Camouflaged tools

There's always "safety orange" spray paint...

nate

It's a conspiracy.

It's like the bigger opening in a tooth paste tube, or a larger size hole in a soda can. With the tools, they hope you lose them, so you'll buy another.

I spray all my tools with fluorescent orange. When I'm on a job site, I know if someone grabbed one of my tools. Much easier to see than initials engraved somewhere, and I have yet to lose one. Ugly yes, but it works.

Sounds like some idiots who make the color schemes. Not real working people like you and me.

My favorite color is blue. I'm part color blind. Blue stands out on the forest floor. I discovered this years ago with a blue Homelite chainsaw. Since then I keep thinking I've got to paint my newer saws blue. One Stihl in yellow and orange, and a red Homelite. Yeah, I'll do that. Someday. My milk crate with bar oil and so on, that's blue.

One summer on the apartment construction site where I was the gofer, I was stuck being the key-keeper for the tool crib. After about the first week of chasing stuff, I started highlighting all the common-use tools with dayglo pink spray paint. Cut the shrinkage rate a bunch, and made the MIAs a lot easier to find whilst doing the lock-the-doors walkaround at the end of the day.

-- aem sends...

About 50 years ago I read Vance Packard's book, _The Waste Makers_, about planned obsolescence. The part that has always stuck in my mind was about a manufacturer of potato peelers who wanted to increase sales. Potato peelers do not wear out; the most common reason people buy a new one is to replace the one they accidentally threw out with the potato peelings. So what if we make our potato peelers look as much like the peelings as possible? But, who will buy a potato peeler that looks like potato peelings? So they put the indistinguishable-from-peelings potato peeler in brightly colored packaging.

Perce

Garden tools sold in civilian stores are styled, sized, and colored based on what they think will appeal to women, who buy most of them. You look at a real supply house, and bright orange handles are more common. Fiberglas handles are almost always bright yellow.

Spending most of my recent project time trying to blacksmith a tree-assaulted metal shed back into usability, I'm wishing fasteners were dayglo-colored. My eyes ain't what they used to be, and when those little suckers jump into dark corners or the leaves under the trees, well, you get the idea. BTDT, so before I started, I went to the borg and bought 100-count boxes of spares. And those hex-head zinc-coated self-tapping pole barn screws go in with such a satisfying thunk, compared to the wimpy Phillips-heads the thing was made with.

-- aem sends...

And you can see YOUR ladder from a block away....................

That's why I never bought anything from the Brookstone catalog. Hard To Find Tools? Not for me.

I once bought a fairly expensive pocket knife because it had a bright orange handle of a new kind of plastic. That kind of plastic got dirty and was impossible to clean, so I no longer had a knife that was easy to find.

A band of red Scotch reflective tape makes tools like hammers and screwdrivers easy to spot. It would be effective after dark, too. Tools marked that way can be spotted so far away that I have often used them as markers outdoors.

And why in the world do people dress their kids in 'camo' colors? So they can't be seen when lost in the park? So they blend in with the background when walking along the street?

Steve

Stupid colors, yes. What about the people that buy them? Bob-tx

I saw an ad for camo condoms once, with the legend: "So they can't see you coming!"

Since this turned into some remarks on keys. People kept keeping a cabinet key after using. Accidently I am sure by fogetting they put it in a pocket. I attached the key ring to a 6 inch piece of half inch conduit and brazed thr ring shut so key could not be removed. Have not lost it since. WW

When taking care of a relative's farm, I would have to get a key from a drawer to open the shop door. I was afraid I would never find it if it fell out of my pocket into weeds.

I tore of a few inches of that non-sticky pink polyethylene surveyor's tape and tied it through the eye of the key. Now it would be easy to find if dropped. It's also easy to feel in my pocket and to spot in the drawer. Unlike a key ring, the strip of tape isn't lumpy in my pocket.

If you don't know the kids there may be method to the madness of the parents!

I tried that with the keys for the display cabinets at work, years ago. Took about eight inches of half inch copper tubing, pounded one end flat, drilled, and put that on the keyring. Less than a day later, someone took the copper off, and threw it out. We went back to losing the keys.