Painted some of the tools for the field hot pink and safety orange. The other colors are still laying out there somewhere.
Missing Tools & Other Stuff
- Thread starter oldflame
- Start date
"Great minds think alike?" I've been using both of your techniques. Pre-imaging the item has helped but not as much as asking my wife. No fooling; her success at finding my lost stuff is over 90% and may be closer to the 99% I first posted. Still, the missing tools were only 6' from their home and remain missing.
"Weird" things happen, including really personal events that appear to be mathematically beyond coincidence. Sometimes I wonder if when we're no longer here, it'll all become clear, because it clearly seems that "someone/something" has taken a personal interest in making my life interesting sometimes. I believe this may happen to many or most people.
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All my mechanic tools are Snap-on including the box. I've only lost a couple items in the 40+ years I turned wrenches. Not saying they're better or worse. The cost of replacement makes one determined to find that wrench. The machinist stuff is Starrett or Mitutoyo except some that was Dad's is Fowler Browne and Sharpe and other companies that aren't here anymore. The way you use them kind of makes it hard to misplace.
On that note: I'm still using my father's 1950 Snap-On tool chest and the 1/4", 3/8" & 1/2" sockets, plus box & open-end wrenches. Only one deep 3/8" socket the 1/4" drive handle needed replacing. The plastic handle crumbled. None of those have gone missing ... thanks Dad!
I lost a can of spray paint I bought last week. I was absolutely certain it was still sitting in the car that I took to the hardware store last weekend to buy it, laying on the front seat. Guess where it wasn't this morning when I went to grab it? I have no memory of removing it from the car, and didn't have time to find it before I had to go to work. Goal was to paint that chassis today while the boss is out in a warm and dry space, let it cure overnight, and tomorrow night start assembling things.
worst part is, last night I thought to myself "should I go put that stuff in the truck now?". Talked myself out of it because it was raining, and I 100% knew where the paint was.
worst part is, last night I thought to myself "should I go put that stuff in the truck now?". Talked myself out of it because it was raining, and I 100% knew where the paint was.
In my generally chaotic approach to life, the one thing where I try to avoid that inevitable lost item is to do the best I can with putting things away when I'm done with them. Most of the time it's sufficient, but of course there are the times where you carry something off and put it somewhere that is not where you'd ever expect. However, I haven't found any tools in the refrigerator lately.
I work mainly on smaller electronic components now so that tends to change the scale and scope of where things can end up. It's not like working on a car where you have a large space to misplace things.
And I try to maintain organization with my stuff, too. I can generally find what I'm looking for quickly when I want something, like the gazillion serial adapter cables I've made over the years are now in a storage bin. I am not a naturally organized sort of person, so it really takes some effort for me to maintain this concept.
I work mainly on smaller electronic components now so that tends to change the scale and scope of where things can end up. It's not like working on a car where you have a large space to misplace things.
And I try to maintain organization with my stuff, too. I can generally find what I'm looking for quickly when I want something, like the gazillion serial adapter cables I've made over the years are now in a storage bin. I am not a naturally organized sort of person, so it really takes some effort for me to maintain this concept.
All the time. That's why I have screwdrivers placed in four different spots in the house and garage. Even then, I will misplace them.
One was found in the fridge, next to where the beer is kept.
That's exactly what I did some 30 years ago. Was working on something, wandered into the house for a beer, and spent a long time trying to figure out what I did with the screwdriver (or whatever it was) that I knew I had just used.
Eventually, you'll want another beer, and the mystery is solved.
I've left cable remotes in the fridge, too.
It's like the first place I look when I'm missing something these days.
it was in the damn truck already. Apparently a week ago I thought to put it there.
I told a friend once- successful criminals are absolutely meticulous. No deviations to anything ever. I need to be the same. Tools must be put back when done and during the project they get placed- "there" with the other tools and NOT over "there". Even when I had a memory they would escape-can't trust that memory anymore. This came up at the dinner table tonight- I think it is called mindfulness.
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For logic and safekeeping.
Been there, a lot of water goes over the dam in a week’s time.
DesertRatt
All Bark, No Bite!
I keep tools divided up by useage. Special tools for watches, tools for guitars, tools for electronics, tools for wood, tools for the RV, tools for cars and mechanical stuff. It's got its good and bad points. I put the small collections, like watch or guitar into shoe
boxes with labels and most of them live in my office. Big tools, or dirty tools in the garage.
The obvious downside is when a watch tool ends up in the mechanics bin. Then a long hunt is needed to find it. My worst habit is WALKING around with a tool. I have the tool in my hand then I need some tape and I walk into the room with tape, set the tool down, peel off some tape and walk back without the tool. Then.."where the hell is that screw driver" is sure to follow.
boxes with labels and most of them live in my office. Big tools, or dirty tools in the garage.The obvious downside is when a watch tool ends up in the mechanics bin. Then a long hunt is needed to find it. My worst habit is WALKING around with a tool. I have the tool in my hand then I need some tape and I walk into the room with tape, set the tool down, peel off some tape and walk back without the tool. Then.."where the hell is that screw driver" is sure to follow.
The more expensive the tool, the faster it will reappear. I once misplaced and re-purchased a $600.00 Dewalt double-bevel miter saw. When I got out to the Home Depot parking lot with the new miter saw, my old Dewalt was sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine running. I swear he was drunk—and grinning ear-to-ear.
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Bill Ferris
Lunatic Member
My eighties aged father (RIP) after I moved out in 1989, had this habit of putting all the perceived tools he felt he needed for some job outside, initially in a old timey thin wood strip woven picnic basket, to cart the tools in one trip out to the job area.
Good idea, except when he was finished, and probably tired afterwards, failed to return them to his organized Craftsman roll around tool cabinet`s drawers.
So with the garage filled with all kinds of items, he would forget where he placed the basket when he again needed various screw drivers that were in the basket, so he would go to Sears & buy another common size multi set of standard Craftsman flat head & Philips drivers so he would have the ones he needed for the next task.
I found 3 full sets of the original, & the freshly purchased replacement screw drivers while going through his garage after he passed on in Oct. of 2007, all scattered about, including the initially misplaced woven picnic basket, and other various other containers later on he had pressed into carting a handful tools to inside/outside repair tasks.
Good idea, except when he was finished, and probably tired afterwards, failed to return them to his organized Craftsman roll around tool cabinet`s drawers.
So with the garage filled with all kinds of items, he would forget where he placed the basket when he again needed various screw drivers that were in the basket, so he would go to Sears & buy another common size multi set of standard Craftsman flat head & Philips drivers so he would have the ones he needed for the next task.
I found 3 full sets of the original, & the freshly purchased replacement screw drivers while going through his garage after he passed on in Oct. of 2007, all scattered about, including the initially misplaced woven picnic basket, and other various other containers later on he had pressed into carting a handful tools to inside/outside repair tasks.
I've gone down under the house to look at the plumbing and found old Channellocks or something. It's like finding an old friend. All dusty and rusty.
I've found tools under the hood of the car like that. I've also found stuff that other people have left. The good pair of diagonal cutters that now lives in my toolbox was found up in a ceiling. They replaced a nearly identical set that I lost, so its basically just a trade.
Not to derail the thread…And then there are the surgeons who leave/sew up their tools inside their patients. Related, a friend of mine got cancer because her surgeon, three decades earlier, had used the wrong sutures to sew up her intestine. Clearly the surgeon and hospital were at fault—and liable—but everyone involved back then is retired or dead. Even the hospital has since closed.
There are surgical RN's now whose responsibility is to keep track of everything that goes into a patient and should come out of a patient, before being sewn up.