Lost parts in own shop...ARRGGGHHH

[Peter Quinn]

Ever loose hardware in your own shop? Somewhere in the last two years I did. Argghh, its killing me. I've ripped open every box, turned over every drawer, dug into every nook and cranny. Gremlins I'd say.

I had a job for which I made storm windows in several stages, the storm panels were held in with some fancy little brass turnbuckles, there was an issue with about a dozen (at $7.50 each) so the client sent them to me to modify and reinstall. We discussed retrofitting the old double hung windows to chain as the sash cords were all failing or close, so I ordered a pack of chain samples to pick a metal and size. For a variety of reasons the job went on hold until last week. Client called, wants to proceed with the double hungs, I had told him I'd replace the turn buckles when we did the next stage of the job.

At some point I put the chain samples and the turnbuckles in a safe place in my shop awaiting the next phase of the job. Gone. Gone. Gone. Am I the only one to which this sort of thing happens? On the bright side I have found plenty of other gems and organized long abandoned corners of the shop. I'm still looking for a set of carbide tipped planer knives I lost several years ago. Haven't seen them this time either!:eek:They were on a shelf, them they were gone....gremlins?

[Jim Rimmer]

I have (had?) a two axis machine vise I was going to trade a co-worker for a little machining work. I think it ran away with your chains. :confused:

[Ken Fitzgerald]

You too?

I will make a prediction.


Don't worry. After you make a couple trips getting samples and making sure they work.....and buying the materials and complete the job. You WILL find the missing parts.:cool:

[george wilson]

I've lost an $800.00 Fein half sheet sander,brand new,in my shop. I hid it for some reason,and now can't find it!!!@!

[John Fabre]

Been there, done that, tens years later found the hardware and tools that a family member borrowed. I even found cordless tools in my boys toy box.

[Rick Fisher]

I lose stuff all the time.. Ken is right.. the secret to finding it is to buy a replacement..

The funniest to me was hiding all my Festool in my dust collector drum when I went on holidays..

Came home and a buddy needed some cedar milled.. I could have hauled them to the dump if I had not remembered.. Sigh..

[Ray McCullie]

That's when I know it's time to clean the shop. (no really.... I clean sometimes)

That's also why I have 4 or 5 tape measures, or I'm a collector, I'm not sure which.

Best thing to do is relax, retrace your steps, clean as you go, which you have been. Sometimes it even works to get something similar and recreate the "event" of hiding it. You'd be amazed how many times you'll put something in the same place without being aware of that place until you're not trying to remember it.

[Michael Simpson Virgina]

Lets see. In the last month I have lost the following:

25' Air compressor hose (My favorite one of course)
Wooden Mallet
Router Collet
Tip to Glue bottle

So far all that have turned up were the Router Collet and Glue bottle tip.

[Dave MacArthur]

Erm... I literally have lost my Dewalt Biscuit Joiner, I THINK it's in the shop... Certainly can't see anyone taking THAT and leaving everything else! When I realized it a few months ago, I also realized I could have lost it anytime in last 4 years... Guess I'm not a big user of that tool!

[Rich Engelhardt]

Not being able to find something I know I have, has become a way of life for me.....

My wife insists I should buy a replacement for my wedding ring, which disappeared almost a year ago.
It's bound to show up one of these days..

[Anthony Whitesell]

Let me see. I have lost one part and a book in my shop, which I still haven't found. But I think my worst two were missing tools:

1. Spending two hours looking for a wrench I had put on top of the project I was working on.

2. Trying to find the top of my table saw.

[Bill ThompsonNM]

You have my sympathy, at least you had some time to lose it. Last week I was finishing up a new machine stand which has two doors.. I picked up two sets of hinges at the BORG. Opened one package and used a hinge for marking all of the holes and the mortises. Finished all the cutting and drilling and all I could find was 3 hinges. It's Sunday and I hate driving back down to the store so I did an extensive search.. Finally broke down and bought more hinges... of course after I get them installed I spot the missing hinge peeking out from under a stack of oak flooring..

[Myk Rian]

I am capable of setting something aside, and not knowing where it is 3 minutes later. I'm still trying to find a wheel puller. I'm sure I had it, someplace. It was even in a box with a picture of it. Hmmm.

[glenn bradley]

I lost some white metal shelf brackets for about 3 months. I eventually found them in a box labeled "white metal shelf brackets".

[Ken Fitzgerald]

One Friday evening last summer I left a local medical center and stopped by the most complete hardware store in the valley. I bought some special part I need for a project I was working on in my shop. My wife was in Illinois for 4 weeks visiting her Mom.

Our back door is located in our dining room. and exits onto the carport. It must be 50' from my shop to the backdoor.

I set the part on the dining room table so I would see as I left to go to the shop.

The next morning, I got to the shop and a few minutes later realized I needed the part I'd bought the previous evening.

