I went for a pleasant long ride (long for me, I mean) last week, in the course of which I found a serviceable pair of diagonal cutters and a pair of needle-nose Vise Grips. I stopped for both--once on a flat and once during a long downhill--and put them in my pocket and brought them home. Not even sure why, because I already have a pair of needle-nose Vise Grips and a better pair of ****s. It occurred to me after I got home that maybe the proper thing to do is to leave lost tools where they are for someone else to find--maybe someone who needs them more than I do.

Mohandas Gandhi supposedly once lost a sandal between the train and the platform while boarding, and quickly removed his other sandal as well and threw it back next to the first one. When asked why, he said "now the person who finds it will have a pair of sandals he can use." A nice story that might even be true. I wonder what he did when he saw a wrench lying in the road while riding? And yes, he did ride a bike, as I learned just now. Here's a short description of the restoration of his old bike:

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/bicyc...ingenuity.html

That was a fantastic read.

Too bad nobody called out it being a Rudge. I almost registered to do so but being almost 5 yo thread, I didn't.

I always pick up tools as I figure I can put them to good use before they get run over or just left to rust and rot.

I figure, having lost and had plenty stolen it may be cosmic justice or some such BS.

Quite a few months ago, I was at the beginning of a ride and was crossing a busy road once the light turned green. In the middle of the intersection was a Ryobi cordless electric drill, likely having fallen off a contractors truck. While I already have a Ryobi cordless electric drill, I still grabbed it and headed on my way but didn't really have a means to carry it on my bike. When I got to the top of the hill at the other side of the intersection, I stashed it in some bushes, figuring I'd come back for it at the end of the ride. Well, I completely forgot about it. A couple of months passed, and I'd think about it now and then but usually when I wasn't by the place where I stashed it. Finally, a month or so ago, I went back to that spot and found the drill, fully intact though a bit corroded from subsequent rainstorms (chuck seems a bit frozen). It sits now in my basement, next to my other Ryobi cordless drill.

Well, that's the thing--many, perhaps most, lost tools never do get found. When I pick them up, I always tell myself I can give them to someone else. Sometimes I actually do.

Most of those end up in the toolboxes I keep in my vehicles

I've picked up several tools from the open road and taken them home. Figured they were a road hazard for tires and the owner would not know where to look. I found a 3/8" ratchet wrench in the road at the end of a driveway where construction was ongoing. I set it on top of a rock on the driveway culvert and watched it sit there over several weeks during several rides and finally picked it up and took it home.

@SquireBlack taught me that one should always pick up any tools you find while bike riding, and if you don't, your bike will break down soon after needing the exact tool you left behind.

I think it's in The Rules somewhere.

However, the corollary to this is that if you do pick up the tool then you will never have a breakdown that will require use of that particular tool.

Yep , found some nice ones on the road . Actually found a nice wood splitting wedge , it weighed about as much as my bike! But I got it home , used it many times .

Needle nose pliers, vise grips, cutters, screwdrivers and tape measures. I've found more than one of each in the road over the years and still have most of them.

Most recent acquisition is a wrench with 10mm on one end and 11mm on the other; both fairly common sizes for bicycle use

That B&W picture of Gandhi on the bike appears to be one of many digitally stylized versions of that picture. The left fork blade is nowhere where it it would be in actuality.

Near as I can tell, this is the original:



The roadster with the very worn Rudge chainring (the headbadge is not that of a Rudge) may have been Gandhi's bike at some time, but I doubt it is the one in the picture. The bike Gandhi is riding has no chainguard and the rear rack is not the same.

The front rack on that faux springer fork could have always been added later, but the one thing that really stands out are the front fender stays - there's no way they changed from traditional angled-down stays to a Z bend level with the ground.

-Kurt

Thinking of the cosmic forces at play, I was once stopped while a friend fixed a flat.
A truck swerved around us, and a large brass tire gauge fell at our feet.
Less cosmic, I have twice come across Craftsman tools that had been run over.
Sears replaced them without hesitation. I still have the really large screw driver

I find many small hand tools and always pick them up. Once a hand truck fell off the back of a truck right in front of me. The truck was going too fast for me to chase it down and tell the driver. The best I could do was move the hand truck to the side of the road so no one would hit it.

