Science Lite 



Socket to Me 



It all started with that jerk Phillips... 

 by Roger L. Welsch 



Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist and 

 historian, wrote in the early nineteenth 

 century, "Man is a tool-using animal.... 

 Without tools he is nothing, with tools he 

 is all." French philosopher Henri Bergson 

 wrote in the early years of this century, 

 "Intelligence. . .is the faculty of making ar- 

 tificial objects, especially tools to make 

 tools." American anthropologist and ulti- 

 mate toolman Tim Allen said a few 

 months ago, "Man is the only animal to 

 borrow tools." 



Tve already covered borrowing tools in 

 a previous column. Now I am interested in 

 the nature of tools themselves, the quintes- 

 sential artifact (from the Latin, "made by 



skill"). Now comes Welsch's corollary: 

 Man (or Woman) is not simply a tool- 

 using animal, or a tool-making-tool-using 

 animal, or even a tool-borrowing animal, 

 but a tool-loving animal. The team of six 

 accountants at Sears who handle my 

 Craftsman tool account will verify that. 



I'm kidding, of course. I have a set of 

 tools I use for working on old tractors — a 

 modest set of tools. Well, maybe it isn't 

 really a modest set of tools. Lots of tools. 

 Okay, most of my estate is tied up in 

 socket wrenches. 



More tools than I need? Well, actually I 

 don't need any tools at all. I could take my 

 tractors up to town and let a real mechanic 



'Wo, no, no!. . . That regular rock. Me need Phillips! " 



'The Far Side." © 1 991 . FarWorks, Inc Dist- by Universal Press Syndicated. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved. 



14 Natural History 4/94 



work on them. I don't even need the trac- 

 tors, since my farm isn't much in the way 

 of a farm. And my taste in tractors leans 

 toward tractors that aren't much in the way 

 of tractors. In fact, I make more money 

 writing about tractors than sitting on them. 

 But I like working on tractors and I like 

 tools, so I have tools. Lots of tools. 



I don't really need many tools to work 

 on these tractors, which are each and 

 every one of them an Allis Chalmers WC 

 tractor, made between 1935 and 1942. 

 Frankly, about all you need to work on a 

 1937 Allis Chalmers WC is a medium- 

 size crescent wrench, a claw hammer, and 

 a screwdriver Two of each would be nice, 

 but I suppose I could jam the bolt of a 

 stuck nut with any old piece of yard iron if 

 I had to. 



The old maintenance and service manu- 

 als for WCs do call for some fancy tools 

 such as torque wrenches, bushing pullers, 

 and feeler gauges, but most of these old 

 machines, if they could talk, would tell 

 you that they never in their sixty years of 

 life felt a torque wrench, bushing puller, or 

 feeler gauge. 



Most old mechanics I know never use 

 phrases like "foot-pounds torque" or ".019 

 tolerance." They tell me to turn down the 

 oil pan bolts until the gasket puckers out a 

 trifle, and to be sure the cyhnder sleeve 

 doesn't sit above the block more than will 

 catch on a fingernail. "Tighten the nut fin- 

 ger tight," they say, "and then turn it an- 

 other quarter of a turn." Or, "Use an eight- 

 inch crescent to tighten it just enough that 

 your eyes pooch out a little." 



Oh, but you should see how pretty that 

 set of sockets looks, all in a row on that 

 pegboard. Here, try the heft on this three- 

 quarter-inch ratchet. And listen to the mu- 

 sical click it makes on the return pull. Take 

 a look at this two-ton engine hoist; isn't 

 that pretty? And when I put the load-lev- 



