Long ago, back in the Beacon Hill basement shop in Seattle, Pappy and I got to talking about slotted screwdrivers. Now there’s a sentence that already dates a man.
Younger readers have grown up in a world of Phillips heads, Torx, Allen sockets, square drives, spline drives, and enough imported security fasteners to suggest modern civilization no longer trusts anybody with a screwdriver in the first place. But once upon a time, the humble slotted screw ruled the Earth. Radios, appliances, switch plates, junction boxes, furniture, machine tools — all of it held together with slot-head screws and optimism.
Pappy, being an old Seattle fire captain, treated tools with the kind of seriousness only old mechanics, firefighters, machinists, and shipyard men seem capable of anymore. Modern culture tends to think of tools as consumer goods. To those fellows, tools were extensions of judgment. If a man’s screwdriver was buggered up, there was a decent chance his thinking was buggered up, too.
I remember him sitting at the bench with a little triangular file touching up the blade of an old slotted screwdriver that looked perfectly fine to me.
“What are you doing?” I asked him. “Saving screw heads,” he said. And then came the lecture.
He explained that most slotted screwdrivers slowly round off at the tip with use. Once that happens, the blade stops making solid contact out at the edges of the slot where the torque actually belongs. Instead, the pressure migrates inward toward the centerline of the screw and the driver begins trying to climb out under load. Once that starts, the whole exercise deteriorates rapidly into stripped slots, profanity, and somebody eventually heading for the electric drill and a prehistoric ancestor of EZ-Outs.
Pappy hated that.
He explained that the very best machinist-grade screwdrivers often had their final little fraction of an inch honed dead flat instead of continuing the taper all the way down. That let the blade fully fill the slot instead of acting like a wedge trying to split firewood.
Then he told me about an idea he’d been carrying around in his head. He called it the “reverse-pitch slotted screwdriver.”
Which, honestly, sounded halfway between a machine tool patent and a Cold War submarine component. But the idea itself was clever.
His thought was that instead of continuously widening from the tip upward, the blade should fit the bottom of the slot perfectly and then actually narrow slightly for the next tiny fraction of an inch above the tip. Maybe a thirty-second of an inch. Maybe less.
His reasoning was beautifully practical. If the lower portion of the blade fully occupied the slot while the upper portion relieved slightly away, the screwdriver would resist “hop out.” It would stay engaged deeper into the screw head, tolerate imperfect alignment, and reduce the tendency of slotted drivers to cam out when torque increased.
In plain English, it would stay put better when a mechanic was leaned over sideways under a dashboard cussing at a frozen screw with sweat running into his eyes. Which, if you think about it, is exactly where most screwdriver innovation ought to happen.
The thing about old mechanics was that they thought geometrically. They didn’t use words like “ergonomics” or “human interface optimization.” They simply stared at failure long enough to understand why it was happening.
I never did anything with Pappy’s idea. I had my AI stack gin up some plans and I saved this one so you could get the idea of how it works:
At the time I was neck-deep in electronics work, radio gear, kids, engineering deadlines, newsrooms, and all the other rigmarole life stacks onto a man before he notices thirty years have gone by while looking for a missing nut driver.
Besides, the world quietly moved on.
Phillips screws took over because assembly lines liked controlled cam-out. Allen heads spread everywhere. Robertson square-drives appeared. Torx came along from the future like a mechanical gift from a civilization that actually respected technicians. Modern deck screws with spline drives now sink themselves into lumber with almost supernatural obedience compared to the medieval suffering once associated with brass slotted wood screws.
And somewhere in there, Pappy’s screwdriver became one of those good ideas history simply outran.
Still, I think about it sometimes because there’s something admirable in a man studying an annoyance deeply enough to redesign the geometry of the problem itself.
That lesson stayed with me.
Which brings us to another old shop problem: workspace.
Been Designing a Tool Bronco
Or more precisely, the complete and total absence thereof.
Back in the golden age of ham radio boat anchors, equipment possessed mass in the same way small moons possess mass. Today my little Hermes Lite 2 SDR setup sits quietly on a desk corner performing signal-processing miracles that would have required an entire wall of glowing vacuum tubes when I was younger. The modern little SDR rigs are astonishing. Five watts, digital signal processing, software-defined architecture, waterfall displays, filtering sharper than most lawyers, and enough flexibility to make a 1970s communications engineer weep softly into his slide rule.
