Am I alone here or do other peoples tolls sometimes choose to hide and then reappear...?
Spent forever the other night turfing everything upside down in the garage looking for the 8mm hex bit I know I have - could I find it - could I chuff
as like 
Off to Halfords, buy another one, get home use the new one once, job done. Open tool draw to put the new one away.......there's my old one sat
there bold as a lump of steel 
Like I say is this just me...?
yes, especially with allen keys. I have 3 sets and still can never find the one I want.
You are not alone - it gets worse as you get older too
I had a socket wrench that I was sure an ebayer had robbed. He came to the house, but couldnt fit the item in his car, so I lent him my socket set to
take it apart, and since then I couldn't find it.
About 3 days passed, and i worked up the courage to message him through ebay, asking for it back.
I found it on the passenger seat of the kit car.
RED FACE! 
Think of it as the Locost version of hide and seek!
Mike
important bolts always do that to me. engine mounting bolts and the like. the ones where i've only got exactly the number i need, they go missing for a month at a time
Think its called tool blindness. Its not just mechanic tools but building and DIY tools. And the symptoms only get worse!
Thats why I have 2 of everything.
Moss
Yep !
And I'm sure the buggers run away when I put them down as seconds later they vanish.
quote:
Originally posted by Guinness
Think of it as the Locost version of hide and seek!
Mike
Happens to me all the time.
I spend more time looking for tools than doing any work! Usually not only do I know that I've got the tool, but I know that I've seen it
recently, but I just can't find it.
Screwdrivers are the worst. I can sit down in the living room and slacken off a network socket, connect another socket to the spare cable and then
when I come to fasten the faceplate back, the screwdriver has vanished. After much searching, I find it on the other side of the room - at no point
before starting the search have I moved from my sitting position!
What I want to know is when you need a flat head screw driver your draw is full of cross heads and yet when you want a cross head its full of flat
heads????????
Who is it that changes them, and why do I have lots of 14mm spanners and never find a use them
[Edited on 1/6/09 by Lightning]
I can relate but I also have a floor that absorbs things that I drop. I can watch it (often in slow motion) fall but it disappears as soon as it hits
the floor or finds the energy to bounce 30 yards away. It yields things days later when I'm looking for something else i've dropped.
It also moves that bolt, clip or spanner just out of reach when I've got the heavy awkward thing just in the right position.
Ah, the nack to looking for things that you see drop is to look in the total opposite direction to which you last saw it.
I'm not limited to tools. I seem to lose 1 shoe or 1 sock or 1 girlfriend (thats my excuse for being single anyway and I'm sticking to it!)
Its probably still in the last cap head screw you tightened, got left behind.
Steve
Not just tools or screws/bolts.... also pens.. credit cars... e-mails you sent.. e-mails you started to write.. websites your sure you have been
too....the bacon roll you started to eat for breakfast... the list you was writting about all the thinks you have misplaced..
the list goes on and on .... if only i could remember where i put it 
Why is that it is always the 10mm spanner that I lose or goes missing?
quote:
Originally posted by mistergrumpy
Ah, the nack to looking for things that you see drop is to look in the total opposite direction to which you last saw it.
I'm not limited to tools. I seem to lose 1 shoe or 1 sock or 1 girlfriend (thats my excuse for being single anyway and I'm sticking to it!)
my tool's run away from me to, such as normaly 13mm spanners and sockets,
so i brought 4, 13mm spanners, and 3, 13mm sockets, i am lucky if i find one. but i do try and hang them all back up on the tool boards.
stuart
quote:
Originally posted by nitram38
Why is that it is always the 10mm spanner that I lose or goes missing?
ye gods i thought i was just me
Imagine having that problem but using tools all day at work? It drives me spare.
If a tool went missing at work in the RAF, you weren't allowed home until it was found in case it was sat in an engine or summat. I remember one
time a socket turning up on top of a giant axle stand and was only found by the hanger giant and another time, one lad used to do an hours RAf work
then an hour building his many pit bikes. Queue another missing socket. It turned up still on the engine of the bike that he'd sold earlie in the
day to someone off camp!
As for putting up with 2 girlfriends, I'd rather stick with the limp because of having one sock and shoe!
I went to Halfords to buy a repacement 19mm spanner which I lost from a set I bought a long time ago and managed to keep complete until weekend before
last .I last used it to check over the suspention while at melbourn drag meeting.
Could'nt find it anywhere .
I removed the bonnet from the car on Sunday,,,, there was the old one on the scuttle, not hidden , just sat there looking at me. Bloody tool
fairy's
Denis.
Thing is, as soon as you have a tidying session, tool blindless becomes worse - I know where everything is before I put it away!
People say it gets worse, it's always been pretty bad for me. On day about 20 years ago I was working on a car, and lost the spanner I needed. I
know I'd had it because I couldn't have taken the bolt off without it. I also knew I hadn't moved from my spot. I got really quite
cross (understatement).
Eventually I found what the spanner had done. It had, quite of its own volition, decided to climb up the wheel and balance itself on top of the tyre.
How it did that, and without me spotting the movement, I still don't know.
I remember it because I remember how cross I got (very)
John
I find the easiest way to find a lost tool is to find something else to do - as soon as you stop looking , the missing tool gets bored playing hide
and seek and magically re-appears .
Allso - why is everything you lose , allways found in the last place you look ?
All the time. The annoying bit is when you've got a clear picture of exactly where it is in your head, and despite you checking there at least
three times, you still have to look there again because you're sure it's there.
I work on rollercoasters now and then, you quickly learn to keep track of where everything is. Not only would leaving a tool rattling about leave me
in deep doo-doo if it flew out and wanged someone on the head, the honking mag brakes tend to hoover up any small metal objects left in the vicinity,
so spanners really do go walkies
quote:
Originally posted by james h
Thing is, as soon as you have a tidying session, tool blindless becomes worse - I know where everything is before I put it away!
quote:
Originally posted by clairetoo
Allso - why is everything you lose , allways found in the last place you look ?