Onyma Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 04:16AM
Number one is a spoke wrench.
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 04:18AM
#3 is a wine cork puller.
#4 is a battery post/terminal cleaner.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2011 04:19AM by BlahX3.
90130_ Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 04:29AM
#2 is also a motorcycle spoke nipple wrench. I have one of those in my Norton's
tool kit.
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 04:37AM
9er, I'm gonna hafta senja back to school for a brush up on those reading
comprehension skillz, for a refresher see Round 1 again!
But, the O man and 9er are right, those 1st 2 on the left are spoke wrenches,
far left is for bicycles and the next one is for motorcycles
Sorry Blah but I don't keep wine tools in my tool box and if you look at this
one a bit more you'll see it has 2 tangs at the bottom that would not be able to
get down the bottle neck to get beneath the cork to pop it, but .... it IS a
puller, so WTF kinda puller is it
You did peg the Battery terminal cleaner though, nice work! This one like many
others also does have a SS brush nested in the handle end for cleanin the inside
of the terminal too
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2011 04:39AM by Mrkim.
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 04:42AM
A weasel-dick puller?
I knew the spoke wrench but O arready got that.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/09/2011 04:44AM by BlahX3.
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 04:57AM
Yep you got it Blah, and I've been savin it just in case Madnez or Beasties
show back up
GAK67 Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 10:38AM
Maybe something like a valve spring puller?
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 11:43AM
Yep, it's a puller GAK just not for valve springs although it could be used to
pull valve springs once the locks and hats have been removed that's not what
this lil jewel was really designed for
Here's a hint: think about it in terms of fire
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 07:20PM
I give up. I'm a dolt. All this stuff is going ZOOM over my head.
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 09:46PM
I tolja I had some unusual toys in my box. I have lotsa other goodies that
look like deceptively common household stuff that's all in the box for some
specific purpose. With necessity bein the mother of invention all kindsa stuff
winds up bein used for purposes it was never otherwise intended
Maybe we need for 9er to do some diggin in his tools so he can get even
BTW. the last remaining WTF is it on this page is a spark plug boot puller.
It's designed to slip the bottom tangs beneath the spark plug boot and squeeze
the body of the boot with its curved sides when you scissor it closed and then
allow you to slip the pug wire off the spark plug without yankin on the wire
itself, which you're never sposta do as it can often internally damage the wires
center conductor or even tear the outer insulation of the wire, either of which
will ruin the wire and require replacement.
This one, like so many other tools and ideas was a great idea yet underbuilt,
problee in efforts by the damned bean counters to maximize profits. This means
it's so wimpy just scissorin it closed to get it to grab the boot often causes
it to bend the metal of the tool. Though it does work, if it had been made from
metal about 1/2 again as thick or from the same gage SS instead it would have
been much sturdier and more durable/easier to use
GAK67 Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 09:54PM
Don't knock us bean counters - we're not all focussed on reducing costs.
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 10:32PM
I thought that looked a little on the wimpy side. I would have never figured
that one out. Of course that's not saying much since I didn't know even 1/10th
of the tools you showed. I should have recognized some of the brake tools
though.
I hear ya on the home-made inventions though and I did come up with a way to
insert a MOPAR starter armature/solenoid a few years ago when I had to replace
the worn out contacts that I'm a little proud of. I cut four pieces off some old
busted mini blinds about 8" long and positioned them inside the starter
against the brushes. The curve of the blind pieces was near perfect. As the
armature slid in it pushed against the thin metal mini blind pieces sliding the
brushes back out of the way. Pulled the mini blind pieces out easily an viola! A
couple of bolts later and a perfectly functioning starter for $8 in parts! I was
standing there staring at the disassembled starter for about 5-10 minutes
scratching my head thinking how the hell am I gonna get that in there without
some special tool? I took the last swig of a beer in hand and as my head went
back for that last swallow I spotted the blinds on a shelf and the light bulb
went on. I'll probably brag about that for the rest of my life.
I discovered a metal cake frosting knife comes in handy for a wide, thin blade
too. Along with a handle-less knife blade I mentioned before it helped to remove
a bridge from an acoustic guitar. I've also used modified small turnbuckles for
clamping when re-gluing braces inside acoustic guitars and made wooden
extensions for c-clamps to glue bridges on them too. Beats spending $50 a pop or
more on specialized luthier tools.
