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Tools!

HAMMER

Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate expensive car parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

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 convertible tops or tonneau covers.

ELECTRIC HAND DRILL:

Normally used for spinning steel Pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age, but it also works great for drilling rollbar mounting holes in the floor of a sports car just above the brake line that goes to the rear axle.

PLIERS:

Used to round off bolt heads.

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.

VISE-GRIPS:

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.

OXYACETELENE TORCH:

Used almost entirely for lighting those stale garage cigarettes you keep hidden in the back of the Whitworth socket drawer (What wife would think to look in _there_?) because you can never remember to buy lighter fluid for the Zippo lighter you got from the PX at Fort Campbell.

ZIPPO LIGHTER:

See oxyacetelene torch.

WHITWORTH SOCKETS:

Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles, they are now used mainly for hiding six-month old Salems from the sort of person who would throw them away for no good reason.

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 the Rolling Stones poster over the bench grinder.

WIRE WHEEL:

Cleans rust off old bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar callouses in about the time it takes you to say, "Django Reinhardt".

HYDRAULIC FLOOR JACK:

Used for lowering a Mustang to the ground after you have installed a set of Ford Motorsports lowered road springs, trappng the jack handle firmly under the front air dam.

EIGHT-FOOT LONG DOUGLAS FIR 2X4:

Used for levering a car upward off a hydraulic jack.

TWEEZERS:

A tool for removing wood splinters.

PHONE:

Tool for calling your neighbor Chris to see if he has another hydraulic floor jack.

SNAP-ON GASKET SCRAPER:

Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for getting dog-doo off your boot.

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.

TIMING LIGHT:

A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease buildup on crankshaft pulleys.

TWO-TON HYDRAULIC ENGINE HOIST:

A handy tool for testing the tensile strength of ground straps and hydraulic clutch lines you may have forgotten to disconnect.

CRAFTSMAN 1/2 x 16-INCH SCREWDRIVER:

A large motor mount prying tool that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end without the handle.

BATTERY ELECTROLYTE TESTER:

A handy tool for transferring sulfuric acid from a car battery to the inside of your toolbox after determining that your battery is dead as a doornail, just as you thought.

AVIATION METAL SNIPS:

See hacksaw.

TROUBLE LIGHT:

The mechanic's own tanning booth. Sometimes called a 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.

PHILLIPS SCREWDRIVER:

Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt; can also be used, as the name implies, to round off Phillips screw heads.

AIR COMPRESSOR:

A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty suspension bolts last tightened 40 years ago by someone in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, and rounds them off.

Tools

A modern hammer is directly descended from ancient hand toolsA tool or device is a piece of equipment which typically provides a mechanical advantage in accomplishing a physical task, or provides an ability that is not naturally available to the user of a tool. The most basic tools are simple machines. For example, a crowbar simply functions as a lever. The further out from the pivot point, the more force is transmitted along the lever. When particularly intended for domestic use, a tool is often called a utensil.

Philosophers once thought that only humans used tools, and often defined humans as tool-using animals. But observation has confirmed that multiple species can use tools, including monkeys, apes, several corvids, sea otters, and others. Later, philosophers thought that only humans had the ability to make tools, until zoologists observed birds and monkeys making tools. Now humans' unique relationship to tools is considered to be that we are the only species that uses tools to make other tools.

Most anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind. Humans evolved an opposable thumb - useful in holding tools - and increased dramatically in intelligence, which aided in the use of tools.

Some tools can also serve as weapons, such as a hammer or a knife. Similarly, people can use weapons, such as explosives, as tools.

Functions of tools

Many tools or groups of tools serve to perform one or more of a set of basic operations, such as:

Cutting (knife, scythe, sickle, etc...)

Concentrating force (hammer, maul, screwdriver, whip, writing implements, etc...)

Guiding (set square, straightedge, etc...)

Tool Protecting

Seizing and holding (pliers, glove, wrench, etc...)

Tool substitution

Often, by design or coincidence, a tool may share key functional attributes with one or more other tools. In this case, some tools can substitute for other tools, either as a make-shift solution or as a matter of practical efficiency. "One tool does it all" is a motto of some importance for workers who cannot practically carry every specialized tool to the location of every work task. Tool substitution may be divided broadly into two classes: substitution "by-design", or "multi-purpose" use, and substitution as make-shift. In many cases, the designed secondary functions of tools are not widely known. As an example of the former, many wood-cutting hand saws integrate a carpenter's square by incorporating a specially shaped handle which allows 90° and 45° angles to be marked by aligning the appropriate part of the handle with an edge and scribing along the back edge of the saw. The latter is illustrated by the saying "All tools can be used as hammers." Nearly all tools can be repurposed to function as a hammer, even though very few tools are intentionally designed for it.

Multi-use tools

A Multitool is a hand tool that incorporates several tools into a single, portable device. Lineman's pliers incorporate a gripper and cutter, and are often used secondarily as a hammer.

Hand saws often incorporate the functionality of the carpenter's square in the right-angle between the blade's dull edge and the saw's handle.

Tool History

Evidence of stone tool manufacture and use dates from the start of the Stone Age, though it is possible that earlier tools of less durable material have not survived. The earliest tools were made by now-extinct hominid species preceding homo sapiens. The transition from stone to metal tools roughly coincided with the development of agriculture around the 4th millennium BC.

Mechanical devices experienced a major expansion in their use in the Middle Ages with the systematic employment of new energy sources: water (waterwheels) and wind (windmills).

Machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the industrial revolution. Advocates of nanotechnology expect a similar surge as tools become microscopic in size.