But the old Hallicrafters gear?
Different universe entirely.
An HT-32B transmitter. SX-101 receiver that had been properly “breathed on.” HT-33B amplifier. Add the roll-around steel rack cabinet and you were already north of three hundred pounds before accounting for cables, microphones, manuals, spare tubes, patch cords, meters, and the accumulated archaeology of a technical life.
And the rack itself was no lightweight. Heavy-gauge steel with industrial casters large enough you could roll across a garden hose without slowing down. You probably could have rolled over a small child, too, though modern legal departments insist I clarify that no such testing was ever formally conducted.
The real problem came once you started servicing the gear.
A so-called “small” radio cabinet might measure nineteen inches across externally, but the moment you pulled the chassis, removed the cabinet, and opened things up for troubleshooting, the operational footprint expanded like federal spending. Suddenly the project occupied twenty-two inches sideways, thirty-six inches front to back, plus enough additional clearance for test leads, oscilloscope probes, soldering irons, alignment tools, manuals, coffee cups, extension lamps, and the screwdriver that had mysteriously vanished into another dimension despite having been in your hand four seconds earlier.
Old radio repair didn’t need a desk. It needed a loading dock. Forklift would have helped, too.
At one point Pappy wandered through the shop while I was losing a wrestling match against entropy and suggested a pull-out work surface like an old breadboard extension. I actually built one into a desk for a while. Worked beautifully, too. Pull the shelf out, set tools there, keep the primary bench clear for the radio chassis itself.
Elegant solution. Except for one thing. The desk stayed put. The work didn’t.
That realization hit me years later after I’d entered the modern age with 3D printers humming away in the background like robotic chickens laying plastic parts instead of eggs. Somewhere between printing brackets, cable organizers, SDR cases, and oddball adapters at two in the morning, I happened to glance down at my left forearm.
Now this is where inventors get themselves into trouble. Normal people see an arm and think “arm.”
Inventors see unused carrying capacity. And suddenly the Tool Bronco was born.
The idea is still evolving in my head, but picture something halfway between a wearable tool rig, a pit crew accessory, and a low-budget exoskeleton for aging makers who are tired of walking six miles a day inside their own shops looking for misplaced tools.
I was thinking about the Trinity Valley linemen here in Texas – out in a storm, shitty conditions -wouldn’t it be nice to have a few spare crimps somewhere besides a shirt pocket when it’s pouring or snowing and icing?
Of course, I’d do ONLY a left arm version of it. That’d be social justice for the lefty’s who outscore us righty’s in math because of how their brains work differently – I know – SJW is bad, but when comes to handedness in shop tools – oh, let’s not…
The Tool Bronco would mount along the forearm using broad Velcro straps at the wrist and just below the elbow. Lightweight but rugged ABS plastic, probably 3D printed in sections with reinforcing ribs and contouring so it wouldn’t rotate around the arm every time you reached for something. Not huge enough to become ridiculous. Just enough storage to carry the things you constantly need but constantly lose. Keep from running up and down the ladder – that kind of thing. Comfort cuff would make it long-term wearable and maybe that’s part of the anti-twist so the tools don’t dump out 2 stories up.
A magnetic strip for screws and bits. Socket retainers. Small crescent wrench. Stubby driver. Impact bits. Maybe a flashlight. Tiny magnetic pickup tool for recovering escaped hardware from the dimensional portal beneath every workbench. And yes, naturally, a bottle opener, because any civilization advanced enough to develop wearable shop infrastructure should still maintain proper priorities.
The older I get, the more I suspect most shop inefficiency has nothing to do with fabrication itself. The real time loss comes from stupid movement. Standing up. Sitting down. Hunting for tools. Forgetting why you stood up in the first place. Carrying screws from one side of the bench to the other. Looking for the 7/16 socket that vanished despite violating several known laws of physics in the process.
Comes with a second “blind” (Braille) tools so you can work in the dark with it, too…mind adds features for weeks on this kind of thing… MSRP $149 with basic tools and magnets.
Modern shops increasingly resemble memory exercises interrupted occasionally by actual work.
