An Introduction to Tools ... and how to use them

Drill Press: A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat steel bar stock out of your hands, striking you in the chest and flinging your beer across the shed, splattering it against that freshly painted part on the workbench.

Wire Wheel: Cleans paint off bolts and throws them under the workbench at the speed of light. Also removes fingerprints and guitar calluses in the time it takes to say "ouch!"

Electric Hand Drill: Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

Pliers: Used to round off bolt heads. Often also used to create blood blisters.

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 direction the more dismal your failure becomes.

Vice Grips: Generally used after pliers to further round off a bolt. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

Oxy-acetylene Torch: Used almost exclusively for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for setting fire to the grease around that wheel bearing you were trying to remove by heating the hub.

Whitworth Sockets: Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles. Now mostly are hammered over bolts previously rounded by vice grips.

Hydraulic Floor Jack: Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after installing new brake shoes, trapping the handle firmly under the bumper. May also be used to lower vehicle onto the plastic pail you drained the engine oil into, immediately prior to moving the vehicle and spilling oil all over your concrete driveway.

Two by Four: An eight-foot long bar made of wood used for levering the vehicle upward off the hydraulic floor jack handle.

Tweezers: A tool for removing 2X4 splinters or wire wheel wires from your fingers.

E-Z Out Bolt and Stud Extractor: A tool 10 times harder than any known drill bit that snaps off in bolt holes. Works well in inexpensive or easy to replace parts but using this tool in expensive parts will cause almost certain failure.

Two-Ton Engine Hoist: Used for testing the tensile strength of electrical wires, hoses etc that you forgot to disconnect.

Craftsman 1/2 X 16 inch Screwdriver: A large pry bar that inexplicably has an accurately machined flat tip at the opposite end to the handle.

Aviation Metal Snips: See "Hacksaw."

Trouble Light: A very appropriately named tool. Its two main purposes are to shine an intense light directly into your eyes instead of onto the part you are trying to illuminate and also to consume 40 watt light bulbs at the same rate as a 105 mm howitzer consumes shells. Sometimes called a drop light for reasons obvious to anybody who has used one.

Philips Head Screwdriver: Normally used to stab the silver vacuum seals under the screw off lids of oil cans but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out the heads of Phillips screws.

Pry Bar: A tool often used to crumple the metal surrounding a clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace that 50 cent part.

Hose Cutter: Used to make hoses too short.

Hammer: Originally used as a weapon of war, but nowadays used as a device to locate the most expensive parts adjacent to the part you are trying to hit.

Utility Knife: Used to open boxes and slice through the contents of packages delivered to your front door. Works particularly well on items such as seats, CD's, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines etc. Especially useful for slicing through work clothes, but only when you are in them.

Dammit Tool: Any tool that gets thrown across the garage as you yell "Dammit!" It is also the next tool that you will need.

Expletive: A soothing balm, or mechanics lube, usually applied verbally and in hindsight, which somehow eases the pain and embarrassment of your lack of foresight.