Returning Julio’s tools

I think we have established by now that Julio does not like lending out his tools. That’s because real aircraft mechanic are the same way. They have to buy their own tools for the most part and those fancy Snap-On pieces are anything but cheap. The other issue is tool control. After you put a helicopter back together and you’re about to go fly, it’s good to know that all the tools made it back to their respective place in the toolbox. Should there be one missing then you’d have to look over the whole helicopter again making sure it has not been left behind somewhere inside the helicopter.

I don’t think I would want to work for a company that has a “return pile” system, unless they are in the recycling business maybe. Unfortunately my wife has a similar system at home. But since her return pile for my tools is on top of my toolbox and I don’t work on aircraft at my house, it is not a hazard to aviation safety. Yet it is still annoying …

This strip doesn’t show what comes next, but I am assuming somebody ended up with a black eye.

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7 comments on “Returning Julio’s tools
  1. Jean Loup says:

    “…is not a hazard to aviation safety” !!

  2. KenH says:

    Chuckles dying in flames from him leaving a wrench someplace would be absolute, poetic justice

  3. RG2Cents says:

    Black eye? Who could tell with the shades? 😆

  4. Catapult says:

    I once worked in a hotel with a maintenance guy who was a factory trained Volvo mechanic. His wife had divorced him, got his huge assortment of tools declared “community property”. They were auctioned for a fraction of their cost, then she took him to court because – wotta surprise – he was unable to pay the alimony and child support. Case died when her lawyer got a clue, figured out that the husband had no money to be torqued out by any means, and quit. She visited the hotel several times, trying both tears and threats to get him to give her money. I still am bewildered that a woman could be married to a mechanic for twenty years or more and have so little idea about how his trade worked.

  5. reynard61 says:

    I read somewhere that one now-defunct airline took its tool-use cues from the Surgical theater: all tools and parts to be used were inventoried and listed at the beginning of a job, and at the end of said job were re-inventoried. All broken/worn/used parts (and tools, if any) were inventoried and sent for disposal or repair/recycling/refurbishment. That alone cut their inventory losses by something like 80%.

  6. Mattepatte says:

    We would quite often borrow each other’s tools in the packing loft, reserve repacking and inspection would sometimes require tools that I just didn’t have (like a length of heavy chain links in a velvet bag to keep things still).
    When my buddy asked me if I had borrowed one of the ‘chain bags’ from him and I responded no, a bit of a search project was initiated.

    Usually there is not a lot of spare room in the bag where you ‘stuff’ the reserve chute in a sport parachuting rig…but guess where we found the chain bag?

    My mates only comment was;
    “But-but-but, the chute (and the chain bag) slipped into the bag so easily…”

    Missing tools is a big no-no, at 140 MPh that chain bag would not have stopped if it hit you.

  7. Christine says:

    It might not be a threat to aviation safety, but as I say to my husband, returning tools properly is good for your personal safety. It makes your spouse less likely to slip something in your porridge. (They’re cheap tools, so we declared them ours when we got married, but putting shared tools back properly is almost as crucial as putting your wife’s tools back properly.)

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