6 times I left the shop...came to the house....and forgot what I'd come to the house for........6 times.

I proceeded to tear the house apart looking for what I couldn't remember. I checked my night stand.....my jewelry box .......my office.....my clutter catchers on the dresser.....finally as I headed back to the shop....I saw on the dining room table and remembered that's what I had come to the house to get.....:o

[Michael Peet]

I once "lost" my framing square in the shop. Looked everywhere for it. One day I was uploading some pics from my camera to my PC and as I was going through them lo and behold I saw the square, hanging on the backside of a work bench. I went down to the shop and sure enough, there it was. :o

Mike

[Luther Oswalt]

Has anyone seen my little bottle of "Star Tron" gasoline additive? I found it a day or so ago and made a mental note of where it was so I would pick it up later ... seems it has legs and is gone again!
Leo

[John Shaffner]

So that i don't lose anything in the shop, I employ what I call "Organized Chaos". There is a place for everything, and NOTHING in its' place. That way, I can't ever lose anything, cuz it's already lost!;)

[Will Overton]

Did you say, "... a pack of chain samples"?

I think I have them. :)

[larry cronkite]

I use the excuse "I've had a nap since then" to cover all my forgotten tasks that SWMBO lays out for me and to explain the missing tools, hardware and other items that seem to move themselves around the shop, house and yard.

[Robert Reece]

I have a policy that when I lose something and then find it, I throw it out. I shouldn't have had it in the first place because I'm not responsible enough to know where to put it so I can find it.

Seriously, I hate looking for stuff so when I can't find something I just clean up. I usually come across it.

[Jerome Hanby]

Every new piece of material is logged, labeled, and carefully put away in the proper place. Never any problem finding it...and I'm going to start doing that next week...promise....this time I mean it :p

[Chip Lindley]

My sympathies for things lost in the shop! They will all turn up on the planet Uranus, when space travellers arrive there in the future. That is where all those missing Unisaw dust doors are!

My best advice for finding lost things? You will find it in the last place you look....SO look there first! ...hmmm

[Ron Jones near Indy]

At some point I put the chain samples and the turnbuckles in a safe place in my shop awaiting the next phase of the job. Gone. Gone. Gone. Am I the only one to which this sort of thing happens?

In my experience a "safe place" is the very worst place I can put something that I will need to find in the future.:o

[Ron Jones near Indy]

One Friday evening last summer I left a local medical center and stopped by the most complete hardware store in the valley. I bought some special part I need for a project I was working on in my shop. My wife was in Illinois for 4 weeks visiting her Mom.

Our back door is located in our dining room. and exits onto the carport. It must be 50' from my shop to the backdoor.

I set the part on the dining room table so I would see as I left to go to the shop.

The next morning, I got to the shop and a few minutes later realized I needed the part I'd bought the previous evening.

6 times I left the shop...came to the house....and forgot what I'd come to the house for........6 times.

I proceeded to tear the house apart looking for what I couldn't remember. I checked my night stand.....my jewelry box .......my office.....my clutter catchers on the dresser.....finally as I headed back to the shop....I saw on the dining room table and remembered that's what I had come to the house to get.....:o

Been there, done that Ken. I spent 45 minutes looking for a tape measure yesterday. When I found it, it was on my desk within 6 inches of the first place I looked.:o:eek::mad::(

[Ron Kellison]

I used my digital micrometer two weeks ago and now can't find it. I ALWAYS put it back in the same drawer and now it's not there. I've torn the shop apart looking for it. I've also lost the top of my workbench but I'm reasonably sure it's still there under all the clutter! In the past I've also "lost" a Bosch jigsaw and a PC circular saw but I suspect I wasted my time looking for them.

Regards,

Ron

[Craig Gates]

I'm new here and I'd like to thank each and every poster to this thread for making me feel "normal" since all my days are spent living all or some portions of the mentioned situations.
Thank you all
Craig

[jon devries]

I have found it is always in the last place you look. Now I just have to figure out how to make the last place the first place.

[Dick Aubochon]

Do pencils count?:D

[Steven DeMars]

I've lost an $800.00 Fein half sheet sander,brand new,in my shop. I hid it for some reason,and now can't find it!!!@!

Probably because a neighbor or friend wanted to borrow a "SANDER".

Thats why I love Harbor Freight, they sell "loan" tools.

Steve:)

[Mike Cruz]

Peter, let a woman loose in your shop for 5 minutes. I gaurantee she'll find 'em!

[Peter Quinn]

Peter, let a woman loose in your shop for 5 minutes. I gaurantee she'll find 'em!

