Art & Inspiration interesting/funny tool stories

Could be the same reason I have a SnapOn 1/4" ratchet. Found it in the street. Got the mechanism rebuilt, works fine, just a bit scratched up.




Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

as a truck driver, i picked up all kinds of tools on job sites and on the street. i found a tool much like your lineman's pliers. dipped the handles and jaws in "liquid plastic" and use them to replace the hammer spring on a black-powder remington pistol i have...

 

I will add one. Went to a garage sale. There were two sets of tap dies up to 1" in wood cases. Made in Groton Mass. Picked up a belsaw narrow belt sander and walked it with all for 50.00 Doubt it will happen again.

Sent from my K88 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

I was working with a young hot shot kid that was always borrowing tools,
one day I flipped him some shit about buying tools of his own. His reply was, "why should
I buy tools when I can borrow yours" Needles to say he never borrowed another tool from me....

Lynn W

 

I worked with a guy who had the dirtiest set of tools on the planet, never wiped off, never cleaned. So one day I asked him why. He said he once worked for a boss that chewed him out for cleaning off tools on company time. So to that day he never did just for spite. I let it go a few weeks and got together with 2 other guys at work. When the dirty-tool guy went to lunch, we took every tool from his box (not a lot of tools) and we washed them in the Safety Kleen sink. He comes back from lunch, picks up some tools that were out... WTF, who cleaned my tools??? Then he looked in his box and laughed. They weren't clean for long.

 

One place I worked, one of the mechanics got a new rollaway and huge top box and it was filled to the brim with new tools, all Craftsman. He was a bug about not letting anyone borrow anything. One day he had a job across the shop, so he goes off across the shop. On the way he hits a divot in the floor and the entire deal goes ass over head. The top box was not closed... most of the drawers opened and all those shiny tools... all over! We were so shocked nobody laughed and helped him gather up the spilled tools. It was weeks later and we were still finding small sockets under things.

 

although I am just 17, I have run into people like that, got this one friend who always "just needs to borrow my jack-stands", some how he think my socket sets and impact gun are part of my jack stands

 

Well said!

 

My neighbour had a barn sale, this was a leftover I grabbed. He thinks it was from an old body shop, used for lead work. It's brass, that's all I know..

 

I build and install industrial control systems. For a while I was doing a lot of test stands for a company that made hydraulic valves for all the major farm and heavy equipment manufacturers. All the valves have Deutch connectors, the type of connectors used on most under hood auto components. In order to assemble test leads I had to crimp and assemble the connector using a special crimper. The end customer at first would lend me their tool to do it but since it was a rather expensive tool set, $900+, they were suggesting that I buy my own so I wouldn't have to keep taking theirs out of their building and at times they needed them and couldn't lend them out. One day a friend of a friend came into my shop and asked if I would be interested in a set of electrical crimping tools he had just picked up at a yard sale for $20. He handed me a two box set of the crimper and the extractors, complete like new in the boxes. I happily gave him $40. He was happy because he doubled his money and I got $900 worth of tools for $40.

 

Special connector tools run into big $$, nice score!

 

Before I was of driving age, early 1970's, I rode a ten-speed bicycle all over Garland Tx, and I would find tools on the side of the road and stop and pick them up. Lots of Craftsman tools, mostly 7/16", 1/2", and 9/16" combination wrenches, a few ratchets etc. I still have some of those in my collection.

 

Our neighbors of 50 years is a family of 6 kids. The oldest of the 3 boys has never done particularly well. So 10 or 15 years back the youngest "boy" bought a real nice log splitter to use for firewood at the family home, where the oldest brother was living in exchange for maintenance, etc. Several years go by, and the oldest brother is having a yard sale when the young son happens to come "home" to visit. The log splitter is for sale. When challenged the older son says he really needs money, so the youngest son ends up having to buy back his own splitter.
That was not the craziest stunt pulled by the oldest brother over the years, tool related or otherwise.

