"Must Have" Tools for Christmas
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 beer across the room, splattering it against
that freshly painted airplane part you were drying.
WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere
under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint
whorls and hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you
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.
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: Used to 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 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 or
1/2 socket you've been searching for the last 15 minutes.
HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground
after you have installed your new disk brake pads, trapping the jack
handle firmly under the bumper.
EIGHT-FOOT LONG DOUGLAS FIR 2X4: Used for levering an automobile
upward off a hydraulic jack handle.
TWEEZERS: A tool for removing wood splinters.
PHONE: Tool for calling your neighbor to see if he has another
hydraulic floor jack.
SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER: Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for
spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for getting dog poop off your boot.
E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool ten times harder than any
known drill bit that snaps off in bolt holes you couldn't use anyway.
TWO-TON ENGINE HOIST: A tool for testing the tensile strength on
everything you forgot to disconnect.
CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 16-INCH SCREWDRIVER: A 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, it's main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs
at about the same rate that 105-mm 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 lids of old-style
paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt; but can also be
used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads.
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 last over-tightened 58 years ago by
someone at Ford, and neatly rounds off their heads.
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 cut 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
not far from the object we are trying to hit.
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.
For the more advanced tool kit there's the
ENGLISH WHEEL: Used to squirt blood out from under a fingernail. Also
used for determining when metal should have been annealed.
(from Eric Miller and Dan, on rec.aviation.homebuilt)
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