And somewhere in all this, I still see Pappy at the old bench with that little file touching up screwdriver blades because he understood something fundamental:
A good craftsman never stops refining the interface between human intention and physical reality.
Sometimes that refinement is a sharpened screwdriver. Sometimes it’s a pull-out shelf.
And sometimes it’s a ridiculous forearm-mounted wearable toolbox with a beer opener attached. That’s the Tool Bronco PPE/Medicine kit.
Wait!!!
Memo to G2 (the server farm build medical dir/ son)
“Hey son, anyone making an arm-mounted AED or gunshot kit for mass casualty events?”
Either way, the shop rolls on. Safely – for the first beer, anyway. Don’t suppose you’d be interested in my under-bra hanging small parts chest ideas? I need to sit in a crawlspace for a while and think.
Doing It Yourself
If you have an interest in the new/emerging hobby/job skill or AI, or if you have an interest in owning your own “sovereign AI” at home, then check out our Home AI Central website. For the more advanced concepts and evolutionary detective work, see the HiddenGuild.dev website.
If you’re waiting for big savings on tools and home improvement supplies? National Tool Slut Day is approaching. Amazon has already confirmed Prime Day gets dragged forward into June this year, though the exact dates remain undiscovered, as of this morning. Across garages, workshops, ham shacks, grow rooms, and home labs nationwide, TSD (tool slut disease) sufferers are already compiling emergency lists of “absolutely essential” purchases including thermal cameras, bench power supplies, cordless ratchets, mini-PCs, and at least three tools they didn’t know existed until YouTube suggested them.
As always, the first symptom is hearing yourself say, “I’m just waiting for Prime Day…” Current treatment options include paying retail (applying a thick covering of cash) or getting married which some users report does alleviate symptoms, though several methods of action are suspected.
Write when we’re wrong,
George@Ure.net
After all that screwing around, you deserve a… stiff drink.
“The Screwdriver is a classic combination of vodka and orange juice that has been designated an International Bartender Association official cocktail.”
https://www.liquor.com/recipes/screwdriver/
In ham radio, the nomenclature was often applied as one moved progressively up the vacuum-tube food chain in amplifier design. A small 50-watt class amp using a WWII surplus 807 was code for beer. “Pour me a pair of 3-500Zs” meant a serious double. And a pair of 4-1000As? Well, now we’re into overpour territory and somebody better check filament voltage before key-down.
There are additional old-barroom scaling systems, but most of them were developed before sensitivity training, HR departments, and permanent digital evidence. So in the interest of staying off lists, I’ll merely note that screwdriver technology and beverage technology have long shared a certain practical vocabulary. Just don’t venture into one-bagger/two-bagger country, or you risk arrest, shaming, and/or imprisonment by the modern Just-Us silo keepers.
My first 5kW AM transmitter used a pair of 4-1000s as a plate modulator. Those fins ran cherry red hot. You know how AM was modulated to sound ‘louder’ than the competition. Every six months we replaced the 4-1000s because we were melting holes in those finned, red hot plates.
Remember JC, those are not just “Data Centers” they are building. Those are dedicated temples for the new god.
they are very proactive in lobbying to give those temples the same rights as the Houses of Religion.
I Win with God within.
Cue: ~ Go ~
https://youtu.be/LO2RPDZkY88?si=Nt_suNopr-Gvwv4r
Chemical Brothers.
Just the choir if we work it right
Space limitations have forced a cluttered minimalist discipline on me, but it fits lifestyle and operating mode.
I have my large frontline wrenches and drivers in tool rolls, all stuffed in one of those oversized tanker GI-style canvas bags. For sockets and bit drives, there is usually nothing better organized than the carrying case they rode in on.
Small specialty drivers are on the printer cart next to my solitary computer station. They rarely make it out the door.
About the only power tools I use frequently are the battery operated drill, and a small air compressor. I have a portable aluminum air tank I fill. I typically use hand floor pumps for the bike tires. Electric and gas chain saws stay at the ready. I have other power tools, but use them infrequently.
I’ve run into a serious tool storage problem. Other supplies – less so. Working across disciplines from hydraulics to electronics, mechanics, plumbing, carpentry, concrete, welding, software, and more, tools proliferate like bunnies, including the dust bunny kind, but rarely a hot bunny that would make it all worthwhile. Sometimes it’s quicker to buy another essential tool than find the three that you have, and sometimes it’s quicker to make one than to wait on Amazon or drive hours to a store. I have to rethink how to both store and access these things when operating in different locations around here. A dedicated tool truck or trailer is not a reasonable option.