See, that is the problem Mike. I let a woman in my shop, and that's how I got into this predicament to begin with! After probably better than 6 months of sitting in a heap on the end of our dining room table, my wife moved them to the sideboard. I noticed they were gone from their "proper" place and may have complained about it, so she briskly ran them down to the shop and threw them on the first surface available through the door, which happens to be the TS. She may have mentioned "your junk doesn't belong in my dining room to begin with...." I remember saying "You have a home office and I don't so sometimes I have to use the dining room table.." She may have asked "So just what do you call that 1000SF of space with all those machines that we pay to keep warm, dry and lit?"

I remember moving them around for several months between the TS, router table and shaper, placing them on which ever surface I wasn't currently using. i had to keep them handy in case that job went active again in the spring! Then I decided to do the logical thing and put them in a safe place for longer term storage. And there they live. I may not find them in the last place I look, I may in fact have already been looking right at them and not seen them. I'm good at that too. I though perhaps I was crazy and had only imagined ordering the chain sample pack, but when I called the distributor to ask for another sample pack they had me in the system as having received them already. Now I have received two. The second pack is duck taped to my fore head, which is frankly no safe bet either.

I'm sure glad I'm not the only one who suffers from "Where the heck is it...". Everyones stories have certainly lightened my mood about the situation. I'm taking tonight off, but the search resumes tomorrow for those turn buckles. Or gremlin tracks. You would think with all the dust on the floor they would leave tracks.:D

[mreza Salav]

some of you guys made me chuckle reading your stories!

I have had mine but not as funny as yours....

[Mike Cruz]

Peter, you have a great witty sense of humor, and a wonderful way of telling a story. I look forward to reading more of them in the future. Thanks for your colorful painting.

I must say, though, I whole heartedly believe that if you invite your wife into your shop and ask her to look for those dag burn thingys you had left on the dining room table that got inadvertantly relocated to your table saw, regardless of their otherwise temporary homes, she'll find them without batting an eye. That would, however, take some humility and humbleness...not saying it would be something that I would possess in your shoes... Good luck.

[Rich Engelhardt]

After probably better than 6 months of sitting in a heap on the end of our dining room table, my wife moved them to the sideboard.
LOL!

(me - yelling to my now slumbering wife):
Hey dear, come look at this post! See, I told you the living room, dining room and kitchen are proper places to store tools and such!!!!

:D

My wife thinks I'm the only one that insists on decorating our home in "Early Tool Staging Area".

[Rob Damon]

I have never lost anything in the shop but in the house is another story. I have a tendency to put things in my pockets and forget to take them out. So when I would get in the house at night, I would empty my pockets and place them on the dining room table before going to bed at night, figure I will just put them back in my pocket when I go back out to the shop the next day.

But....The wife gets up early and see it on the table and moves it a shelf beside the table. I get up the next morning don't see anything on the table, forget about it and go out to the shop.

She walks past it on the shelf two or three days and says "that doesn't belong there sitting out, I am tired of looking at it and it moves to the drawing beside the shelf.

A few weeks go by (I still don't need the part, so I don't miss it) and she is going through the draw and cleans it out and moves the part to a box out in the garage.

I finally need the part and I am looking all over for it. So I ask "have you seen XYZ part", she says "no, where did you leave it?" I say on the table, she says "Well I haven't touched it." and at this point even if she remembers moving over to the shelf, she certainly doesn't remember moving it to the drawer and then to the garage/closet/footlocker/where ever.

So I go a buy a new part to replace it. Then when christmas hits, and we are going through the boxes in the garage, getting the xmas stuff out, we find the box with the XYZ part.
Now she remembers and I get blamed for leaving it on the table in the first place. After this happening a dozen times over the past 30 years, I final bought a nice basket with a lid and sit it on the shelf beside the dining room table. It is my "don't ever touch what I put in this basket, "EVER", that I use to empty my pockets with. So now I always know where to look first if I can't find something.

Rob

[Steve Rowe]

I've lost an $800.00 Fein half sheet sander,brand new,in my shop. I hid it for some reason,and now can't find it!!!@!
Ahh! The only way you will ever find it is to shell out another $800 for an identical sander - then the first will show up in a matter of minutes.:D

[Doug Carpenter]

I am sooooooo glad to see that I am not alone. Of course the companion to this is how you save some scrap material for 20 years, throw it out in a cleaning fit and then need it two days later.

[Mike Cruz]

Rob, I think you just summed up 90% of mens' relationships with their wives into a pathetic little nutshell. That little story ought to bring a bunch of rolling eyes, nodding head, "um-hmmmm"s, and grins.

[glenn bradley]

It is my "don't ever touch what I put in this basket, "EVER",

If there is one thing that defines the benefit of living alone it is probably that I can set something down and come back 3 weeks later and it is still there. The other side of this coin is, of course, that when something goes missing . . . it was me. ;)

[John Schreiber]

Be sure to check the refrigerator. I'm sure I didn't put it there, but that's where I found it.

The glove compartment of the car you never drive too.