A tall upright machine useful for suddenly snatching flat metal bar stock out of your hands so that it smacks you in the chest and flings your beer across the room, splattering it against that freshly painted airplane part you were drying.

Cleans paint off bolts and then throws them somewhere under the workbench with the speed of light. Also removes fingerprint whorls and hard-earned guitar calluses in about the time it takes you to say, “Ouch....”

Normally used for spinning pop rivets in their holes until you die of old age.

Portable cutting device used to make studs too short.

Used to round off bolt heads.

An electric sanding tool commonly used to convert minor touch-up jobs into major refinishing jobs.

One of a family of cutting tools built on the Ouija board principle. It transforms human energy into a crooked, unpredictable motion, and the more you attempt to influence its course, the more dismal your future becomes.

Used to round off bolt heads. If nothing else is available, they can also be used to transfer intense welding heat to the palm of your hand.

Used almost entirely for lighting various flammable objects in your shop on fire. Also handy for igniting the grease inside the wheel hub you want the bearing race out of.

A large stationary power tool commonly used to launch wood projectiles for testing wall integrity.

Once used for working on older British cars and motorcycles, they are now used mainly for impersonating that 9/16" or 1/2" socket you’ve been searching for the last 15 minutes.

Used for lowering an automobile to the ground after you have installed your new disk brake pads, trapping the jack handle firmly under the bumper.

A large stationary power saw primarily used to cut good wood into smaller pieces that more easily fit into the trash can after you cut on the inside of the line instead of along the outside.

Used for levering an automobile upward off a hydraulic jack handle.

A tool for removing wood splinters.

Tool for calling your neighbour to see if he has another hydraulic floor jack.

Theoretically useful as a sandwich tool for spreading mayonnaise; used mainly for getting dog**** off your boot.

A tool ten times harder than any known drill bit that snaps off in bolt holes you couldn’t use anyway.

A tool for testing the tensile strength on everything you forgot to disconnect.

A large prybar that inexplicably has an accurately machined screwdriver tip on the end opposite the handle.

Normally used to stab the lids of old-style paper-and-tin oil cans and splash oil on your shirt; but can also be used, as the name implies, to strip out Phillips screw heads.

A tool for opening paint cans; sometimes used to convert slotted screws into non-removable screws and butchering your palms.

See hacksaw.

The home mechanic’s own tanning booth. Sometimes called a drop light, it is a good source of vitamin D, “the sunshine vitamin,” which is not otherwise found under cars at night. Health benefits aside, its main purpose is to consume 40-watt light bulbs at about the same rate that 105-mm Howitzer shells were used during the first few hours of the Battle of the Bulge. More often dark than light, its name is somewhat misleading.

A machine that takes energy produced in a coal-burning power plant 200 miles away and transforms it into compressed air that travels by hose to a Chicago Pneumatic impact wrench that grips rusty bolts last over-tightened 58 years ago by someone at ERCO and neatly rounds off their heads.

A tool used to crumple the metal surrounding that clip or bracket you needed to remove in order to replace a 50-cent part.

A tool used to cut hoses too short.

Originally employed as a weapon of war, the hammer nowadays is used as a kind of divining rod to locate the most expensive parts not far from the object we are trying to hit.

Used to open and slice through the contents of cardboard cartons delivered to your front door; works particularly well on contents such as seats, liquids in plastic bottles, collector magazines, refund checks, and rubber or plastic parts.

Any handy tool that you grab and throw across the garage while yelling “Damn it!” at the top of your lungs. It is also the next tool that you will need.

A balm, usually applied verbally in hindsight, which somehow eases those pains and indignities following our every deficiency in foresight.