If you don’t have enough floor space, then going vertical with metal storage shelves can help. Uline has good ones. I need to do some more of that.
I buy industrial shelving, surplus, 18ga steel, 32x84x12 and 236 pounds each, for about $10 per unit. I originally bought six of these to cut into weld stock because I couldn’t buy junk steel sheet for that kind of money… Got to looking, and decided they were much too nice and much too valuable to destroy. They show up in school auctions about once every 6-8 weeks…
Your screwdriver diagram reminded me of a 5 gallon bucket out in the time anchor realm. It is 2/3 full of old brace and bit screw drivers my dad had dug and rooted out of various farm and estate sales. He would take them and grind them down to various profiles for wood turning small chess pieces, which was his last shop adventure before passing on. I stopped by to see him one winter day and found him bent over is hand built lathe wearing a bloody, kind of clean shop towel on his head, He was testing the latest tool and a weld let loose sending the jagged piece across his forehead. The only reason he let me take him to the ER in town was to get away from Mom who was in full rage after she had realized she was holding one of her best T towels to his head and the blood stain clashed with the little daisy needlework she had added to the edge. He passed away soon after this.
That bucket of memories is a powerful time sync best avoided or I would lose a large part of the day just pawing through it.
Stay safe. 73
You know Jim you can get some pretty cool stuff at yard sales and the dump..lol lol..I got the nicest radial arm saw and band saw at the dump..one lumber supply place tossed out a whole bunk of 3/4 ply..A fork lift scraped the side..not bad but it had a slight blemish..when they went from 16 ounce bottles of pop to 20 ounce bottles everything they had went out..we got at the dump site somewhere around a thousand cases..lol lol..sports cards..my boss hated that I was buried in books it bothered him..tgen some kids were throwing out their parents library..he grabs a book..home fires burning..about six or seven hundred pages..he grabs it tosses it at me and says..why don’t you read thus ine..then he left for lunch..every other page had a fifty dollar bill..they lived through the depression when banks closed.. I raced TBE truck back to the pit..but they already had them buried..one store tossed out their cash drawer lol..and vacuum cleaners..wow..the expensive ones..people buy them fill the bag then throw it away..lol lol..I was giving kerby vacuums away..
retail stores..your wife buys you a pair of jeans..but they are the wrong size..she takes them back gets her money back.. they are tossed out..there was a guy brought back one of those little electricity jeaps..in the box..crush it..its not even open..crush it..we put it together and rode it around during break time until they made us crush it..the place I work now has a brand new dorm room fridge..never been used waiting for the garbage man today..and a beautiful small table..its trash….my Blackstone griddle.. it was missing one screw…twenty bucks and it was mine..they were going to toss it..we use it all the time..after xmas.. the retail store tossed out a whole rack of winter coats all down filled..they take a Razer blade to them to make them unusable.. when its shoe day..they toss out all left shoes one day..then right shoes the next..at one store they take their entire supply if towels and toss them when the styles change. one large exclusive store that only sells to the upper tier of society was notorious for that..waste in America.. everything goes in the trash..
needless to say I’m not allowed to go to the dump either..when a hospital renovated a floor or wing everything on that floor is tossed out..the bank sold to another branch bank they had just upgraded to new computers..yup you guessed it..that’s where I got my desk chair..I wanted the new copier but didn’t have a place for it..sports cards .. every year out goes semi loads of them..the last if this tears collectables..
The tool bronco might be OK for desk work if it was shielded from random contact with live circuits. Wearing one under a car where you need to remove your watch just to get your hand into somewhere would be a non-starter.
Scrapers R Us
Around the tbs household, old, abused flat heads (rounded corners) are relegated to the Scraper pile. Different widths for different applications; like scraping moss out from between pavers or a more rounded “blade” for scraping silicone putty out of old shower/tube fittings and grout lines.
Have even cannibalized(angle Grinder) an old rounded flat head into (2) short “shafts” that were mounted to piece of steel – perfect tool for turning ancient “Bolts” holding the “Narraganset” 9ft Pool Table together. Fits perfectly inside old Stanley (2) two hands -handheld drill. This tool is inserted into Bolt hole..it klicks in, then youse can start turning.
