What is your favourite tool?

**felixblue** · 9th-March-2012

Every real man likes to get to grips with a good tool and use it as nature and design intended..

Being a man, is all about handling ones tool well, and doing much good work with it and the subsequent pride one gets from a job well done is often directly related to the tool used..

Ever since I was a young lad, I have been fascinated by tools, indeed, tis not a word of a lie, when I was first interrogated by the handlebar tasched high ranking military careers officer at my posh private boys school, I had no idea what I wanted to do, but I was not interested in fighting for the bosses wars, even if I was a good and keen cadet, so I wasn't going to be persuaded by the usual options..

I told him I wanted to be a tool maker..

What was on my mind was the beauty and satisfaction I used to get from shaping metal, on a lathe, grinding the cutter back to sharpness, tempering it, having the ability to shape materials.. Making ones own tools is very satisfying, because it is often the case that one cannot find a hammer, or a screwdriver, or a pointed object of the correct dimensions, a screw of the correct type etc..

No matter how many tools I had, one of them, I tended to always come back to.. It is, quite rightly, named "the bodgers favourite"..

If I ever see anyone using this tool (oddly, I rarely do, because it seems hardly anyone other than myself uses it so often for some many different things..) I laugh at them, and even berate them for using such a terrible device, a tool that is never the right one for the job.. A tool that not only is almost universally NOT the first choice for any task, it can mean the destruction of the object it is used on, as surely as testing the strength of glass by throwing rocks at it can do..

If you haven't guessed by now..

Mole Wrench How and why? A Useful Tool. - YouTube

And if you havent fallen asleep within a minute of watching that gent chew up and knacker whatever he was using it on..

You can tell me how it ended, because I simply cant watch bear cruelty to be inflicted upon innocent metal..

I mostly use mine for cracking nuts with.. Much better than so called "nut crackers" that invariably snap when you put almost enough strength to crack a brazil nut shell, tearing your palms with jagged edged metal..

I'd give that tool even more kudos though than the impact driver, which is another "bodgers favourite".. reason being, as I discovered 30 years ago when taking the seized casings on my lower end apart on my noble steed, the mole wrench can actually prove more capable of getting out seized and broken screws and bolts from metal, even when harldy anything is there to grip on.. The impact driver is a great "saviour", a few blows from the hammer will break the fusion of the metals often.. But the mole wrench can rip that 6 mill bolt out with its awesome grip and leverage, without risk of damaging the alloy casings with the shock.. And an impact driver doesnt work well on mashed headed screws, which the bodgers favourite can still grip (even if it does ensure that screw is crushed and chewed beyond all hope and will never be used again!)

I only ever had to admit defeat on a few occasions when battling with seized bolts..

Several times, the bolt snapped BELOW the level of the cylinder head.. there was no way of getting the last bit out..

What does one do when one has a heat hardened piece of broken bolt laughing at you and accusing you of all manner of sexual improprieties from a safe position where you cant grab it with anything and tear it out?

Well, the neighbours pets had a few days of relief from random torture as I tried hard to find ways of getting that abusive bugger out..

I had had success in the past with "drilling out" such bolts, but this was a small one and the risk of damaging the cylinder head was high..If I messed up the thread, it would be bad news..

The thin drill bits broke several times before I realised that it was not feasible to get a straight hole down the centre, due to the deformed way the bolt had sheared..

So, I had to do the shameful thing eventually, and ask my dad what he would suggest..

He came back from work one day with some extractor bolts..

I suspected, from my knowledge of metal charateristics, that these bloody hopeless items would simply break..

And yes, that is exactly what they did when I put the small one to work..

Absolutely fucking magnificent!!

Now, I had a lump of hardened tool steel cleanly snapped off level with the top of a bolt that had sheared off level with the cylinder head..

Drill would not touch that metal.. game over one could say.. End of my beloved xr500 engine., with its ever loosening and annoying cam sprocket nuts that periodically forced a strip down of the top end..

Might as well get back to the business of tormenting housepets and farm animals to get my thrills..

But no.. My dad had something unbelievable up his wizards sleeve.. He must have wanted the family sheepdog to last just a bit longer..

He took that doomed cylinder to work, and brought it back with a lovely new stud in position..

How on earth did the engineers get that thing out?

Spark erosion..

Basically, the broken tool and stud where removed by a process of eroding them away by electrical discharges..

Pretty fancy machine eh?

And that, is why I always to this day ensure I always close the door when I have the window open..

**Richard** · 9th-March-2012

A pair of pliars are my favourite tool - it can act as a hammer, pull nails out, shape thing, act as a wire cutting/stripper, and a makeshift adjutable spanner. Pliars are a tool I could not live without.

