TOOLS EXPLAINED BY A DO-IT-YOUR SELFER

[Grizzly bearParticipant @grizzlybear]

• Saturday American TOOLS EXPLAINED BY A DO-IT-YOUR SELFER

  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 objects across the room, denting the freshly-painted vertical stabilizer which you had carefully set in the corner where nothing could get to it.

  WIRE WHEEL:
  Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, 'Oh shit'

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

  SKILL 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.

  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.

  OXYACETYLENE TORCH:
  Used almost entirely for setting alight various flammable objects in your workshop. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub out of which you want to remove a bearing race.

  TABLE SAW:
  A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.

  HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK:
  Used for lowering a vehicle to the ground after you have installed your new brake shoes, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

  BAND SAW:
  A large stationary power saw primarily used in most workshops to cut good aluminum sheet into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the dustbin after you cut on the inside of the line instead of the outside edge.

  TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST:
  A tool for testing the maximum tensile strength of everything you forgot to disconnect.

  PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER:
  Normally used to stab the vacuum seals under lids or for opening old-style paper-and-tin oil filters and splashing oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads.

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

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

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

  DAMMIT TOOL:

  Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling 'DAMMIT' at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need.

  Does this ring true with anyone?

[Grizzly bearParticipant @grizzlybear]

[SakuraParticipant @sakura]

Boy, you've been around tools for a while, just like me! And, I still keep buying them !!

[SteviegtrParticipant @steviegtr]

Strange you described every tool perfectly. .

Steve.

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

Have found all of those uses for them, plus a few more !!

[Dave HalfordParticipant @davehalford22513]

you've done this before haven't you.

[Steve NeighbourParticipant @steveneighbour43428]

You forgot the 'Gremlin' although not strictly a 'tool' – every model engineer has at least one lurking somewhere in his workshop

(Gremlinus Painius) – a very small near invisible creature that steals items of any size and shape, but have a special appetite for tools that you have just used and put down, they cleverly hide them in obscure places that will take you hours, days or even weeks to find – if ever !!

Sometimes they use a mystical power to make to go on certain well known web selling sites and buy the lost item they have hidden, only to place it in full view when the new one arrives.

Edited By Steve Neighbour on 28/06/2020 20:32:19

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

The bench grinder is excellent at removing bits of finger, although it is remarkably painless initially, it soon bleeds and is very sore, unfortunately no skin is left to make a repair.

The cup wire brush in a pistol drill likes to wrap itself in your pullover which it winds as tightly as possible before stopping, you will probably have a reminder of the event for a few days, anyone who witnessed the event may ask how you are when they stop laughing.

Mike

Edited By Mike Poole on 28/06/2020 21:48:16

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Oh yes, I think we've all been there and done that at least with some of those things!

I used to know a rather eccentric character – long since transferred to a rather higher Link – for whom the tool-set for servicing and running a hefty 7-1/4 inch g. 0-4-2 tender loco was a 2lb hammer, a big pair of heavily-serrated pliers and for the more delicate tasks, a well-worn old adjustable spanner.

The pliers of course for gripping brass union-nuts that were nearly cylindrical thanks to someone habitually using a big pair of heavily-serrated pliers on them. Plus an oil-can with a powerful pump suitable for what the rest of us called the 'aim-and-squirt' technique, which least ensured the steaming-bays and oil-company dividends did not go rusty.

Despite (or because of?) this loving care and attention the locomotive actually ran well, though driving it from a seat on the tender on a raised track was, well, an experience.

'

Gremlins hiding things>

One tricky calculation in a model-engineering problem. Calculator… where are you calculator? Nowhere. Slide-rule…? Equally evasive. Large sigh, an earthy word or two and out with the logarithm tables. Next day I bought a new scientific calculator, surprised to find calculators following an inverse-dimension rule compared with other small electronics; i.e., growing larger as phones etc. grew smaller. Three weeks later I opened a drawer and there was the missing sums-box I knew I had not put there.

My conclusion? In keeping with the Age of Enlightenment I blamed not supernatural beings but Physics. Specifically, tiny Black Holes that are too small to sustain themselves for long, and eventually fade away (can something invisible because it prevents light escaping, fade away?), thereby dropping all the matter they have swallowed, in random locations.

[mechman48Participant @mechman48]

Been there, done it, got the Tee shirt/s. there's another tool that should be included on that list.. A prick / centre punch… used by the prick that can never get the centre pop to mark out the intersection of two lines, always seem to end up being off set at any point of the compass enough to make it annoying & having to 'tap' it back, usually ending up the other way.

George.

[larry phelan 1Participant @larryphelan1]

Oh happy days !!!

[Mark Gould 1Participant @markgould1]

Funniest thing I’ve read in weeks!

[Grizzly bearParticipant @grizzlybear]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback.

It was sent to me with some other jokes.

Reading it ,I had tears running down my face.

It was too good not to share.

Bear..

[james rumbleParticipant @jamesrumble18726]

Yep, that’s all very true

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