Tools or ‘things’ as therapy

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember53456]

[This posting has been removed]

[Former MemberParticipant @formermember53456]

[DanielParticipant @daniel]

Yep, completely with you on that one.

<atb,

<daniel

[Boiler BriParticipant @boilerbri]

MMMMn depends on the tool!!! Nowt like feeling a good spanner, or feeling like one for that matter! Especially when you got bored with setting the dividing head and moved one hole too many and bu!"£"! up your latest creation.

Bri

 

 

Edited By Boiler Bri on 17/06/2019 21:20:03

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

I like the smooth hum of my lathe and the feel of latching in the power feed.

In my pocket there's an example of what I think's the best little 4" adjustable spanner made, with a nice Parkerised finish and all the handling surfaces polished by use. Sometimes I just run the worm up and down for the feel of it.

I have a nice, worn Mole wrench clone that feels just right as the toggle link locks up and unlocks. Occasionaly I've been able to recover a broken tap or drill with it by gripping the tiniest protruding shard.

I guess many of us have our own little amulets.

[Jon LawesParticipant @jonlawes51698]

Mick, who makes that spanner please, I've been forgetting to buy one for a while!

Tools are very theraputic. For me its the old machine tools. At the end of a rubbish day using the lathe keeps me sane and leaves me tired and content.

[John Paton 1Participant @johnpaton1]

And it works for babies too.

When my son was just months old I would return home from work and be handed a screaming lad wrapped in his 'Babygrow' and shawl.

I found the best answer was to quickly get changed and take him out to the workshop. There I would do some turning on the Myford, making parts for my Stuart Turner 'Real' engine while supper was being prepared indoors.

I had to drape a muslin over his head to protect hime from stray swarf and splatters of cutting fluid. He fell silent literally within a minute or two. (but returned indoors later smelling of suds oil as much as I did!)

My wife could never understand how and why I could calm him down when she had failed.

I suspect it is genetic and yes, he chose engineering as a career!

[Rik ShawParticipant @rikshaw]

As the last suns set over the workshop the old chap is wrapped in a trust

with the love of his tools, belittled by fools, replacing a once urgent lust

for those lovely young fillies all fragrance and lace and so very, very enticing

NOW what stops me dead is a Swiss boring head, ground threads, silky smooth – so exciting!

Rik

Edited By Rik Shaw on 17/06/2019 23:15:39

[HopperParticipant @hopper]

Robert M Pirsig said (somewhere) in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" that when you work on your motorcycle, what you are really working on is yourself.

True words.

[Blue HeelerParticipant @blueheeler]

Tool lovers unite

[Henry BrownParticipant @henrybrown95529]

That extends to lovingly cared for old wood too, I can't help just putting my hand on a patinated piece of furniture as I walk by…

[John Paton 1Participant @johnpaton1]

Oh no Henry, thats just weird and kinky! You risk backlash for encouraging people to put filthy, oily fingerprints on priceless domestic treasures. Door handles and light switches are one thing, but furniture ..noooooo!

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by Jon Lawes on 17/06/2019 22:20:00:

Mick, who makes that spanner please, I've been forgetting to buy one for a while!

Tools are very theraputic. For me its the old machine tools. At the end of a rubbish day using the lathe keeps me sane and leaves me tired and content.

Well, it was Bahco who made the thing that I bought – but it took a couple of decades of riding in pockets, plus a string of situations where its availability was welcome, to make it what it is now…

[Bob StevensonParticipant @bobstevenson13909]

…..I prefer to run my hands over a naked woman myself, but, gettting back to John Muir and 'How to keep your VW alive', that whole book should be an obliged read for all who make stuff and use tools……it IS the very essence of 'making' and craftsmanship in one volume. …

……Highly recommended, and very funny to read as well!

[Guy LambParticipant @guylamb68056]

The obverse of course is 'tool abuse'. Once witnessed a micrometer being used as a G cramp whilst welding and another, a Neanderthal swinging an shipwrights adze in his garden thinking it was a mattock.

Perhaps Esther Rantzen could be persuaded to open a dedicated hot line where such outrages could be reported?

Guy

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

I love all my tools, machines and assorted nick knacks.

It would be hard to pick out any favourite but I too have a 4" Bahco mover that seems to always be close by.

My current favourite is a Facom ratchet screwdriver set, which has a ratchet handle, bits, 1/4 drive adaptor and 5 sockets in a box 5 x 2 inches. It's so cleverly designed I just love using it.

The smell of a well used and oiled tool transports me to my shop where ever i am. Should i be disclosing this in open forum?

Mick

[Henry BrownParticipant @henrybrown95529]

Posted by John Paton 1 on 18/06/2019 08:18:20:

Oh no Henry, thats just weird and kinky! You risk backlash for encouraging people to put filthy, oily fingerprints on priceless domestic treasures. Door handles and light switches are one thing, but furniture ..noooooo!

Probably because my Dad was a carpenter! I've had more than one final warning about mucky door handles and swarf on the carpet though John…

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

And here was me thinking that I was wierd, apparently it’s safe to come out of the closet but I don’t think that our other halves will understand our obsessions with metallic objects.