 

I haven’t had much luck with “barn find” tools like some of you, but when I first started my mechanic apprenticeship years ago I only had things like a few wrenches and a cheap hammer – I figured I would buy tools as I could afford them. One day I was working with an older mechanic, a wiry ex boxer who was a farmer on the side. My job was to use a big cold chisel on something, and I was busy wailing away with my little hammer with my partner closely watching. Suddenly, a small chip broke off the face of the hammer and nailed him right on the cheek just below his glasses. He slowly pulled the piece out and there was a little trickle of blood from the wound – I almost fainted. Then he quietly said “now I’ll show you what to do with this hammer so that never happens again”. I thought, great, now he’ll teach me some old farmer type blacksmithing that will make my hammer new again. Instead, he calmly walked to a nearby garbage pail and dropped my hammer in, and came back to me and said “now go buy some decent tools and never, ever cheapen out on anything you strike with”. I went out and spent way more than I could afford on a brand name hammer and cold chisel set and never bought cheap stuff like that again. I still have the hammer and chisels 45 years later and they’re still my go-to tools. I keep the chisels sharp and the ends ground smooth (something that makes me cringe when I see chisels with the ends all mushroomed over) and I’ve always tried to buy quality over price. Lesson learned.

 

My mom had a uncle who was a total lush. Whenever one of t he kids needed a few bucks they'd wait until their old man was well into bag and then go out to his garage grab a tool, bring it into the house and sell it to their dad. The old man must have bought some of the tools 3-4 times.

 

I used to do appliance repairs in people's houses, for a few years. Stuck my head in the bottom of a washing machine, and saw a 3/8 ring spanner, sort of rusted into a corner. I snagged it, threw it into my toolbox, and after cleaning it up, found my name engraved on it!
I must of overhauled the gearbox (back to the workshop type job,) somewhere in it's life, and it stayed there for maybe 10 years!
We had a bloke in the workshop who always played practical jokes, but could'nt take one in return. His practical jokes amounted to hundreds,so a bunch of us decided to repay all the favours he had done for us over the years. So on his day off, we bolted his toolbox to his bench through the bottom, and filled it with expanding foam, closing the lid so it really filled it up.Trimmed off the foam that seeped through the gaps, and put a padlock back on, same type as we cut off (and filled the key hole with silicon). He spent the whole day digging and solvent bathing his tools out of that foam crud. "Dont get mad-get even!"

 

combination metric /ase

 

I found a nice long 3/8 snap-on ratchet sitting on the cowl under the hood of one of my customer\ friend's Ram. Knowing he wrenched also, I set it on the seat of his truck. He picked the truck up and I forgot to mention the ratchet. The next day the said ratchet is sitting on my porch. It wasn't his and it wasn't mine. He said keep it.

 

Picked up a 12" line up punch laying in the dirt where I sometimes park my trailer, no telling how long it had been there, was nice and rusty brown but still in good shape.

Stopped at a yard sale with the wife one day when she spotted something she wanted to look at. As I was nosing around, came up on a small flat steel box with some tools in it. I saw a new pair of vise grips and a ratchet that caught my eye, turned out to be a Snap on. As I dug around in the box, saw several Snap On and Craftsman sockets, was just going to pick out some of the stuff and the owner walks up and says, "Give me $50 and you can have it all". Ask him if he'll take $40, he says, "Yeah, it's worth that". Sorted through it when I got home, ended up with an almost complete set of standard and metric Craftsman 3/8" sockets, several Snap on, Williams, and Husky sockets, the 12" snap on 3/8" drive ratchet, two Craftsman 1/4" ratchets, A Craftsman 1/2" ratchet and several 1/2" sockets of various makes, a new pair of Klein side cutters, another small pair of Vise grips, and a bunch of other stuff I've forgotten. Most of the tools looked fairly new or barely used. Whatever the wife was looking at didn't look as good up close as it did from the road, so she didn't buy anything. And I was going to just drive on by....

 

I went to a yard sale put on by a church one time. They had a whole bunch of Craftsman sockets, ratchets, wrenches, etc. I asked for a box so I could set the Craftsman tools aside from all the other tools. I gathered up probably close to 40 pounds worth of tools. When I went to pay, I asked them how much for everything. The guy looks at the box, not necessarily the contents, and says, "$10". Stunned, I looked at the box too and noticed it said $10 on the side. I said, "That was already written on the box when it was given to me, these are worth more than $10" He looked back at me, kinda shrugged his shoulders and said $10 was still a good number.
I had to force him to take $20 as I couldn't leave without feeling like I'd taken them for a ride. Even at $20 I was ecstatic.

