The Little World

Never glance. Glancing is dangerous. Either look deliberately or put your head down inside your shirt collar and see nothing. I know this because I glanced…

To my left, as it happened, as I went to the till at Hobbytech to purchase the set of Ustar plastic nippers. I went past the rack that has all the rest of Ustar’s little accessories on a peg board. As I glanced, I saw the very nippers that I bore in my hand…and nestled next to it a Ustar box with a colourful picture.

I disregarded the animé character of the schoolgirl making the obscure gesture. It means something to the Japanese but you probably don’t want to know. I looked at the nippers and the price…$ 10 cheaper than the separate packaging.

I also looked look at the suggestion that there are more things in the box. Whatever they might be, the fact that they piggybacked upon a lower price in the first place, means they were good value. But were the nippers going to be as good as the $ 39 version.

There’s the bet. And I took some time looking at the illustration and then at the nippers in the plastic bag in the other hand – and in the end decided that it was worth a punt. The model numbers were a little different but the basic design was the same. And Ustar produce decent tools.

Note that all-in-one or workshop kits is a time-honoured tradition for hobbyists. There have been no end of tool kits from Exacto, Tamiya,and the Italian makers of wooden ship models that are packed in wooden chests. They contain basic knives and saws and then start to become imaginative with measuring squares, clamps, sanding blocks, and Archimedes or Yankee drills and drill bits. Frankly, they are often crammed full of stuff that you never use – not because the tools are bad, but because you have other techniques.

Still, there is something about a beautiful set of tools in a chest – whether they are for toy boats or bone surgery – that sets the heart a’pounding. The trick is to stand there until the palpitations cease and then calculate the cost of the tools in the kit and subtract the ones that you have no earthly use for. Sometimes you find yourself looking at the wooden case as the only really good part of the kit.

It’s the same way with the mechanic’s tool kits that come in big plastic cases designed for stowage in your car’s ever-shrinking bootspace. Eventually the Chinese tool makers will exceed the interior volume of your Japanese car makers’ stowage and you’ll be buckling the toolbox into the back seat and stowing the child in the boot.

At least tool boxes don’t keep asking whether we are there yet…