There’s a thing that happens in a man’s brain, sometimes,
when he steps in the door of a place like Harbor Freight, or opens a mail-order
catalog. It’s as if the air is a bit
lighter, the light a bit brighter, maybe, there’s a willingness to suspend
disbelief, perhaps, that’s the only way I can justify the decision in the cold
light of day. You see something, and it
just speaks to you… it says, "buy me, and you and I can go off and have
fun together…”
I suspect a similar process is at work when my wife steps
through the doorway at Joann’s Fabrics, but, in the interest of continuing
enjoyment of domestic bliss, which can be defined as the avoidance of spirited
conversations, we won’t go there.
I was quick to adopt the multi-tool, when the concept first
arrived, in the form of the Swiss Army knife.
They had the scissors, and the all-important but soon lost
toothpick. As the form mutated, the
knife blades became less important and the main tool was now a pair of pliers,
as in my Gerber. But this! This was truly something new. A Combination claw hammer, pliers with pipe
jaws and a wire cutter built in! And
it’s Red! Just like a Swiss Army knife! What
more could anyone ask? So I bought one,
of course. Then I got it home, and
really looked at it for the first time.
Ugh. Whatta piece of junk…
Here’s a picture:
Yes, that funny bent rod sticking out the back is one handle
of the pliers. The back jaw with the
claw is fixed, so only the hammer nose moves.
As you can imagine, that skinny square handle is not very comfortable. And
the shape of the hammer makes it the opposite of needle-nosed. Call it a hammer nose pliers. When you want
to use it as a hammer, you capture the end of the handle in the little swivel
clip at the bottom, which sorta matches with a hand-ground notch in the
otherwise sharp-enough-to-stab-yourself end, if you haven’t already impaled the
meat of one finger on the leaf spring that doesn’t go out quite as far as the
handle.
Then when you secure the sharp ends with the clip and try to
strike something with the blunt end of the hammer, you quickly discover another
design feature. The body of the
hammerpliers is so short that the sharp end of the claw will rebound into the
meat of your hand by your thumb and draw blood in two places at once. You see the lengths to which I am prepared to
go in order to bring you the results of scientific, thorough product testing,
and I hope you’re grateful.
Then we get to the blades concealed in the handle of this
wonder of modern tool design. The first
little short blade on the bottom is supposed to be a P-38 can opener with a
screwdriver tip. Unfortunately, the
prisoner in whatever Chinese dungeon that produced this garbage did such a
lousy job of grinding the P-38 edge that he wiped out half the screwdriver tip
while making sure the P-38 was dull enough to have trouble with a cube of
butter, let alone a tin can. The blade
is only .060” thick, which means it would have twisted in half the first time
you tried to screw something with it, making you the screwee in this deal. Opposite that is another weird little finger
that is so stiffly locked in place it will pull your thumbnail loose and hurt
for two days if you try to open it by hand, only to discover that it is a tiny
little rounded finger that barely clears the hammer snout when deployed,
bringing up the obvious observation that it has no useful purpose at all. Maybe it’s for the reset buttons on a
Gameboy.
The next blade is full length, about 2 ½”, and combines a
sharp serrated edge with a crude nail file on one side and a tip that looks
like a flat screwdriver blade but is only tapered on one edge, which means it
is a scraper chisel for built-up crud on a flathead Ford engine block in a
junkyard, or the guano deposited by a flock of seagulls on your garbage can lid
the last time you made gumbo. Be careful
when using it, because there is no locking mechanism, which means it can and will
bite you.
The adjoining full length blade is just that, a knife blade,
albeit one that is only .070” thick and thus useful for only the lightest of
whittling chores, and also lacking a lock.
And when you use this thing with either long blades deployed, the claw
of the hammer fits nicely into the heel of your hand, where the sharp ends mark
their spot and dare you to do something stupid.
On the back side of this egregious waste of steel is one
slngle round Philips screwdriver blade, which, because it pivots from the
middle of the handle, only sticks out a short reach from the handle on one side,
and even then would only be useful if the immediate area around the screw on
which you were trying to use it had room for the entire body of the hammpliers
to swivel like an ice skater spinning in circles while balanced on one leg.
So then I take a good look at the body of the hamliers,
which is quickly revealed as two formed rubber pads held in place by a cheap
stamped tin cover that is secured top and bottom with two tiny bent tabs, like
a cheap toy from the ‘50s that sparks and dies by the end of Christmas
Day. With the cover off, the true nature
of this misbegotten excuse for a tool is revealed: two thin stamped side plates held together
with 5 little pins, guaranteed to fall apart within minutes of any attempt to
accomplish any meaningful tasks. The
cheap covers are likewise guaranteed to fall off in your toolbox under the
influence of gravity, which is where it should stay, unless you foolishly take
it out and try to accomplish something with it and injure yourself
instead. Truly a jack squat of all
trades. One can only imagine the
committee meeting at which this design was approved for production, and wonder
at the quality and quantity of the drugs and alcohol that must have been
involved in the process.
It would only be natural to give some thought to
consideration of the type of person who would be foolish enough to buy
something like this. In my defense, I
can only offer that it was red, very red. And it was for science! And stay out of Harbor Freight! :-{)}}
