain. He brought back my ladder a few days
ago that sat in a snow storm overnight.

I just got a new cabinet saw and dust collector. Now that Christmas is
over and my kids birthdays out of the way, I'm going to be working pretty
hard getting my chairs made for spring-summer time, therefore, the loaning
is going to come to a stop.

Here's my question, is there a way to tell him I can't loan out my tools now
that I'm going to be using them more without ****ing off a neighbor? I'm
already going to have to ask for my other tools back since I need them now,
not when he decides he can bring them back. It gets to me a bit that he
always wants to borrow my tools since he works at Home Depot. I
figure that some of you guys out there have gone through this. How do you
keep it under control? I know I can say "no" everytime he wants to
borrow something, but won't that make for bad blood?

Thanks for any advice.