The Little World

I thought it felt a bit odd. The nippers I keep in my travelling kit to separate plastic parts from sprue trees felt strange while biting into a kit. No-wonder – the coiled spring wire that separates the blades had fractured. Pretty good for a tool that was less than a year old, eh?

It’s an Excel product, and I was surprised that should be so weakly-made. I’ll avoid their nippers in the future.

The other lesson I learned came when I saw that the break was not fixable. The nippers are encased in thermoplastic moulded handles that will not permit disassembly. They’re broke and going to stay broke.

Not so with a lot of other tools that we use. Of course we can experience damage that no designer could anticipate – the tool used contrary to all good sense and a bend or fracture from force improperly applied. Tools get dropped and dulled and corroded, but they do so when we fail to use or care for them.

However, disaster having been produced through our own agency, it is also possible to repair a good tool. The power tool that can be taken apart, parts replaced, or lubrication renewed, is a good tool. The chisel that the spouse uses to scrape concrete from the driveway…ahem…can be resharpened properly. The rusted plane can be de-rusted and restored. If the tool is only good for a limited use and has no way of restoration, it is a bad tool.

I don’t suggest that you get the contents of your workshop and throw it at the wall to see whether or not it is still going to work. That’s the sort of thing you can reserve for mobile phones and computer tablets. But you should look at what you have bought over the years and see whether you have something that can be refreshed. You’ll be pretty proud of yourself when you can do it, and the work you produce will be far better.

PS: Sharpened wood chisels yesterday with an oilstone block I purchased as a dental student in 1967. The chisels are like little razors and I’m dead pleased with myself.