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 05, 2011 10:49PM
Somebody has to count the beans. How else will anyone know how many are in the
jar so somebody can win?
90130_ Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 01:47AM
Spark plug boot pullers. Of course! I have a set of KD ones in my rollchest
which look kinda similar, only much longer and don't have the exaggerated curved
handles that yours do, Silly me.
90130_ Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 01:51AM
If you want me to post some pics of truly unusual tools, be prepared...they'll
be equally difficult, maybe impossible for anyone but the most seasoned career
line tech to figure out.
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 02:45AM
Hell yeah dude, go for it. Afterall, fair's fair and I love a good challenge
as well as the next guy
GAK, while I hear what you're sayin examples just like this tool where cheapin
out on the finished product to save a few cents (or hundredths of a cent!) in
manufacturing ruins the whole damned product. Design wise this tool is awesome
and easy to use while in practice it falls short of its intended goal
Blah, idn it amazing how all kindsa stuff winds up being used for purposes it
was never intended for? I liked the miniblind idea, I usually just pry the
brushes into place one at a time with a screwdriver, but that's a great idea
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 03:16AM
Thanks Kim. I tried using the skinniest screwdriver I had but there just wasn't
enough clearance.
GAK67 Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 04:30AM
Mrkim: it's a case of getting the balance right. Steel 1/2 as thick again is
probably right for this tool, but 3/4 again is probably overkill and therefore
overcosting. I have advised my employers before to increase quality (and
therefore cost) to meet customers' demand. It all depends on the market you are
targeting. Would you have bought the tool if it cost you 25-40% more than it did
for instance? Even if you would have paid the extra would the majority of people
who bought it been prepared to pay the extra?
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 05:55AM
Yeah, I'd problee still have picked it up at a higher price because I liked the
design and simplicity of the tool. Sadly, when I went to use it for the 1st
time was when I found it was cheeziern I had thought, which was a real
disappointment.
I will VERY rarely however pay the ridiculous prices Mac, Snap-On or Matco
charge for their tools. I don't mind someone makin a profit off a sale but
these cats take that principle to an extreme!
While I've had several other mechs scoof at my mostly Craftsman tools and make
remarks like "you can't make a livin usin that crap" to which I just
calmly ask "Really? Damn I guess I've been doin the impossible for the
last 30+yrs then huh?". Fuckin tool snobs are a joke
There's a company here in the US called Lisle (if they're still in business)
that makes a lotta neat lil specialty automotive tools which tend to be really
well designed/manufactured, in fact some of the ones in these sets are Lisle
tools, one of which has yet to be identified.
I was at a big parts swap meet and came across a vendor selling tons of
specialty tools on the cheep and bagged a bunch of 'em for some great bargains,
again several of which wound up in these pics
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 06:21PM
Snobs are assholes and they all have the same superior attitude no matter what
it's about.
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 06, 2011 07:00PM
Yep, Lisle is still going Kim:
[
www.lislecorp.com]
pro_junior Report This Comment Date: September 07, 2011 01:16AM
if I'm buying a tool that I know I will only use once or twice, I buy the
harbor freight stuff, some of which is actually half-way decent stuff...but if
it's something I know that I may or may not use often but want good quality then
I buy Craftsman..
was up in the mountains about 15 years ago, my buddy couldn't get his truck
started because his battery cable clamp had worked loose on the post, and for
whatever stupid reason he didnt have any tools with him...you ever see those
aluminum bottle opener
key-chains? it was if it was made to tighten that nut on that clamp,
tightened it up and away we went...I think I mentioned my coors light cardboard
12-pack thermostat housing gasket before..
I bent a few wrenches to custom fit an application here and there, like
attempting to tighten the alternator belt on my mom's 80 sumthing plymouth
reliant wagon...after about 45 minutes of grunting sweating cursing and knuckle
busting I decided to RTFM and I learned that if you simply remove the right
front tire, you will have very easy access to the alternator tensioning bracket
adjustment bolt...it's because of that day that I usually do rtfm whenever I buy
anything..
