I got this from another forum and just knew that most of you would love this:
If you have never puttered around in a shop, don’t bother to read the following. You won’t understand. If you have puttered around in one and you can’t laugh at yourself, don’t bother to read any further you will be insulted.
Some Shop Tools Explained
1. Hammer- A tool which acts as a divining rod to locate expensive and delicate parts not far from the object you are trying to "ajust."
2. Box knife- Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered by guys in brown uniforms. Particularly effective on boxes containing soft materials such as gaskets and I&T manuals.
3. Gasket Scraper- A device used to score and/or scratch precision machined surfaces. Also used to remove dog poop from your boots.
4. Pliers- A manual device used to round off bolt heads.
5. Vise Grips- A highly efficient device for rounding off bolt heads. Also used as an effective device for transferring welding heat directly to the palm of your hand.
6. Hacksaw- A cutting tool which operates on the Ouija board principal. It transforms human energy into random, unpredictable motion. The harder you try to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.
7. Straight-slot Screwdriver- Used to mix epoxy resin and hardener to a consistent dark gray color on the torn-off top of a Fram oil filter box.
8. Cross-point Screwdriver- A tool for opening the inner oil seal of 1-quart oil containers and 1-gallon antifreeze jugs, thus transferring contents of same onto your shirt. Also used to round off cross-point screw heads.
9. Deep Well Sockets- Normally used as piston-pin and wheel bearing drifts. May also used for drawing circles when a coffee can lid would be way too big.
10. Drop Light- An appliance used to apply large red welts and blisters to various parts of a mechanic's anatomy while simultaneously eliciting streams of invective and blasphemy. This device consumes 100 watt light bulbs at approximately the same rate that AAA shells were consumed during the first days of Desert Storm.
11. Shop Rags- Small pink squares composed primarily of lint which, when saturated with whatever fluids are accidentally spilled within the workshop, add a unique smell to the washer/dryer, and the family's clothes therein.
12. Oxyacetylene Torch- An expensive tool used almost exclusively for lighting stale workshop cigarettes that you keep hidden in the back of your socket drawer because your wife would never think to look there.
13. Zippo Lighter- A relatively inexpensive tool that would perform 90% of the tasks reserved for the oxyacetylene torch if you could remember to buy lighter fluid for it.
14. Electric Drill- Normally used for spinning pop rivets until you die of old age.
15. Socket Drawers- A storage device once used to organize the sockets you have now strategically placed in odd locations throughout the workshop. Now used primarily to hide six month old cigarettes from a person who would throw them away for no good reason.
16. Drill Press- A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching pieces of bar stock out of your hand so that they slap you in the chest and fling your last beer across the shop.
17. Wire Wheel- Cleans rust off bolts then hurls them at the speed of light toward the nearest really expensive and most easily damaged item in the workshop.
18. Hydraulic Floor Jack- Used to lower the tractor after installing a new rear axle seals, usually trapping the jack handle firmly under the tractor.
19. Telephone- A handy tool for calling your buddy to see if he has another hydraulic Floor Jack.
20. 2 x 4- An eight foot long piece of Douglas Fir used to lever the tractor up off the hydraulic Floor Jack.
21. Tweezers- Tool for removing Douglas Fir splinters from the palms of your hands.
22. Easy Out- A bolt extractor designed to break off in bolt holes. Manufactured from the hardest material know to man.
23. Timing Light- A stroboscopic instrument for illuminating grease deposits on the camshaft gear.
24. Shop Manual - A book which describes in detail the workings and components of all systems which are currently functioning properly. Through unexplained magic, all reference to the part you're actually trying to fix mysteriously disappear whenever you reach for the shop manual.
25. Radio - An electronic marvel which allows your favorite performers to sing in a shop filled with dust and paint fumes, something they would never actually do.
26. Two-Ton Hydraulic Engine Hoist- A device for testing the tensile strength of the small bolts, electrical system wires, and other lines you have forgotten to remove/disconnect.
27. 1/2" x 16" Screwdriver- A large prying tool which, for some unexplained reason, has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end opposite the handle.
28. Outside Micrometer- A device for periodically reviewing the true meaning of all of those little incremental marks on the barrel and trying to remember whether they translate into thousandths or hundred thousandths of an inch and just how many places to the right of the decimal that is anyway.
29. Battery Electrolyte Tester- A convenient method of transferring sulfuric acid from the tractor battery to the inside of your toolbox after determining that your battery is as dead as a doornail, just as you thought.
30. Metric Wrenches- Used on tractors manufactured in countries whose citizens mistakenly believe that measurements based on an inaccurate estimate of the true circumference of the earth are easier to visualize and more accurate than measurements based on the instep of a dead king. On products using Imperial measurements, metric wrenches are used mainly for rounding off bolt heads.
31. Grease Gun- A device for checking your zirk fittings to determine that they are still plugged with rust and/or dirt.
32. Air Compressor- A machine that converts energy produced in a coal burning power plant 200 miles away into compressed air that travels by hose to a impact wrench that grips rusty bolts last tightened 40 years ago by a guy named Joe, and rounds them off.
33. Refrigerator- A trouble-free appliance which is used primarily to chill piston pins down to an easy press-fit while storing up to 24 cans of beer provided that the guy who promised to bring the beer didn't forget.
"Man's mind stretched to a new idea, never goes back to its original dimension." -Oliver Wendell Holmes
