OT: Tools

[tdgard]

Drill Press: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat bar stock out of your hands, striking you in the chest
and flinging your beer across the room, splattering it against that
freshly painted part on the workbench.

Wire Wheel: Cleans paint off bolts and throws them under the
workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and guitar
calluses in the time it takes to say "ouch!"

Electric Hand Drill: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in
their holes until you die of old age.

Pliers: Used to round off bolt heads. May also be used to create
blood blisters.

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 direction
the more dismal your failure becomes.

Vice Grips: Generaly used after pliers to further round off a
bolt. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer
intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

Oxy-acetylene Torch: Used almost exclusively for lighting
various flamable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for setting
fire to the grease around that wheel bearing you were trying to remove
by heating the hub.

Whitworth Sockets: Once used for working on older British cars
and motorcycles. Now mostly are hammered over bolts previously rounded
by vice grips.

Hydraulic Floor Jack: Used for lowering an automobile to the
ground after installing new brake shoes, trapping the handle firmly
under the bumper. May also be used to lower vehicle onto the plastic
pail you drained the engine oil into, immediatly prior to moving the
vehicle and spilling oil all over your concrete driveway.

Two by Four: An eight-foot long bar made of wood used for
levering the vehicle upward off the hydraulic floor jack handle.

Tweezers: A tool for removing 2X4 splinters or wire wheel wires
from your fingers.

E-Z Out Bolt and Stud Extractor: A tool 10 times harder than any
known drill bit that snaps off in bolt holes. Works well in inexpensive
or easy to replace parts but using this tool in expensive parts will
cause almost certain failure.

Two-Ton Engine Hoist: Used for testing the tensile strength of
electrical wires, hoses etc that you forgot to disconnect.

Craftsman 1/2 X 16 inch Screwdriver. A large prybar that
inexplicably has an accurately machined flat tip at the opposite end to
the handle.

Aviation Metal Snips: See "Hacksaw."

Trouble Light: A very appropriately named tool. Its two main
purposes are to shine an intense light directly into your eyes instead
of onto the part you are trying to illuminate and also to consume 40
watt light bulbs at the same rate as a 105 mm Howitzer consumes shells.
Sometimes called a drop light for reasons obvious to anybody who has
used one.

Philips Screwdriver: Normally used to stab the silver vacuum
seals under the srew off lids of oil cans but can also be used, as the
name implies, to strip out the heads of phillips screws.

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

Hose Cutter: Used to make hoses too short.

Hammer: Originally used as a weapon of war, but nowadays used as
a device used to locate the most expensive parts adjacent to the part
you are trying to hit.

Utility Knife: Used to open boxes and slice through the contents
of packages delivered to your front door. Works particularly well on
items such as seats, CD's, liquids in plastic bottles, collector
magazines etc. Especially useful for slicing through work clothes, but
only when you are in them.

Dammit Tool: Any tool that gets thrown across the garage as you
yell "Dammit!" It is also the next tool that you will need.

Expletive: A soothing balm, or mechanics lube, usualy applied
verbally and in hindsight, which somehow eases the pain and embarrasment
of our lack of foresight.

[BimmerMeUp]

I know all about the Dammit Tool ... LOL...