**Rof L Mao Esq** · 9th-March-2012

A Skilsaw Mag 77 Worm-drive 7 1/4" circular saw. The only one worth having.
Powerful, balanced, durable,
A man's saw.
A saw you can rip a 1 3/4" Microlam with for 20' and never get it hot.
Made in USA.

**themanonthestreet** · 9th-March-2012

We call em vice grips here... After the company that created em.

TMOTS

**felixblue** · 9th-March-2012

Pliers are useful, but use them as a hammer? One needs to have a variety of styles and sizes.. Often when I have tried using the pliers, if they dont give satisfaction.. I have to resort to the bodgers favourite.. That extra strong grip can make a very significant difference..

Regarding saws, I have destroyed many saws in my time as the winter months see me cutting up a ton or so of scrap wood pallets every week for the fire..

Reciprocating saws that are gauranteed for two years last an average of 3 months I have found.. And though over a kilowatt of power and a good blade can rip through wood well, that heavy vibration and cold weather can cause white finger if you spend too long at it!

Chainsaws are very good fun, makes light work of charging through stacks of pallets and thick wood..

Apart form the obvious dangers involved with having what is effectively a noisy two stroke motorbike engine powering a lethal chain of sharp chisels at high speed, another major pain with this tool is the fact that it turns a significant percentage of the wood into rabbit bedding..

half a ton of pallets will produce about 10 pounds of woodchips, which goes asolutely everwhere and is hard to clean up!

Circular saws look good for cutting nice easy to handle wood, I used them a lot when I was learning joinery but I was also worried about that fact that so many joiners have missing digits, arms, etc..

Power tools are scary things, don't even think of trying to use one after a few beers!

Added after 5 minutes:

I got a nice set of spanners last year, those ones that have a rotating ring in the middle at one end.. I always wanted a set of them after watching a mechanic remove a nut in record time.. But I was somewhat disappointed when I tried them out because it is debatable if they are in fact as practical as the old ratchet socket sets.. They have an advantage over the fixed ring spanners for sure though in spaces where the Ratshit set wont fit..

Added after 12 minutes:

One thing I find very odd about men in the UK, is that they don't seem to be as "tool a holic" as the USA blokes.. They seem to hand over such work to "professionals" (aka spotty dopeheaded 17 year old kids employed by some bloke who has the qualifications but no longer wants to do the work so he gets the monkeys in (AKA apprentices provided for free by the state who pay their minimum wages))..

I have a bad habit of following in my dads footsteps when I encounter shoddy workmanship.. "Go round to the shop and drive it up his arse"..

So I prefer to do my own DIY and servicing.. Its nice to have ones car rebuilt at the companies expense when one of their monkeys breaks something critical when changing the spark plugs.. but it does waste time..

Almost all the DIY stuff I see on the web is demonstrated by American men, which is well and good, but sometimes the regulations etc are different..

I was fighting with a ceiling fan recently for a few days, I managed to wire it up very well before I went on my electricians course this year, but a little knowlegde is a dangerous thing..

Went the fan twisted all the wires off and it stopped, I attempted to re-wire it based on my now perfect knowledge of how domestic lights etc work..

I discovered 3 live wires and no neutral..

Of course, it was just the case that the original joker had sleeved the wires wrong!!

I shoved two of the "lives" into the neutral and Hey! Job done!

Would not have realised that if I had not spend time researching in the web..

Even if the American colour codes are different, the laws of phyics and the flow of power remain the same!

**MikeT** · 31st-March-2012

Cool thread there, felixblue,

I own about NZ$70-80K worth of tools, my work requires that I carry that many tools, some are specialised electrical tools, but most are your standard hand tools, a couple of welders, grinders, a drill and some other stuff.

Them ratcheting spanners you mentioned above are really good, I own a set of them and they have come in handy at breakdowns where you need to tighten or loosen something in a hurry.

I'd say out of all the tools I own, my favourite one would have to be my Duspol voltage indicator,
I've had it since I started my apprenticeship many, many years ago, this thing is a life-saver when doing faults work.
Here he is:

**FloatyBoaty** · 31st-March-2012

The razor blade. It can be used in almost every trade, from making shoes to opening packages.

But, that's my second choice. My first choice is a computer; so, I can order all this stuff.

**Bigger Brother** · 31st-March-2012

I saw an episode of the UK series 'Coast' last night which described the discovery and mining of tin on the Cornish coast since way back in 2150BC. When someone discovered that an alloy of copper with a small quantity of tin made a metal that was strong, durable and able to maintain a sharp edge, Cornwall became a major centre for the Bronze Age tool-making industry.

It is fun to try to imagine what sorts of minds would be motivated to explore and discover these new ways of doing things, and somehow I find it difficult to imagine that there were any female minds involved.