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, denting the freshly-painted project 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 with the speed of light . Also removes fingerprints and hard-earned calluses from fingers in about the time it takes you to say, 'Oh ****!'
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.
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 lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. 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 an automobile 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 by most shops to cut good aluminum sheet into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash can 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 cans 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 and butchering your palms.
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 the object we are trying to hit. It is especially valuable at being able to find the EXACT location of the thumb or index finger of the other hand.
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 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.
SON-OF-A-BITCH TOOL: (A personal favorite!) Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling 'Son of a BITCH!' at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need.
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Interesting that the no power tools from the past cost so much. Find a 1940 hand plane or a hand drill, lucky you.
Funny thing, I was watching a documentary of how the high technology is building this huge sea buffer in New Orleans and the amount of technology we have to move huge amounts of metal and concrete to produce this life saving deterrence against hurricanes and I had to laugh at one point.
All this technology in our day and age and the only thing that secured the infrastructure was a tool made 2000 years ago, the sledgehammer to secure the bolts.
Some things are essential, reason why the tools of the past are valued. No one can replace the hammer, the screw driver or the hand made kind of knives to sculpt the wood carvings. Hand made nails that built homes and Towns, -----The hand made tools that built boats that sailed about the world.
Cry me a river because your tools are dependent on technology , cry me a river when a $500 tool goes dead. Cry me a river when you have the todays tools to do a a job but you want to get the job done fast with no thought to craftsmanship or pride.
Wayne , if I wanted a craft manson you would be the last one I would choose, You have no connection to the wood, or the importance of the your craft. You have no connection to your work, only anger that nothing works as you wish.-------It is not the tools you use but how you use them. So the electracy goes out and you are left to finish a job without all the toys and have to put in man power, leaves you as a 3rd class want to be a specialist and really just a less then beginner in what ever world you want to be in.
Masters in their arts can create what ever from what ever without out tecknology.
Man went to the moon with the slide rule, created a few hunreds years ago , so Wayne ----Go back to the basics and learn from how things were done way back in in time, learn from how it was done back then and and now adapt it to Our time.
