The Little World

We all use tools, and if we are in the dating market occasionally they use us. Some tools are good – some bad. Some are expensive, and some cheap. If you go into the wrong bar you will get the latter types exclusively. Sometimes you’ll be in the same dilemma at your hobby shop or hardware store.

Bad tools are not necessarily cheap ones nor vice versa. You can get caught out or find a good bargain. But there are some classic characteristics of bad tools:

1. They are clumsily-built. This is the 21st century and we’ve been designing tools since the stone age. By now we know how to make something sleek and smooth – and to make it work in a way that doesn’t hurt the hand. No-one needs to hammer nails with a rock any more.
2. They are crudely-finished. A rough-cast engine block is one thing – a rough-cast pair of precision pliers quite another. Look at surgical instruments…no unfinished edges or surfaces.
3. They are badly-articulated. Thin rivets, wobbly joints,stiff pivots. All bad, and not likely to get better.
4. They hurt you. If the blade flexes and then cuts you, something is wrong. If you cannot operate the pair of pliers without getting a blood blister, there’s another fault.
5. They wear out. Knife blades wear, but the better ones wear slowly. Ditto shears and scissors. Pliers should not wear at all. If your purchase is unusable through wear and tear, it is a bad tool for you.
6. They break. That sends you back to the store to buy another and occasionally to the Emergency Room to have the bleeding stopped.

If that was a way to see the bad, here’s a list of good tool characteristics:

1. They are affordable. No-one needs Armani pliers or Gucci scissors at diamond exchange prices.
2. They are smooth operating. And stay that way.
3. They hold an edge, if they are supposed to have one and don’t develop one if they are not.
4. They are resistant to chemicals, water, rust, and abrasives. They stay bright.
5. Their handles are shaped to fit the part of the hand that is going to operate them.
6. They are not dangerous when packed away.

Go to your tool box now and close your eyes. Plunge your bare hand into the box and rattle it around in there. If it comes out bleeding, you need to reassess your tools and the way you deal with them.

It is not necessary to be Daniel Boone and be able to whittle a violin out of a box-wood tree. There are no points for making a model of Buckingham Palace out of discarded chicken bones and spit. You can – and you should – be a sensible and skilled user of tools. Or just ring for the butler and demand that he do everything for you.

It worked for Bertie Wooster.