If you work on your Miata....

...you need these definitions:

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 sh -- '

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

SKILL 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 to the object we are trying to hit.

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.

DAMN-IT TOOL: Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling 'DAMN-IT' at the top of your lungs. It is also, most often, the next tool that you will need.

How many of these have you used?

Reply to
XS11E
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TABLE SAW: A large stationary power tool that my now-deceased grandfather used to cut two of his fingers off, back in the days before severed fingers were commonly re-attached. Many years later, his son cut the end of a finger off on one. He managed to just hit one and leave most of it intact.

So, to me, it is a device to be avoided. I never did see my grandfather with all ten fingers, and this seems to be a good thing to let skip a generation........... ;-)

Pat

Reply to
pws

I have shamelessly stolen this and posted it to our Miata club website.

I believe I have several of those items in the basement and/or garage. There's one you missed - Hand Grinder, also called a "spark tester" - a portable grinding tool used to remove imperfections on the skin of your arms and/or shins.

Iva & Vixen

2004 Classic Red No more winkin' Miata
Reply to
Iva

Pat, the brother of a good friend of mine got an ejected projectile imbedded in his chest like a blunt arrow! My buddy had to pull it out for him. He said they packed the hole with antibiotic cream and he never had any bad effect from it. He calls his brother unlucky, I think it might be more accurate to call him lucky!

Chris

99BBB
Reply to
Chris D'Agnolo

You're quite welcome, it wasn't original, I stole it also!

I've used those.....

Reply to
XS11E

Yikes! He was lucky in that it was not sharp.

It takes some good speed to penetrate the skin deeply enough to become imbedded with a real arrow, so something blunt was really moving, probably a few hundred fps.

Pat

Reply to
pws

It takes less than you might think, I watched the famous incident involving Steve Yeager and the broken bit of the bat that hit him wasn't moving that fast*, it had already trevelled from the batter's box to the on-deck circle where Yeager was waiting to bat, but it not only penetrated the skin but also the esophagus.

"In 1976, Yeager was injured when a piece of Bill Russell's bat shattered and hit him in the neck while in the on-deck circle, piercing his esophagus. He had nine pieces of wood taken out of his neck in 98 minutes of surgery. After the incident, Dodger trainer Bill Buhler invented and patented a throat protector that hangs from the catcher's mask. It was soon worn by most catchers around the Majors and other leagues."

*I think Yeager's cousing Chuck went faster than that piece of bat!
Reply to
XS11E

I think that I wrote that wrong. What I meant was that if it was blunt and became imbedded, then a sharp piece might have made it either between the ribs or through the breastplate to the heart and/or lungs.

It sounds like he was lucky that he was not hit in the neck, whether it was a sharp piece or not.

No doubt.......I watched that show, "Are you smarter than a 5th grader?". It is basically "Jeopardy" for stupid people like myself.

One of the questions: who was the first person to break the speed of sound in a fixed-wing aircraft.

Most of the 5th graders got it, the twenty-something year old contestant had no idea. :-)

Pat

Reply to
pws

I really enjoy that show, I get a kick out of a bunch of VERY sharp kids humiliating adults, I'm really amazed at watching people who say they are school teachers but don't know geography, spelling, arithmetic, grammar, etc. etc..

Reply to
XS11E

The last time I watched that show, I got two of the Spanish Conquistadors mixed up. That pissed me off. :-)

Some of the celebrities can be fun to watch. Gene Simmons is pretty sharp.

Pat

Reply to
pws

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