I also remember a time that I fabricated a custom deluxe tool at work, but it
wasn't for doing my job, which at that time was pressure treating wood, the
place is sadly an EPA superfund site now, but that was due to the way they did
things way before the time that I worked there, anyway......we had to wear gas
station guy uniforms because of the chemicals, which was great because we didnt
have to ruin our own clothes, there was a decent locker room, private showers,
etc...we all had 3-4 lockers for all of our stuff...kenny had one below one of
mine and I knew that all he had in there was his rain gear..........
I didn't even remember what he did that made me decide to jam his rain gear
locker full of hangers but I kept doing it anyway...I would get to work, change
into my uniform and jam the 2 hangers, (1-pants + 1shirt) into his locker, as
well as any other hangers that were laying around on the counter tops or
benches, but not the ones that were on the hanger rack where they were supposed
to go...it got to where there were so many in there that I couldn't fit anymore
in there with just my bare hands, so I went over to the shop and got a piece of
probably 1/8 thick x 1 inch wide x however long, piece of steel and I don't
honestly remember how I made it but it fit into the palm of my hand on one end
and the other was just right for jamming hangers down into the locker......and
jam hangers into his locker I did...all summer long
was probably mid september when I was working swing shift, it started raining
around 10am and I started chuckling, and it rained alot, and I couldn't stop
laughing all the way to work...got to work at a quarter to three and didn't see
any sign of kenny...went into the locker room to change and there was a solitary
hanger wound very tightly around the padlock on my locker, I was laughing so
hard I didn't hear kenny come in, I turned and saw him standing there dripping
wet and I laughed even more...he. was. pissed. went on and on about how he had
to change a cylinder and do this and do that out in the tank farm and wah wah
wha how wet he was, and what I motherfucker I was for doing that etc...hell I
don't know maybe ya had to be there, or know kenny, old codger with good sense
of humor...he got over it all pretty quick...actually it was right after that,
he sprayed foaming aerosol glass cleaner at me, but instead of shooting out
foam, it shot a stream, right into my eye....fuck that hurt...eye wash fountain
was literally right behind me so I just spun around and rinsed my eyeball off
and everything was fine...good times...sure do miss that place...
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 07, 2011 03:11PM
That's a great story. Last place I worked had a few pranksters too, me
included. One I did was taping a fresh urinal cake to the bottom of the lead
tech's chair. I barely tore open the plastic packaging and it reeked so bad I
had to put extra layers of packing tape over it to keep the smell to a minimum
and finally got it to where you could only smell it if you were sitting it the
chair.
I quietly watched his reactions. He'd sit down and get an odd look on his face,
sniff a bit then go to work, sniff a little more every once in a while and once
every so often look around and in the trash can for whatever was causing that
smell. A couple of weeks went by and I finally thought I better go back there
and tell him before he turned green and got real sick or something. I rounded
the corner to his desk and he had just flipped his chair over, looked up at me
red-faced and yelled, "Who the fuck did this!?!?" I was laughing so
hard I couldn't speak and just raised my hand. I thought he was gonna be really
pissed off but he thought it was funny as hell and laughed about how he'd been
looking all over for the source of the smell and was ready to tear his whole
desk apart when he realized it came from the chair.
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 07, 2011 08:38PM
One of the craziest places I ever worked was at a cement plant. It was such a
tough place (environmentally) to work you just about had to be nutz to work
there, but the $$ was so good it was hard to walk away from, so ....
We had an oiler on our crew that was a helluva practical joker! On one of our
midnight shifts the crew was sittin in the break room eatin lunch when in walks
the shift foreman, a rather rotund cat named Larry. Now while Larry was a pretty
cool headed guy, he was fuming mad when he walked in.
My partner and I worked in a tunnel about 20' below ground level that had a long
straight steel staircase leading from ground level to the tunnel floor and just
before lunch, Boatman, our oiler decided to have some fun with us by puttin
grease all down the top of the handrail thinkin when we headed out to break we'd
get it all over our hands. As fate would have it, when break time came we were
in the other end of the tunnel and had headed out through a door at the that end
instead.
Larry and his shft helper Juan were makin the rounds while everyone was at lunch
and had decided to check out our nights progress so he and Juan had headed down
into the tunnel via the recently greased staircase from ground level.