 

I was doing a maintenance test flight on an F-5 after an engine change, and one of the requirements was to fly 15 seconds inverted at 500 kts. When I rolled the aircraft inverted and applied the negative G to maintain altitude, a 9/16 wrench came flying out from some crevice, and bounced off the canopy.
Needless to say, because I was looking for any engine problem, it scared the crap out of me. I was able to retrieve the wrench, and after landing asked the maintenance crew who lost the wrench. Nobody fessed up, so we counted tools, only to find that all the tools were accounted for and the wrench must have been lost during some earlier job.
I still have the wrench. \

 

At work we now have to account for all tools at regular intervals during the day. Someone left a 3/8" combo wrench in a job and it jammed the works up. The unit came back to be fixed along with the wrench. It was a huge corrective action for us. Funny it wasn't a company issued tool which are all marked to go with a specific shadow board.

 

We tore int a CanRig top drive at work, that was gaining gear oil, while losing hydraulic fluid. After replacing the hydraulic motor for the torque boost, CanRig says the only other way that can happen is through a bad seal in the main drive

 

Dang phone posts! Anyway, the main drive is via motors on a huge ring gear equipped flex plate. We opened it up enough to see a 3/8 flat screwdriver that had obviously been rolling along for a while. CanRig insists it had to have been dropped in there by one of us (the end user). They had to eat the shipping and repair costs when their mechanic could not remove it without breaking CanRig's seals. Turned out to be one of theirs and was marked as such. Now they do a tool count daily also, I am told.

 

This is`nt about a tool,but it is funny as hell.Newspaper story.A guy goes to the local dealer,says there is a hissing sound coming from under the dash.WELLLLLLLLLLL,the mechanic crawls under,and comes out quicker than he went in.Called animal control.They extracted an 8 to 10 foot python.
Good luck.Have fun.Be safe.
Leo

 

Pops thought one of those double ended crescent wrenches was so goofy he framed the one he bought at some sale. Hangs in my shop now.

--
Loaned tool story

When I was in high school I built a set of ramps as a metal shop project- heavy angle iron and expanded metal traction surface (several guys started to build them but I may've been the only one that finished a set). My stupid brother loaned them to a guy we knew so they could do some maintenance to his '68 Camaro. When I asked for them back there was plenty of excuses but no ramps. A year later the guy left for the Marines and didn't see him again. End of story? Nope- 20 years give or take later, my Dad called and said "Mike dropped off your ramps". I still have never seen him or known him to be back in our area but I'm happy to know he came back from duty and glad to have the ramps back- used them twice last week.

---
Grandpa would buy mass quantities of the junkiest Taiwanese tinfoil tools. Like a dozen sets of rachet/socket sets from Kmart at once on sale and on the other hand Pops would buy good, like craftsman tools but not snapon- still sorting through boxes from both of them. The few snapon pieces I find must've been yard sale bits or something because Grandpa could've filled his entire toolbox for the price of one screwdriver!


Sent from my iPhone using H.A.M.B.

 

When employed at a machine shop, I was the guy that got the "nobody-else-will-do-it" jobs for certain clients; usually at their place of business. One call was about an offset printing machine that was leaving "impressions" on paper where there shouldn't be any.
Found out that somehow a small Crescent wrench had dropped in front of one of the rolls. How it got through the machine is beyond me, but it definitely left an impression....nice outline of the head. Dang.... how am I going to fix this?
And of course they can't shut down for any long term disassembly/reassembly.
Got some Devcon 2-part epoxy (this was many years ago..before the metal type) and after cleaning the roll with lacquer thinner, applied it the roll surface. Let it set for a day, then used a new file and slowly filed the excess off the surface. Must have worked OK, 'cause I never heard back. That is until the next time they needed help.......with some other problem.

 

We had a much less funny incident regarding a snake. Back in the early 1980s, the airline I flew for traded off our 747s for 8 DC10s, most of which were coming from Pakistan.
After the delivery of one of the aircraft, which had spend a few months in the desert, it required a D check, which meant that it would be completely stripped inspected, and reconfigured with our equipment before it went back into service. While the mechanics were stripping out the interior, one mechanic heard a sound, and then saw a snake hide itself in one of the many available hidy holes in the partially stripped aircraft.
They immediately closed up the aircraft and fumigated it, and eventually found a medium sized cobra in the cargo compartment. Who knows when or how it got in there.

 

I found a SnapOn cresent wrench in the 49 Ford in my avatar after I brought it home. I should have left that car in Kansas and came home without buying it, almost as poor of a decision as my second marriage

 

Re: loaning tools. Twisted wrenches in bike shops in the 70's. Dirty bikers ( i can say that because i are one) always wanted to borrow tools. I would point at the sticker on my tool box and go back to what I was doing. One of my favourite stickers!