Worst Tool Abuse / Misuse

[usenet]

This one wouldn't, the roof is falling in, otherwise we might have considered it ourselves as we have some chickens.

[Martin Evans]

Its not tool abuse but I happened to find out the other day that a Fein Multimaster (the expensive delta sander thingy) with the right saw blade is absolutely f*cking brilliant at removing floorboards - wish I'd bought one ages ago! Beats either a floorboard saw, a circular saw, or a the broken jigsaw blade trick which i'd used up to now. You can cut the tongues and do the cross cut across the floorboard before you get anywhere near it with a lifting chisel/big screwdriver.

[bigcat]

just rememberd another one... a milk bottle used as a hammer to nail up a doorframe. Yep, a glass one. Some folks are brave!

NT

[Rick]

Barb wire is easilly removed with 2 hammers, hammer them together with the wire in between.

I remember being told never to hammer 2 hammers together, so I guess this is abuse ?

Rick

[John Stumbles]

How much is expensive? Sounds like the trick for opening out the gap under skirting and the bottom of architraves to get vinyl underneath.

For cutting floorboards I also use a jigsaw, but I take the foot off and turn it over to use as a sort of mini reciprocating saw. I use it with the blade almost parallel to the wood: it can start a cut from nothing and make quite a clean cut across a board across the middle of a joist, without taking much out of the adjacent boards.

[John Stumbles]

Dulux Diamond glaze tins are practically impossible to re-open with a screwdriver: the glaze just glues up the join between tin and lid from the inside. Once I've bent a bit of the lid lip up with the screwdriver I find a pair of waterpump pliers on the lip and a levering action with the pliers does the trick

[doozer]

Apparently because they are toughened steel they can in theory shatter when banged together - at least that's what my old CDT teach told me.

[John Rumm]

Did it once when I was a kid with two hammers that belonged to my mum. The head fell off the smaller one!

(might just have been a result of it being bought for peanuts at the local market though!)

[Mary Fisher]

When I was a child we couldn't afford peanuts. Nor more than one hammer :-(

Mary

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[David Shepherd]

I had a Ferm (a free gift when I purchased a combi boiler, of all things) which didn't stand up to aforesaid abuse quite so well. The handle parted company with the main body of the drill.

David

[Andy Dingley]

Old hammers were wrought iron, with hard steel faces welded to them. if you hit one of these against something hard, then there's a very real risk of the weld failing and the face coming off in one piece. This is a waste of a good hammer, but it's not particularly hazardous.

Incidentally, the difference between a face and a peen on a hammer is that either can be of any shape, but a "face" is one of these hardened add-ons.

Modern hammers (for a very long time) have been made of cast steel (which is often forged, because "cast" doesn't quite what you think either). These don't need a hardenable face welding to them, and their hardened faces are often deeper. If you hit one of these against something hard, then it's likely to chip the edge and you have a small fragment pinging across the workshop. This really is an eye hazard.

[Andrew McKay]

My hammers will last a lifetime then. Thumbs are relatively soft.....

Andrew

[norm]

I cleaned the scum off the back of my front teeth with a Dremel and an appropriate looking polishing attachment.

I quickly found out why dentists have that squirty water thing. You can't spit out a hot tooth.

norm

[Dave Plowman (News)]

I wanted to sling a TV from the ceiling in the bedroom for those odd occasions where I wanted to watch TV there - bad back times, etc. Now wall mounting brackets are obtainable from any DIY place, but the only ceiling mounts I could find were pro types which cost as much as the set.

So I made one out of 15mm copper tube and my pipe bender. Looks very good and cost near nothing - I had the tube lying around.

[Mary Fisher]

I read that as 'the world failing' - like the sky falling on your head!

A lens came out of my specs this morning whilc walking through the sewage works. My world has changed in the twinkling of an eye!

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Oooouuuuuccccchhhhhhhh!

When I was eleven I filed off the end of my long incisor but it wasn't power assisted thank goodness.

Mary

[bigcat]

Lol. Theres a small but persistent tendency to do dentistry diy, but it does not have a good record.

NT

[Rick]

And the icidence of violent crime against the person was much lower.

[Bob Eager]

I'm just waiting for the usual suspect to mention car body filler.

[Andrew McKay]

Where is he anyway? I haven't seen any of the usual tripe that he posts for several days. Perhaps he's been following his own advice with the expected result?

....or maybe he saw the thread on DIY coffins and decided to investigate a new self latching mechanism..... :)

Andrew