Larry was in the lead and when he came through the doorway and grabbed the
grease covered handrail had it not been for Juan bein right behind himi he'd
have likely become more akin to a human bowling ball as he tumbled down the
staircase, though luckily for him Juans quick reaction in havin grabbed him
saved him from that painful fate.
Anyway, when Larry came in the break room he looked right at Boatman and asked
"Boatman! You been down in tunnel #2 tonight?". Boatman said
"Naw boss, haddn made it down there yet tonight".
Larry glared back at Boatman, cleared his throat for added emphasis, paused an
extra second or so for effect, then said "Yakno Boatman, there's a lotta
goddamned rollers, gearboxes and such in this plant that needs grease on a
regular basis to keep from burnin up or wearin out, but .... the fuckin handrail
goin down into tunnel #2 ain't subject to ever burn up, nor is it likely to ever
wear out either so it damned sure don't need grease! You get my
drift?".
Boatman just sheepishly looked back at Larry and said "Yeah, boss, got
it"
I could problee write a book about all the craziness I encountered in the 5yrs I
worked there. It was a dangerous as hell place to work, but there were sure a
lotta funny MoFos there
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 07, 2011 09:35PM
I'm sure glad that story turned out to be a funny one and not a bad injury for
the rotund fella. Practical jokes can be funny as hell but some hold a lot of
potential for unintended injury.
At the same place I mentioned was a guy named Brady for a while and he was
always looking for some prank he could pull on someone. He did pull of a few
good'ns but one he tried didn't turn out as planned at all.
At the shop we worked out of was a back door with a push-bar type thing to open
it from the inside. Not the normal type bar you usually see but a long, flat,
2" wide metal piece in a metal channel to push on. To get to a storage area
and the restroom in a separate building you had to go out that door onto a short
landing and down two steps, across 6 feel of pavement and into the other
building. The lead technician I pulled the urinal cake prank on was a rotundoid
too and he would regularly go barreling out that back door like fright train
headed for the restroom or whatever. He never just opened that door like a
normal person would but literally bashed into the push bar every time.
Now this was a school district job and our office/shop was located behind a high
school so Dog knows what would always end up being strewn around and the area
between our building and the other was a favorite place for miscellaneous
bullshit to wind up. it was like a useless crap magnet. Somehow a big tractor or
backhoe rear tire found its way there and got filled with water from the rain.
Brady had this bright idea to prop that tire fulla water up against the outside
of the door in the hopes that the next time fatboy shot out that door it would
push the tire over which would flop over and tumble down the steps, make a big
noise and splash water all over the place. Unfortunately Brady didn't have a
real keen grasp of physics and when the big boy hit that door with 340 lbs
moving at top speed the tire securely blocked the door from opening at all. we
were sitting in at our desks in the other room and heard the biggest, loudest
string of foul language I've heard since my Navy days and boy was he pissed.
This man was a devout Christian and rarely used bad language, if ever, and it
was a shock to me to hear that so I figured it must've hurt and he was pretty
pissed off. He came in our area screaming something about nearly breaking his
fucking wrist and arm on that goddamned motherfucking door and who the fuck did
that!? He looked at Brady because he was of course the automatic primary suspect
and Brady just shrugged and muttered, "Wasn't me." I just shook my
head.
Later on I asked Brady if he was gonna fess up to it and he said, "Fuck
no!" After Brady left that job I told the prankee that Brady did that one
and he said he knew that the whole time but didn't want to get in trouble for
kicking his ass.
I think after that incident Brady stopped trying to prank anyone until he left
and just had to do one more. As a parting gift to me he left a paper cup with a
few ounces of milk in it well hidden under my desk and a couple of weeks later
every morning I kept checking my shoes to see if I had stepped in dogshit. When
I found it I knew it was his work. I miss Brady. He was fun.
Mrkim Report This Comment Date: September 07, 2011 11:57PM
Another incident while at this same plant occurred between a maintenance guy
and an oiler on another production crew.
2 maintenance men were standin on a catwalk that went over a big concrete pit
below that was filled with pumps and valves connecting some big tanks. The
oiler was below in the pit greasing the pumps and valves about 8' below where
these 2 were standing above and one guys says to the other "I got an
idea!".
He takes the lid off his thermos jug and pours a cup full of water then asks his
buddy to hold it for him for a second. While his buddy's holdin the cup he
reaches down, unzips his fly and pulls out his dick, then takes the cup back
from his buddy.
