If you need a table saw, a 10-foot pipe clamp or a 20-foot pruner, you’ve normally got three choices: Buy it, rent it or borrow it from a neighbor.

Portland is fast becoming a leader in a fourth way: checking it out for free at a tool lending library.

About 900 of the more than 1,100 tools at the Northeast Portland Tool Library were donated, helping give the library a hardware store’s worth of inventory. The volunteer-run tool libraries offer low-cost home and garden lessons as well as tools.

Membership is free, and the library allows borrowers to check out up to 7 tools for a week.

The library survives on donations that help it buy new and refurbished tools, small grants, tool sales, late fees, and the good will of members. Since the library opened in August 2008, it has lent about 5,000 tools, with only a dozen not returned.

[Read](http://www.oregonlive.com/environment/index.ssf/2010/01/portland_ratchets_up_volunteer.html “Read the Article”) (OregonLive.com)