Lost parts in own shop...ARRGGGHHH

[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.

[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!!!!



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.

[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.