By now the oiler is almost directly beneath them so he leans out just a bit and
pours the water onto the top of the oilers hard hat then quickly hands the cup
back to his buddy.
When the oiler looks up to see where the water's comin from he sees the
maintenance guy standin there with a shit eatin grin while seemingly
"shakin the dew off his lily".
That oiler chased the maintenance guy all over the place, but luckily for him,
never caught him
Like I said, that was a crazy place to work
GAK67 Report This Comment Date: September 08, 2011 01:54AM
Not a practical joke but a near miss in a sawmill. I worked in a sawmill that
had a great safety record while I was there (probably helped significantly by
the fact that I was based in the office and not in the factory), but the manager
of the green-mill (where they cut the logs into planks) had been there a long
time. He told a story of a saw operator that was sitting in his operators chair
(by the time I started there the operators were in separate rooms which were
insulated from the noise and the risk, but in those days was out in the mill
without a cage) when the large band-saw came off it's drive rollers. This was
about 150mm wide and about 4m total length. It flew towards the operator so
quickly he had no time to get out of the way. Now this thing had been spinning
at whatever RPM as it came off and was razor sharp so had the potential to do
serious harm. It wrapped around the operators chair in such a way that the
operator could not move from where he was without the engineers getting the
oxy-acetylene out and cutting the band-saw away. The only injury the operator
ended up with was a small cut to his thumb that didn't even need to be stitched.
Apparently he needed a change of trousers though.
90130_ Report This Comment Date: September 08, 2011 05:48AM
I worked as a lead tech in a Chrysler dealership in the 1980's, and that
reminds me of a particularly awesome payback I laid down on the shop practical
joker.
This guy was a scrawny fellow named John, who worked in the bay next to mine. He
was a lube tech, kind of a glorified oil changer and shop go-fer, who'd install
license plates and change headlight and tailight bulbs, that kinda thing.
We'd play a few jokes on each other, with the whole shop of 20-somethings and a
couple of older guys playing along, but John really pissed me off when he
started doodling little cartoon characters on my toolbox with a Sharpie felt
marker.
I would clean it off with a little bit of 3M adhesive remover, but a faint
residue had absorbed into the paint and was never coming out completely. I
warned him not to do this again, or I would fix his ass permanently. This,
however, did not sink in, nor did he take me too seriously,and he drew a
caricature of me berating and scolding him on my toolbox lid while I was on a
week long vacation.
For three days, I said and did nothing, and he'd look over at me nervously and
wonder what was going on. I didn't give him any clues to the fearsome
retribution I was about to unleash on his sorry ass. One day, he was at lunch
with three of the other shop rats, and I decided to exact my revenge...I removed
a 1/4-20 inch bolt attaching the handle to his tool box top chest, and found a
suitable Zerk fitting large enough to thread into it. Then I took the pneumatic
overhead grease gun and snapped it onto the fitting, pulled the trigger and
wrapped a heavy rubber band around it so it would not turn off and walked
away.
It took him three days to get all the grease out of his top box and bench, and
clean all of his tools. He never fucked around with my stuff again.
fossil_digger Report This Comment Date: September 08, 2011 11:09AM
we took a guys brand new c8 pontiac, picked it up with the forklift and stuck
it sideways in a display garage out in the parking lot.
he wasn't happy.
BlahX3 Report This Comment Date: September 08, 2011 06:01PM
My desk was at a window and right outside was a ramp to the door. On the window
was a white metal screen that some of the guys would scrape their hands across
as they walked up the ramp to make a noise to annoy me. Being the main contact
for the tech dept I was usually on the phone which made it doubly annoying. We
had an old tube of white heat sink grease that leaked and was messy and should
have been tossed out years before, the kind of grease that is damn near
impossible to wash off your skin. I took that shit and smeared it on the white
screen where they drug their hands across and it quickly put a stop to that
crap.
They still did their best to annoy me but I had ways of getting even, like glue
the mouse to the mousepad, switch their phone lines around so they'd get each
others calls, install Teletubby windows schemes on their computers but they
persisted. I finally configured workstation management stuff to shut their
computers off as soon as they logged in to the server and our systems were setup
to require a network login. Heheh. That one got em begging for mercy.