Repurposing an old tool

[mklotz]

Marv,

Very interesting original and re-purposed tool. Glad you remembered the tool. I joke with my wife about occasionally taking the time to look through all the drawers and tool boxes in the garage shop just to remember what I have. I call it "visiting with the tools" in the shop. Thanks to you and PJs about keeping several chopsticks in the shop.

"Visiting with the tools". Love the expression and guilty of it too. I have antique and inherited tools that I seldom use so a visit can turn up old/new friends as well as promoting suggestions of new tools. Just the other day I "discovered" a broken tailpipe expander whose conical elements will form the basis of a washer chuck for machining the diameter - a design similar to one shown recently on this forum.

Chopsticks have a myriad of uses in the shop. For instance, they can be used to clean small files. File cards tend to dull files. Take a chopstick, preferably bamboo, and use the end to "scrub" the teeth by moving it parallel to the teeth. The chopstick will quickly develop a pitch equal to the file teeth pitch and, as a result, sweep swarf out of the gullets. Sanding a rough dull chisel shape on the end of the stick helps. The better sushi bars have bamboo chopsticks with square ends opposite the food end; grab those when you run across them.

Split lengthwise once or twice they provide nice slivers that are fairly tough. One in a flute of a tap can make it cut a bit deeper for a more relaxed fit. Good fix too for wood screw holes that are wallowed out.

I make disposable paint stirrers for small bottles of model paints. Split the end partway twice and wedge in splinters to spread the resulting four "fingers" to make something that looks like the fishing spears made by New Guinea natives. Cut to a comfortable length and stick the cut end in the electric screwdriver and voila, a powered miniature disposable paint stirrer.