Tools and their proper uses...

[Harry Babb]

I am pretty sure that several of us here can identify with the tool descriptions below...........first hand

DRILL PRESS: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your soda pop across the room, splattering it against that freshly-stained heirloom piece you were drying.

WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under

the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned guitar calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, 'Yeou sheeeet....'

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

SKIL SAW: A portable cutting tool used to make studs too short.

PLIERS: Used to round off bolt heads. Sometimes used in the creation of

blood-blisters. The most often tool used by all women.

BELT SANDER: An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor

touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

HACKSAW: One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

VISE-GRIPS: Generally used after pliers to completely round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

WELDING GLOVES: Heavy duty leather gloves used to prolong the conduction of intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub you want the bearing race out of.

WHITWORTH SOCKETS: Once used for working on older British cars and

motorcycles, they are now used mainly for impersonating that 9/16' socket you've been searching for the last 45 minutes.

TABLE SAW: A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood

projectiles for testing wall integrity.

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground

after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle

firmly under the bumper.

EIGHT-FOOT LONG YELLOW PINE 2X4: Used for levering an automobile upward off of a trapped hydraulic jack handle.

TWEEZERS: A tool for removing wood splinters and wire wheel wires.

E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool, ten times harder than any known drill bit, that snaps neatly off in bolt holes thereby ending any possible future use.

RADIAL ARM SAW: A large stationary power saw primarily used by most

shops to scare neophytes into choosing another line of work.

TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of

everything you forgot to disconnect.

CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 24-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A very large pry bar that

inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end opposite the handle.

AVIATION METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.

TROUBLE LIGHT: The home mechanic's own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, 'the sunshine vitamin,' which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105mm howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids

and for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads. Women excel at using this tool.

STRAIGHT SCREWDRIVER: A tool for opening paint cans. Sometimes used to convert common slotted screws into non-removable screws.

AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning

power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts which were last over tightened 30 years ago by someone at Ford, and instantly rounds off their heads. Also used to quickly snap off lug nuts.

PRY BAR: A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50 cent part.

HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to make hoses too short.

HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is

used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts adjacent to the object we are trying to hit. Women primarily use it to make gaping holes in walls when hanging pictures.

MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on contents such as seats, vinyl records, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts. Especially useful for slicing work clothes, but only while in use.

DAMMMMIT TOOL: Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage

while yelling 'DAMMMMMIT' at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need!

[mike ohlstein]

Back in the day.....they used to make screwdrivers out of tool steel, and they had a 'full tang'. With one of those and a hammer, you could build a railroad or tear down a house.

Now they make hammers out of plastic......

[Carl]

First thing this morning-
My first new hire had a hard time getting thru the door, should have realized it was not a wise choice to hire him. Yesturday he called from his cell phone while standing outside to tell me we where closed and I am not there, he thought the door was locked. I told him you have to pull the door open, not push.

Second thing today-
The second new hire is still not here, but he is CLOSE, as he called to get the street name again. He claims to have been driving up and down the main cross street for 20 minutes now. So he is supposedly two blocks away and that was a half hour ago.... I can see how that hire is going to work out.

Third thing today-
They finished all the milk yesturday and nobody said an ----ing word that it was gone and I have to drink my coffee black till the guy gets back from the store with more.

Oh did I mention it snowed here...I had to shovel my house then drive to my mothers house and shovel her out as well, then rush to get here in time to open up. Of course most of the guys came in late because the roads where so bad...

Thanks Harry, you put a smile on my face. Now it's back to work for me.

[Harry Babb]

Sim.......I feel your pain...........for the most part we have a good crew here but there are a few that we keep around just for the entertainment and excuses.........

Story about me.......
When I was much younger and less dependable I remember one day my boss chewed me about being late..........I told him that my wife was planning to get pregnant that morning and I really wanted to be there......and that I would make it up in the afternoon.

I was the one that was consistantly 5 minutes late but to offset my tardiness I was the one that always, ALWAYS logged at least 50 hours a week and sometimes 65 hours........they could always count on me for overtime.....Saturdays........call in's........and being 5 minutes late........but I was GOOD at what I did otherwise they probably would have fired me.