Need to breakdown or setup a Narraganset Pool Table – I got those skills now..after much trial and error. As for humping the those 1 inch thick Vermont Slates around – fugit about it, need some Big Boys for moving those suckers around.
Sunday Open Question- How Gay is Donald Jeffery tRump, and does it matter?
Did it matter when obongo was in WH?
Lol I have a freezer..every day I have to choose a gallon of ice out of it ..more if its humid out..it would make the perfect air well lol..the thing is there is a drain plug but I never could figure out where the kink is in it..I have an old scraper that works perfect for the job.
Tool Bronco is a neat idea. Now that you’ve gone public, it won’t be long before some offshore, AI informed, knockoff has one on Amazon.
My early experience with using tools remotely was in the Navy. The radar room, with all the tools was 2 decks below the 13-ton radar antenna with both a 5 KW CW transmitter & a 3Megawatt pulse transmitter & the receivers. A desk sized pile of C band waveguides routed the signals from the dome to the klystrons and the receivers. One time, a liquid cooled dummy load failed & flooded most of the waveguides. We had to take everything apart, wash it with grain alcohol, & reassemble. It all used Allen fasteners, & that was before ball Allen wrenches were available. I still remember one screw that took 3 hours to remove & 3 hours to tighten, 1/8 of a turn at a time, hopping you didn’t drop anything, which would always fall 2 decks down.
The problem – and you know this as a world famous writer – when the ideas are flowing hard and fast you do your best to capture – maybe filter a few – but mainly just let ’em burn into paper – that’s what this week had been, lol
I’m a long way from world famous, but thanks for the plug. Please keep up the good work. I have started reading your latest, but there are interruptions…
Do you know the problems getting ‘Fire” to our homes? A story is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abfEH7SAM6A
Cheers
Anyone care to loan some time to talk about the pros and cons of a situation? The corporate world must be mesmerized at the seeming magnetic attraction for rare earths between a First Son and a company allegedly under guidance of publicly recorded register number 04370-510 of the U.S. Federal Prison system. Long before the world heard of Star Trek and “where no man has gone before”, Vulcan stood as the Roman god of fire celebrating the Vulcanalia festival on August 23rd. According to legend, Vulcan utilized caves on Mount Etna to forge his weapons.
tool bronco,,, variations on a theme,, I needed one for 5 gal buckets
https://bucketboss.com/collections/bucket-organizers
as one on the arm would not work in my usage,,, but could be “handy” on the right job,,, tools for tools that make the job easier, or should we just call them holsters, Tool Time Tim had a belt
pocketprotectors are another type, mine carried ink pen, mechanical pencil, soapstone, sharpie, small screwdriver with magnet tip and 6″ scale,,, all the while I carried my bucket
I understand A G s concern, dropping small things when working on grated flooring in 300ft tall boiler blg, tink, tink tink, down she goes, hope ya can find it on the 4th floor, it is concrete
gees,,, I dislike phillips,, with a passion,,,
hollow ground screw drivers for slot head screws when working on guns
I hate to post this on a Sunday afternoon, but this is something I’ve been watching grow out of control over the past year or two. Networked AI cameras by Flock, Clearview, and others connecting autonomously with government and private databases are creating a control grid that few among us have any idea of the scale and dystopian risks they are creating. Regardless of your views of El-Al, ICE, immigration or crime, the risk is to human freedom itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fbhd0r3wLw
The devil is in the details, and those details need to be made public and discussed, then addressed while we still can. Please share this with those in your own circles.
“Please share this with those in your own circles.”
Good luck. I DID share this, over a year ago. All I got was crickets…
Thanks Ray. I know of one small town in NM that had Flock for about a month and there was so much pushback that it was gone the next month. Sometimes it works, and often it doesn’t.
