9/8/2023 0 Comments Pack rat tool box sizesAll the ones you find nowadays have plastic handles, but his set had wood handles. Since they don’t have a lever-arm, they don’t generate as much torque as a ratchet handle, but they’re perfect for things like assembly and disassembly of electronics, which is what he used them for. My father had a set of nut drivers, which are screwdriver-handled sockets. I have a particularly fond memory of one specific tool and a rather creative crossover application into the BMW world. They’re just tools, there to do the job, and suffer the same fate as other tools, be it loss or breakage. As soon as they’re in a toolbox, they no longer have any special dispensation. On the one hand, it’s surprising, as I am an inveterate pack rat who sentimentally fills boxes with life’s mementos. I didn’t really treat these tools with any particular reverence, and so, fifty years after my father’s passing, nearly all of them are gone. I used to love playing with them when I was a kid, thinking that they looked like a two-headed monster out of a Japanese sci-fi film, and making the heads separate and the jaws open and close as if they were talking with each other. As you squeeze the handle, the jaws separate, which strips the insulation off. There was also a pair of wire strippers-the old-school ones with two jaws, one of which grabs the wire while the other cuts the insulation. But the cord had become badly frayed, and I believe that, at some point, I considered it a fire hazard and threw it out, a decision I now deeply regret. When, years later, I learned how to solder and tried to use it, I was astonished that my father actually employed it to build the Heathkit amplifier that graced our living room. I vividly remember the black-and-white braided cloth that covered the plug-in cord. There was a soldering iron nearly the size of my forearm-laughably large compared with the pencil-sized tips on modern irons. Owing to his profession, they were mostly small hand tools and electrical tools. These weren’t car guy tools-no ½-inch ratchet sets or big wrenches or timing lights or anything. I mention the electrical engineer thing because it explains his tools. While of course those two things aren’t mutually exclusive, I definitely did not inherit my car guy tendencies from him (although, according to my mother, I did inherit his rationality and Zen-like repose, at least on my good days). My father, who passed away in 1968 when I was ten, wasn’t a car guy. Rob is dealing with a family medical issue, so this week we’re reprinting one of his favorite columns from Roundel magazine.
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