Dave W

[Mick HenshallParticipant @mickhenshall99321]

My Gramps brought me up and I spent my childhood with him in his workshop and at his work as a signwriter, I have a Brylcream jar which has some mixture of polish in it, this resides in my workshop and a sniff takes me back to the 1950's and all is well with the world and before anyone mentions health issues I have been sniffing since 1982 when he died and I am still here to tell the tale at my mid 70's oh and just a quick sniff now and then

Mick 😎 🤔🇬🇧

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

I daresay that if one needs ‘therapy’, whatever works must be good.

Do these tools work better after being ‘caressed’? Fidgeting with a piece of equipment, object or tool is one thing, caressing seems to be entirely a different matter!

I certainly prefer a smooth, well designed and crafted tool to a rough and ‘awkward to use’ one – but that is simply on a technical level. It was the reason why I changed my lathe from a chinese heap to a Raglan, even though the latter was 50 years, or more, old.

[PlasmaParticipant @plasma]

NDIY the Raglan is a splendid manufacturer, I had a 5 inch and a loughborough as well as the vertical mill. I upgraded to a new Boxfod X10, that does not have back gear or auto carriage stop or one handed speed adjustment. Wish I had kept it now!

Mick

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

Ah yes, the satin sheen on exposed steel parts, and general patina, of a well-used, well-loved machine or tool… One of my tap-wrenches is now becoming too worn to be very useful, but years of mine and previous owners' hands as well as predecessors have given it such a sheen and pleasure to feel.

This reminds me of visiting the tiny, 13C church in the French Pyrennean village of Ste. Engrace. The columns' plinths are decorated with stone balls, about tennis size; and I noticed some were black and shiny whereas the rest of the stone retained its limestone creaminess. I realised from their location, those ones had helped all those generations kneel for Communion: the patina from thousands of hands over hundreds of years. (My girlfriend wrote one word in the visitors' book: " Peace ".)

The satisfaction of using any very old functional article – not necessarily a workshop tool – as intended, when and where its use is still legitimate in purely practical terms….

Though including a large carpenter's trammel whose hardwood rule's brass-end fittings look (at very close inspection!), hand-made; or a very useful, neat little adjustable-square with 4" blade. I so wonder of their history.

The scent of clean oil…. The pleasure of using a bench drill, a Meddings so a good one, that was second-hand to me but actually has no lazy-holes in its table!

The neat contrast between 18C interior-decorating elegance and 20C modernity in a former town-house used by the IT training company my employer sent me to.

The slow, very soft, almost inaudible, " whoomp whoomp whoomp " of a large-scale (6"? It was certainly 4", scale) Showmen's Road Locomotive ticking over, though still generating for its canopy lights. (I wonder what would be the common reaction if someone displayed a miniature or indeed full-size SRL without canopy lighting? )

The rhythmic splash-splash-splash of a large water-wheel in a restored mill, while hardly a sound comes from the cast-iron pinions meshing with the hardwood "cogs" of the larger wheels. ("Cog" here is the millwright's term for the teeth, but not the gear as whole.) …..

…. and this lead only slight obliquely to…

"The click of a ratchet". Ah yes…

Just outside Sherborne, Dorset, is a Wessex Water fresh-water treatment-plant alongside its predecessor, a bore-hole pumping-station driven by a water-wheel. This has been restored to demonstration state as central to a local water-supply museum by a Trust which holds occasional public Open Days. (I am not a member, but yes, this is a plug – it's a charming little industrial museum to visit, the sort more conserved than pickled!)

The wheel-driven pumps were replaced in due course by steam-driven ones, in turn eventually displaced by electric of course. The Trust found a similar engine, and installed it with a coal-fired vertical boiler in the original shed. Built by E.S. Hindley & Sons, of Bourton; not very far from Sherborne, this single-cylinder mill-engine is so quiet the only sound is the soft tick-tick of its lubricator ratchet.

On one visit, I saw the volunteers had placed a small hot-air engine on the valve-chest, cheekily using heat escaping through the casting!

The water-wheel, also a Hindley product, had rusted beyond repair. It is on display, and the working wheel is a replica by preservation-engineer Richard 'Turbo' Vincent, fittingly near Bourton and Sherborne. He was also the builder of a replica Hindley Steam-wagon, to commission, and which uses a pair of wheels that are the only known remains of any original Hindley wagon.

@

On a very different metallic " tick ", I can assure you that as also a caver, when you are dangling from a rope with a hundred feet of dark thin air below your tootsies, there is nothing more reassuring than the sharp, metallic " Click " of a karabiner snapping shut on the belay!

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Nigel Graham 2 on 18/06/2019 10:14:34:.

…

On a very different metallic " tick ", I can assure you that as also a caver, when you are dangling from a rope with a hundred feet of dark thin air below your tootsies, there is nothing more reassuring than the sharp, metallic " Click " of a karabiner snapping shut on the belay!

Of course I secretly agree wholeheartedly with Nigel, but:

• When you're stood in front of a firing squad there is nothing less reassuring than the sharp, metallic "Click" of a Carbine bolt snapping shut.
• Society is not well-disposed to men who fondle their tools in public.

I apologise. I have lived too long on the dark side!

Dave

[Mick B1Participant @mickb1]

Posted by SillyOldDuffer on 18/06/2019 11:02:47

…

• When you're stood in front of a firing squad there is nothing less reassuring than the sharp, metallic "Click" of a Carbine bolt snapping shut.

Dave

It's unusual for those who've heard that to comment on it…

[roy entwistleParticipant @royentwistle24699]

I find that there's something about old tools, somehow they feel right whereas a new tool tends to feel awkward.

Roy

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