I I know I gave this story before a friend of mine sent me a laptop he’s a government it specialist. and my grandson when he was 3 years old would watch cartoons on it. one day he comes in I was cooking in the kitchen and he says Papa can you change the channel. in there was my friend’s home computer I had the whole cloud I had his banking I had everything I could turn his camera on or off I could track his camera his phone took a long time and I couldn’t get him but there was one file up on the cloud that said photos so I there’s a joke picture out the luckiest man in the world wins the lottery and finds true love all in the first week. so I cut the girl out of the picture and put his picture and I put it in the deal he’d erase it so I put it back in here to race it again and he did that for about a week and I finally said to his son I says would you go and talk to your dad and tell him that he’s got to destroy this thing. so I sent the thing back to him and said destroy it it’s still that machine even though you would put it back to factory specs that machine is still logged on to your cloud account I could go and change I could put photos in there I had downloaded Beavis and Butthead videos to his phone everything. and he didn’t get it changed phone numbers in his phone one digit. anyway he called up and he says so what was going on with it and I said well didn’t you I figured you’d get a clue when I kept sending that picture of that guy in there and he said what guy so I went and send him the picture and he said that’s the pervert. this guy runs up and he rings my doorbell and takes off he had the police hunting for this guy because every time I would drop that in that photo folder his doorbell would ring.
As a ‘Lefty’ I’m offended that you think you can out-think us! Never under estimate the power of a Lefty to use things with the wrong hand. In Japan, where ALL are expected to use the right hand, I received a left-handed-compliment from mama-san as I dived into a boiling sukiyaki pot with chopsticks to remove a soft cube of tofu. She looked at me in amazement and said: “He’s very good with the wrong hand!”
My brother “shrink” told me someday the left handed will take over the world! All seven of them. Yuk
you do realize that if you are all left-handed and you’re walking in path trying to see something eventually you’ll end up right back where you started because you’re predominant side is going to have you make that Arch that’s why you should have a left-handed and a right-handed to walk the line straight
International Left Handers Day is an international day observed annually on August 13 to celebrate the uniqueness and differences of left-handed individuals …
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Lefthanders_Day
Welcome to The Left Handed Store. This website is an online collection of products that are designed solely for left handed people.
https://thelefthandedstore.com
“I may be left-handed, but I’m always right!”
doesn’t matter if you’re right-handed or left-handed I can write with either hand or draw with either hand and when I was young I used to do a bar trick where I would write with one hand and draw with the other hand now it’s really really hard but you can do it you just can’t think about what you’re doing
my granddaughter was in her college course and she told her Grandpa she told her professor she says my grandpa can balance an egg and he said it’s impossible so she called me and had me balance an egg on the table to show him that it can be done now the wide end is easy you just got to find the proper balance the narrow and I always thought that that was impossible but I did it once it is really hard do it on the narrow side. her professor was astounded cuz he didn’t think you could balance an egg
My tools are all in a mesh pouch bulkhead. Can easily spray the whole collection with LPS-3 before heading offshore. Full access, no rust.
Check out http://www.barryspanier.com/baleen for the big idea that is available to anyone with budget and will. Let’s clean it up.
Cold and clear. Amazing great sail yesterday. Quite the labyrinth of secret little coves and anchorages. The best is yet to come.
Stiks
Sticks – thanks for that I had forgotten that next to (rum., female cocapt, and food) LPS (and BoeSheild) is some of the most indispensable of yachthy life…
Gunsmith Screw Drivers.
Hollow ground. Flat point.
Don’t even begin to tighten a screw on a gun with a “normal” screwdriver.
Vital knowledge there – gun smything tools are on the list – my bank thanks you doc – they ain’t cheap for good uns
They don’t have to be specific gunsmithing tools.
However…
They do have to be fine quality tools.
“USA” is likely better than anything Asian, but on this type of tools, “Made in USA” is not a guidepost. See which tools the US Army uses. These are the tools which work, reliably, day after week after month after year, in the field, where spares don’t exist. They’re not sexy and they’re not cheap. On the bright side, you only buy them once…
A neighbor once told me..always look for chrome vanadium when looking for a tool …he sold tools to mechanics and machinists for a living..
I have used a file or stone on flat screwdrivers since I was a little kid. I never tried an arc. I would “sharpen” them until they were either parallel or had a slight negative taper (across the flats) to a quarter inch up. Dad would square screwdrivers if the tip got boogered-up. He was a metallurgist, and although I could use a first-cut triangular file or a 1×2.5 stone, he didn’t feel that at 4,5,6 years old, I could understand how to grind on tool steel without destroying its temper or why that was important.
