I kept (it) because it didn't bind up so much.

Almost every tool manufacturer on the planet has competition. For every $50.00 screw driver on the market, (Yes, this DOES seem exorbitant to me.) there are a thousand $5.00 knock-off coming from another country. Sure the expensive one was hand crafted, has a fine hardwood inlay, brass fittings and a hardened tip, but only someone who uses it for their work every day might see the value in this. 

The same can't be said for all tools though. Some tools look and feel right to laymen and tradesmen alike when they are used for the very first time. Ask Milton Waddams, he knew a good product when he saw it, and he stuck by it as well.

Some time ago I ended up with a US Navy surplus, battleship grey, World War II era stapler. This object, a stout two pound lump of cold hardened steel, with color coordinated rivets, is about as overbuilt as a similar era bomb shelter. With heft, simplicity of design and remarkable functionality, this everyday office item is about as necessary a tool as you'll find in the world of paper pushing. After 60 years of desk use, from the high-action, large-stack stapling world of the US Navy's cold war bureaucracy, to the less "staple happy" world of my office desk, this simple item has never failed to perform its' prescribed duties with aplomb. Never any bound staples, no snapped plastic parts, not even a staple tray cover that flipped open with the ease of Kirk's communicator, tossing a mass of unspent staples across the room. It was built for one purpose, to staple when asked and to sit on the desk looking stout and defiant until asked to repeat the task. Other tasks could have been to hold down papers in gail forced winds, to act as an exercise weight for a Pilate's class, or to be used as a shovel to aid in a breakout from a cement cell. 

So MANVIL's hat is off to the builders of patent No. 2,603,781. Here's to the stapler made at Long Island City 1, N.Y.. In a world where keeping things together appears to be a dying art form, you have proven yourselves the champions of your realm. And that is something the jealous b*tch from accounting can't take from you. 

The mystery of the left-handed shovel.

Most hand tools are pretty easy to use. Some may be used more efficiently by more experienced handlers, but the general concepts are pretty easy to grasp. Hand tools are pushed, pulled, forced, turned or pounded in order to function in their designed purposes. Rarely does one come across a hand tool that leaves a novice flabbergasted as to the tool's function. There are always exceptions.

On any construction site, more than a fair amount of ribbing is handed out. I think it's the comradery involved with producing projects together that provokes it.. Smart alecked banter acts is a sort of social barometer for the caste system of the site. One's response to ribbing allows the entire crew to see where an individual's lot is amongst the other ranks. The majority of the kidding on a small site is often passed out by the site foreman. His queries and proclamations ride the subtle line between team building, esprit de corps, or simply a time honored feather rustling that states "Yes, dung does roll downhill, and I, the foreman, can see where it will land from where I stand".

All too often, though, this same foreman doesn't do the hiring. That effort is left for the noble folks in HR who will never actually have to work with the folks they hire. Such was the case in early summer when I had the opportunity to work with 'a new guy". Wiry, bookish, slouched shouldered, greasy haired and arrogant, he had an air of entitlement in his conversational voice, and seemed burdened to have to work with the likes of the stone crew. Myself included. I couldn't tell whether his haughty nature was a defense mechanism or a bona fide disdain for manual labor and those who worked it. It didn't matter though, arrogance doesn't last long on a close, functional team. I figured his attitude would be quashed through work site based tomfoolery. I just wondered how soon, and if I'd be the one to pull the joke. 

Apparently the lad's reputation may have preceded him. He was met at the parking lot by the site foreman before I could even close the door to the company dumper. After a brief greeting to the rest of staff, a wet fish handshake for all, and the assignment of company provided work gloves, the new kid was asked by the foreman to go grab the left handed flat shovel as the rest of the crew planned the day's production. My foreman might as well have asked him to find Shangrila in the cab of the dump truck, or perhaps to pull a moon beam from his own posterior, but I wasn't going to say anything. He could search all he wanted as far as I was conerned.

And search he did. When he finally did return, forty minutes later, he arrived with nothing in hand but his hat. "There were only right handed shovels in the trailer." He muttered with some conviction and further sunk shoulders. I don't think he saw that all eyes rolled for him. He continued to explain that he had grabbed each one of the eight shovels in the trailer, and checked them out. He said he'd looked at the heads, as well as the shafts, and found there to be no lefties what-so-ever. He had no idea that there are as many left hand specific shovels in the world as there are specific right handers. None! We should have asked him about the left handed tooth brushes, aerosol cans and surfboards. Perhaps he could have more easilly found a left handed pencil, and some right handed chopsticks to eat more crow with. It took us six hours to tell finally him about the futility of his quest, but eventually the joke was explained, thereby sealing his fate as the low man on the totem pole for the entire summer. If only he'd had some MANVIL cards as a kid, maybe training him how to actually USE a shovel wouldn't have taken so long.

If there is a lesson to be taken from this at all, it might be that although a tool might be named for, and look like it was specifically made for one purpose, it might function perfectly well doing other things. It's as possible to open beer bottles with a lighter, as it is to make shoes with a waffle iron. 

Toe-headed boy sights trousers eating wedgie!

If ever there were a tool that could strike fear into the heart of a car owner, this would be it. The air impact wrench. 

When an unknowing civilian gets within ear shot if its' toney whirring, he or she imagines money... on fire... coming from their own pocket. Whether you consider your technician a ham fisted goon, or the product of a superior technical education, this tool is one of the prime weapons in the arsenal of automotive repair. 

My fondest personal remembrance of this tool came on a bitterly cold mid western winter's day, when I was working as the assistant service manager at a quirky northern European car dealership. 

