1. 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, splattering it against that freshly
painted part you were drying.
2. WIRE WHEEL: Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under
the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint, warts and
hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you to say,
'SH**!!!'
3. ELECTRIC HAND DRILL: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their
holes until you die of old age
4. PLIERS: Used to round off hexagonal bolt heads.
5. 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.
6. VICE GRIP PLIERS: Used to 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.
7. OXYACETYLENE TORCH: Used almost entirely for setting various flammable
objects in your shed on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside a
wheel hub you're trying to get the bearing race out of.
8.. WHITWORTH SOCKETS: Once used for working on older British cars and
motorcycles, they are now used mainly for impersonating that 14mm or 12mm
socket you've been searching for.
9. HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK: Used for lowering a vehicle to the ground after
you have installed your new disk brake pads, trapping the jack handle
firmly under the bumper bar.
10. 100x50 HARDWOOD WALL STUD : Used to attempt to lever a vehicle off a
hydraulic jack handle.
11. TWEEZERS: A tool for removing splinters of wood, especially hardwood.
12. TELEPHONE: Tool for calling your neighbour to see if he has another
hydraulic floor jack.
13. SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER: Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for
spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for removing dog faeces from your boots.
14. E-Z OUT BOLT AND STUD EXTRACTOR: A tool that snaps off in bolt holes
and is ten times harder than any known drill bit.
15. TWO-TON HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST: A handy tool for testing the tensile
strength of bolts and fuel lines you forgot to disconnect.
16. CRAFTSMAN 12mm x 500mm SCREWDRIVER: A large motor mount prying tool
that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on one end.
17 AVIATION METAL SNIPS: See hacksaw.
18. TROUBLE LIGHT: The home builder's own tanning booth. Sometimes called
drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, 'the sunshine vitamin,' which
is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main
purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that
105-mm
Howitzer shells might be used during, say, the first few hours of the
Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat
misleading.
19. PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER: Normally used to stab the lids of old-style
paper-and-tin oil cans and squirt oil on your shirt; can also be used, as
the name implies, to round off the interiors of Phillips screw heads.
20. AIR COMPRESSOR: A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning
power plant 200 kilometres away and transforms it into compressed air that
travels by hose to an pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts last
tightened 70 years ago by someone at Ford, and rounds them off.
21. 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..
22. HOSE CUTTER: A tool used to cut hoses 10mm too short.
23. HAMMER: Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer is now used
as a divining rod to locate expensive parts not far from the object you are
trying to hit.
24. MECHANIC'S KNIFE: Used to open and slice through the contents of
cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on
boxes containing upholstered items, chrome-plated metal, plastic parts and
the hand not holding the knife.
25. ANGLE GRINDER: Designed for the purpose of seeing your own living bone
as it begins to dry and scab over.
26. CHAINSAW: A machine that checks whether you have enough band aids in
the medicine box, and guarantees that you don't.
27. TOOLBOX: A container for every possible tool known to mankind, except
the one you are looking for.
27a. CRESCENT/SHIFTER: Tool that replaces the tool required under rule 27,
and rounds off anything not previously rounded off.
28. FILE: For filing flats onto all objects that had flat surfaces before
being rounded. Laws of physics guarantee that new flat surface is smaller
and weaker than previously rounded flat surface.
29. COLD CHISEL: Tool of last resort, used for trying to turn remainder of
protruding round bolt head, usually resulting in bolt head joining the one
redistributed by rule 2.
30. BEER: Solves all problems created by previous 29 rules
