Strange forces at work in my shop

Naturally

Mark Mandell - Gone Round In New Jersey

It's s.o.p. that to find something you usually have to look every place it's not. Then, having eliminated all the wrong places, you find it.

Re: Strange forces at work in my shop

John Pappas

"It's always the last place you look."

Of course it is.....why would one keep looking? Anyway, we have all had similar experiences.

If it makes you feel any better (I know, it won't)

John in NM

I once spent about an hour looking for a hose bib I had just set down in a tiny shop. Turns out I had set it on top of the jaws of a mechanic's vise, my eyes must have passed over it a dozen times, not noticing it due to not expecting to see it in such a spot. Really makes one believe in the concept of the "Somebody Else's Problem" field of camouflage from one of Douglas Adams' books.

Re: If it makes you feel any better (I know, it wo

Dick Coers

I’ve become a huge fan of the program Air Disasters on the National Geographic Channel. I love the investigation methods and the engineering. Often they find that pilots develop a stress reaction that makes them ignore data. That leads to new developments that should be more failsafe, but the human mind can still screw that up.

Re: If it makes you feel any better (I know, it wo

Barry Irby

I am pretty sure my imaginary friend lives in my shop while I am gone and moves things around. He doesn't actually do any wood working, at least in a positive sense, but he does handle the tools and small pieces of wood.

I had a friend that when he lost something and started to search for it, would not just open a drawer and give it a glance, he would carefully search through the drawer and straighten it up. He would straighten up the top of the workbench, putting things away. I would get frustrated, but he would say that when he looked in a place he would do it well and not have to look there again, He would KNOW it was not in that drawer or on the bench. Worked for him.

Re: My Wife Says ...

Hank Knight

My wife says I suffer from "male pattern blindness." I often have a clear image in my mind of what I'm looking for, but look right at it and not see it. Happens all the time, most often in the shop or in the refrigerator: "Honey, do we have any ---?" "Yes, your'e looking right at it. It's right there on the top shelf in front." "Oh, yes. I see it. "Thanks."

Wonderful

Mark Mandell - Gone Round In New Jersey

to learn that I'm not the only one to spend 20 minutes looking all over the shop for something (pencil, tool, etm) that I had in my hand not 5 minutes previously.

WoodCentral is such a warm and supportive place!!

You are not alone.

Thomas Skaggs, Foothills of Mount Level

If there is any place in the universe where the laws of physics don't apply it's my workshop....with the exception of entropy.

I have at least 8 or 9 mechanical pencils in various places. Yet, when I need one, I can't find a single one to save my soul.

Additionally, gravity is much more powerful in my shop than elsewhere on this planet. The propensity for things to fall in my shop is profound. And if they are tools, they always fall sharpened edge first.

I need a whole team of physicists to come and study my shop.

T.

Re: Strange forces at work in my shop

John McGaw

I think it is more complicated than you suggest. I believe it is a wormhole. I say this because I had a wide-crown stapler show up in my car, right next to my shop and I had never owned one. Then, mysteriously a few months later, it disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared. Clearly your stapler had leaked over to my shop and missed, hitting the back of my Subaru...

If somebody has had a four-foot metal straightedge suddenly show up in their shop, please let me know ASAP -- I need to break down a sheet of plywood.

Fresh set of eyes

Jesse Cloud

At least you found it yourself. I was looking for a flexible curve, a four foot long piece of bright orange rubber, for several days and could not find it.

Finally one day I mentioned the problem to my wife and she offered to look with me.

Of course she found it 30 seconds after entering the shop.

I will never live that down!

Easy solution

Jerry Nicholson

Over the (many) years, I have developed an optimum method of locating a lost tool or lost box of really important fasteners.

I just go buy a new one - shortly after the first use of the new one, the old one shows up. I think this might be an application of something I read about decades ago, know as IPIO or the Innate Perversity of Inanimate Objects. Of course this is closely related to the Finagle Factor and Murphy's Law.