Amidst the omnipresent whirring of impact wrenches, I reviewed our days appointments. I was disappointed to find that my least favored customer was to arrive with an inevitable laundry list of subtle issues that all convertibles have in cold winter climates. Despite my previous suggestions to the contrary, my client again demanded to have the convertible mechanism checked, it apparently squeaked while operating. I quickly rho-cham-bow'd my coworker to see who would 'get' to deal with said customer. 

I won, and left the sign-in desk for the din of the garage just as the older, yet still sleek, red convertible entered through the rolling doors. As I passed I waved and smiled at the convertible's owner. I was met with the same smirk and stink eye that I always got. I have rarely been happier to dodge a work related resposibility than I was entering the cacophony of impact wrench noise that moment. The syncopated rhythm of 12 techs and their tinny tambourines. Safe within the confines of the shop, with the constant sound of the automotive repairs in process, I watched from afar as the customer untidily exited the low seats of the drop top and waddled to the greeting desk. I could see my co-worker preparing himself at the approach. "You poor, glorious bastard" I thought to myself. Out came at least two pages of laundry list, single spaced, on legal pads. It was as if they'd re-written the owners manual, and written "squeaks when cold" by every subject line.

Safely 30 yards from the service desk, I tried to look busy. All the techs considered the client to be an overly dramatic, self-righteous and hyper-sensitive. They had all worked on the car before, at one time or another, and the issues of concern were, to our minds, unfounded for a convertible that age in the bitter cold. 

Within minutes I noticed the storm doors opening again and realized it was Mrs. J. and her four year old lad, Timmy, arriving in their sedan for a scheduled maintenance. I began my walk towards the front desk and I received a kind wave from Mrs. J. I noticed young Timmy, at her side, yanking at her snow pants. Through the din of the impact wrenches I saw him yell up to his mom "Look Mommy!" while pointing at the after end of the convertible owner at the front desk. Mrs. J looked down at the boy curiously. He took a breath to yell over the clamor, still pointing. At that very instant all whirring stopped.

 "That person's butt is eating their pants!" And then the whirring continued, for a second, until what he'd said registered with everybody, and I mean everybody, who'd heard it. Which was... everybody within the confines of the very large shop, including the ladies in the warranty services department.

In another very brief second the tech's laughter began to overcome the whirring. "Outta the mouths of babes!" the senior tech hollered, while holding his impact wrench over his head like a grease smeared, whisky crazed cowboy. I peered at the scene to assess damage control with a bowed head and covered eyes. 

"Ooh, nooo, Timmy" gasped Mrs. J, her beet red cheeks flush with embarrassment as she held the lad's toe-head in her hands. Her kind eyes were darting from side to side looking for an escape route. The laughing techs began to marvel aloud at his comedic timing. On my hip my walkie talkie squawked to let me know a loaner was warmed and waiting for the convertible owner. 

 "Your loaner is out front!" I belted out over the laughter and the whirring, shielding my eyes with one hand, and waving goodbye with another. The convertible customer was whisked from the scene like they'd been sucked through a vortex. 

The laundry list was chopped down to two items that were diagnosed and repaired in a very timely manner. Mrs. J, got a discount on her service, because the tech who did the service wasn't able to wipe the grin off his face for week. None of the techs could.

The lesson I took from this experience was that sometimes progress can be a monotonous, ear-numbing torrent of seemingly meaningless input interrupted, only briefly, by devine insight. That day the impact wrench found a warm place in my heart. Perhaps it could find one in yours too, if only as a MANVIL card. 

Shockingly Simple

If you don't recognize having ever used this tool, you should get out more. Or get some MANVIL flash cards.

This, one of mankind's simpler, yet gracefully designed tools, is no marvel of technology, and it is certainly no earth shattering implement. It is simply a screw driver, and as such, little gets screwed without knowing how to use it. 

On trying to describe this tool's myriad uses, I have only one, thankfully fond memory. Most uses are mundane at best, place driver on screw, turn, repeat until screw is either all the way in, or all the way out. The most memorable use of the screw driver that I can recall was in a non-traditional role.

On a warm day, at my family's home in the valley, my father equipped me with an old stout Craftsman screw driver as we were setting to attend to a problem. We needed to remove "something" from one of the concrete blocks that was at the top of the driveway stairs. After surveying the object sticking proudly out of the block, we realized that it was a much aged wooden dowel, and it was protruding from what looked like an old lamp socket. For safety sake, my father turned off the electricity to the lower half of the house, as well as the 'hot' lines that went to the garage just past the cement block. It was at this point when I began to use the screw driver for its' non-traditional roll, as an instrument used to pry things apart.

I pounded the tip of the flat head into the top of the dowel and would continue to pry water damaged pieces of wood from the hole for about twenty minutes. In time I began making headway, the dowel began to come apart in ever larger chunks. In an moment of flourish, for the seemingly inevitable final act of dowel disembowelment, I planted the screw driver in the rough center with my left hand. In one stroke of a small mallet I pounded the top of the handle soundly, quite soundly. 

I came to sometime later, 12 feet away. The screw driver was smoking in the hole. The mallet was still clenched in my right hand. Luckily, I had landed in the grass, as opposed to taking a header down the stairs to the street below, or landing in my mother's beloved Bougainvillea. 

My father and I eventually hunted down the offending electrical circuit. The offending line went from the kitchen to the old, unused lamp post out front. When it was finally turned off, I returned to my duty and cleaned out the old socket as my father quietly snipped the line at the junction box. 

If there is a lesson to be learned here, I should say this, always hold your screw driver by the handle and not the shaft. That, and never assume your electrician knows what the schematics are if he didn't put them in himself.  -Cheers!