I don’t believe the “Tool Bronco” as you’ve illustrated it, is practical.
However, I DO believe you can create a prototype, patent and trademark it, then sell or license it to someone like Irwin or Apex for “buying a small island” money. It is an absolute market winner…
BTW, speaking of boatanchors and their weight: I bought my 3rd SX-28 last week — picked it up today. It was in a little town in Ohio, probably halfway between Dayton and Lehman’s retail store. I mention this because I saw something I haven’t seen in years. The town was probably about 1500 people or thereabouts. I’ll bet I passed 400 people out walking, enjoying the sunshine. Old, young, men, women, [lots of] boys and girls, nobody raising hell or bitching about being misgendered, all simply “being” and enjoying a nice day. Oh yeah, there was not a single cellphone in sight…
(“Younger readers have grown up in a world of Phillips heads, Torx, Allen sockets, square drives, spline drives, and enough imported security fasteners to suggest modern civilization no longer trusts anybody with a screwdriver in the first place. But once upon a time, the humble slotted screw ruled the Earth. “)
got to say I love this…. we have a lumber yard/hardware store I love to shop at..so much so that my wife make me take a chaperone with..lol lol
( you could walk up and say..seen him headed to the bar looking for a sexy woman..and all she would say is..I hope he has a nice time…no worries there.. but if you said hey I seen him and he said something like I’m headed to Barnes and noble books…or headed to the hardware store..and I’m in trouble..”)
Anyway back to Menards.. lol lol.. I needed a yard stick ruler..I went in this young kids there..say could you tell me where the yard sticks are..huh..what’s that ..oh its a long ruler three feet long.. he was dumbfounded..didnt have the foggiest clue what in the he’ll I was talking about..so he wanted me to describe it..oh sure its a stick with numbers on it..lol
after that it was a challenge I would go in just to seek this kid out..with names of different tools..oh yeah can you show me where your Yankey screwdrivers are..or feather boards lol lol the funniest one is..where’s the bastards…he shrugged his shoulders and said take your pick they’re all around us lol.lol lol..
I was friends with the store manager and one day we were taking and that kid walks by..I said I gotta go..he says huh..oh I’m teaching that kid tools.. of course they no longer make blades for a Stanley 45.. there are places that will make them though..on the flip side..I don’t have a clue over this new crap..I had to have an 8 year old teach me how to use my phone lol lol
The kids at Menards now see me coming and whip out their store inventory PDAs.
I’ve got a cousin who’s about 35 now. She’s a farm girl. Her first job was working in a small-town, old-fashioned hardware store. When she graduated and moved on to college, she got a job at a Lowe’s near her school and apartment. It took her 5 months to become hardware and tool manager. Once she reached that plateau, she went out of her way to recruit men in their 60s and 70s with backgrounds in real hardware stores, and hire them at a pay premium. She DID work at Lowe’s for a couple years after graduation, but eventually moved on. I rarely go to Lowe’s because Menards is so much cheaper and Carter has much better lumber, but when I do, I often see an old man amongst the kiddies, in the hardware and tool areas. ‘Makes me wonder if Corporate learned something from me cuz…
that’s what Menards did too. I don’t do it anymore because they hired all these old hardware lumber yard guys that used to have their own shops and stores. and they know exactly what I’m asking for so I avoid going and asking questions about stuff unless I’m really looking for it.
Or kitchen gadget isle..she cringes when there’s a new kitchen gadget advertised..
The Son is a lot better..their returns AR sold by pallet I think its either fifty bucks a pallet or some like a hundred..the problem is..you have to buy forty palkets.. at one truck salvage store they had two stop lights..I have to say…these were the ones that construction companies use to control travel in construction zones..I wanted to buy them the put them up in some remote area just to sit back and watch people stopping g in the middle of nowhere.. slot machines.. casinos dump them every couple years and put new ones in..not sure what they are selling for now but they use to be a hundred bucks..Reader Ray frequents these auction sites.. AED’s.. every three or four years they change case colors. and the old ones thrown away..I have three…one for the house one for the garage and one in the car..
Amazon. there’s a store in our nearby City that they buy a truckload of Amazon pallets every week and they call it the dollar store you walk in there and you can buy something that cost $200 for a couple bucks one one time they got back a pallet and they had 40 urns for burial.