Hey Mike..........can you even buy a good screwdriver anymore????? I still favor Craftsman. The good thing is that if you purchase Crapsman they will keep giving you replacments when the tools fail

Do you guys have a "Work Shop Tools" store in your area???........Kinda like Harbor Freight

Harry

[offshore31]

Harry

Thanks for the morning caffiene nasal wash. Some good ones there.

Joe A.

[Dug]

Thanks Harry,

That was good.

Dug

[scot]

Excellent Harry,

I have used every one of those tools with simular results.

[randall]

thanks, but you forgot my favorite....

ANGLE GRINDER.....a tool used to set a perfect 8 inch circle of material on the front of your shirt on fire................ive done it twice



and dont forget...LEVEL....a tool with its own unique definition of what its supposed to measure....since no two read the same....you can substitute torque wrench for level

[RAWicklund]

Sim,
You need to buy your "push/pull" challanged employee one of these coffee mugs.
http://cgi.ebay.com/FAR-SIDE-MUG-Gary-L ... 00889a2594

Not gifted enough myself to post the cartoon here.

[Harry Babb]

Randall
Try this.........wear a flannel shirt........shirt tail out.......mount a wire wheel onto the angle grinder.......If you place the grinder in just the right position the wire wheel will make a serious attempt of disrobing you right in front of everybody leaving a remarkable resemblence of Road Rash right up your front side......

Harry

[randall]

lessons learned the hard way...and since i have a tendency to use tools in ways they weren't designed for i have a few scars for the effort.....heres a hint....routers were not meant to be hand held in space without the base as a carving tool.

first on the list was this act of pure genius.... my old british sports car had a bonnet (hood) with one of those male with a spring, female with a catch ,do hickeys......when it stopped working i took the male part off, put it in the female part....got right over it so i could see why it wasn't working.........................and pulled the release handle. luckily it got me in the forehead and not the eye......20 stitches....all told almost 100 stitches in the head to date....and no plastic surgery...i'm a good healer

[Mikey]

DAMMMMIT TOOL: (read hammer) used to find the most inaccessible, largest, most expensive, newly installed window.

I remember as a teen lying under what my Dad called my 'piece of car' and trying to remove a muffler clamp bolt. As he passed by I asked him to hand me one of the large wrenches lying at his feet. He then lectured me endlessly (while I'm still under the car) on the use of the correct tool and the fact that it was more likely to achieve the desired result with said tool. He then asked again which specific wrench I needed, where upon I answered, "it doesn't matter, I'm going to use it as a hammer."
He dragged me from under the car and shortened my day.

Of course he is the one who told me never to force any tool to get the job done . . . Use a bigger hammer.

[capy]

Randall and Harry, good stories..

You'll like this one.

One of my first jobs as an engineer back in 85 or so, was to heat/cool a cross section of a turbine blade to 250F while nitrogen gas at 1250F and 900 psig flowed around it while taking an infrared video of the blade surface to measure surface temperature so a PHD could develop some heat transfer code from the experimental results.

I calculated that I needed to pass 30 gals of glycol heated to 250F in 30 seconds through the blade coolant passages in order to maintain a core temperature of 250F over the 30 seconds the experiment would last, To do this it needed to be pressurized to 650PSIG!!

So I designed and built a pressure vessel out of some 18 inch dia 3/4 wall SS pipe and welded flanges on the ends that had 1/2 NPT Pressure, fill and exhaust ports a 1 1/4 NPT cromalox electric heater port and 110v ac solenoid valves to operate the whole system from a computer (vax) within the the control room that was behind a 1 inch thick steel wall in case anything blew up. The glycol from the the experiment flowed through the blade and back to a 55 gal drum that supplied the pressure vessel with glycol.

Tested everything and it worked great, the pressure vessel emptied in 35 seconds, the blade temp was maintained and The PHD and I high fived one another on the success!!

Lets run another test......BA-BOOM!!!!!

When we went to fill the pressure vessel, I forgot it was pressurized with 650 PSIG of nitrogen and when the valve was opened to let glycol in from the 55 gal drum..the nitrogen tried to blow all the glycol out through the 1/4 inch vent in the drum which quickly turned it into a football until it exploded......I forgot to put a vent in the pressure vessel!!!

It rained glycol for 10 minutes in the test cell.

Unbelievable, I didn't get fired!!!

[randall]

i hate when that happens!!

[AndreF]

Stick to the bombs, Paul.

[offshore31]

Andre

I'm thinking that's how Paul got his start with the bombs.

Joe