Over my 63 years and probably 120K miles of cycling, I have come across various forms of "hardware road kill," most often small hand tools (Snap On sockets, anyone? ). I just add them to my collection or give them to my sons to round out their respective tool collections. I participate in various bicycle and small appliance "fix it" clinics, and if I have extra copies of a given tool, I'll lend them to other fixers and/or customers, with no expectation of return. I guess that earns me some compensating karma.

I have stopped to pick up many small tools over the years. Ratchet straps are another common find, although I usually only find one side at a time, either the ratchet or the strap. I still pick it up and take home and match it up with one of the opposite pieces that I collected previously.

One time I found some things that I recognized as electrical tools. There was a line crew working on a pole just a short distance up the road and they were thrilled to get their tools back. Apparently someone had left the tools laying on the truck's bumper at the previous worksite and they had bounced off on the way to the next one.

best tool found in a traffic lane, Thor brand hammer, big Copper face one side, rawhide the other. held in positions by a clamshell cast iron clamp, wood handle.

The tool haul that I have found over the years is too long to list. So many cheap wrenches and sockets spotted on the road that I only stop if it's a brand I recognize. One week years ago, I found three Eastwing hammers on three separate rides. I found a 24 inch flex head 1/2 " drive ratchet a few years ago. It rested nicely on top of my brake hoods all the way home.

This deserves its own thread.

I also have found tools(and usually kept them, but happy to pass along any that are super-superfluous) such that I have a "notorious" reputation amongst my friends for finding such things.

But the best, which I just put to use a few days ago, was a Fluke multi-tester in its vinyl case, still works fine after a couple battery changes. Must have fallen out of a truck cause there was absolutely NObody on the road in any direction, certainly no active electrical workers on a job.

I lost count of all the other handtools that came into my hands over the years, but the needlenose visegrips are always disappointing me: they seem like a perfect tool for certain jobs but they almost never are!
Regular visegrips are just the opposite, they work as expected...go figger!

We should also have a thread concerning "bicycle parts found on the road"

[QUOTE=unworthy1;23605561We should also have a thread concerning "bicycle parts found on the road"
[/QUOTE]

Tools Found By The Road
Tell us about your road finds and treasures.
What have you found while riding?
What have you found on the ground while riding?

Okay, the last one is from the commuting sub-forum, but somehow I suspected this wasn't a new topic!

nlerner, weather warlock and internet sleuth

It does. It deserves a thread about how basing a claim on one previously altered picture and circumstantial evidence isn't enough to back or broadcast a claim as significant as "this is Mahatma Gandhi's bicycle" to the world.

Even if this bike does have a meaningful claim to Gandhi (the chances of it being the same bike in the photo is slim to nil), there couldn't be any better example of handling a relic of this significance improperly by brutally blasting off whatever originality it had in a sandblaster - chrome crank and brass headbadge included - and then (apparently) leaving it bare.

Sorry to be the killjoy, but even with limited resources, this "restoration" can only be upheld as a shining example of what not to do, and the claims linking this bike to its owner are also a fantastic example of completely failing to do even the slightest bit of evaluation upon already limited research.

-Kurt

/end critique - back to the regularly scheduled thread of tools off the side of the road.

Same here...too long to list. I likewise found a flex head ratchet, only in 3/8 drive. More like 16-inch.
Anyway, on the road it got banged around quite a bit, until the ratcheting mechanism did not work well.
Made by Craftsman, however, so they gladly swapped it out with a new one. Back in the day when Sears gave a lifetime warranty.
I returned a few things to their rightful owners, including a wallet with $700+ in it, a wallet with ten bucks in it, and a college student's backpack full of notes.

Fair! I only quickly perused the thread earlier with the time I had. In this case, I would agree with you.

I leave things where they are if I don't need them and don't know anyone who needs them. I'm not terribly observant, so if I spotted it the chances are good that several others will see it too.
This is also how I keep my bike collection manageable. When a really great deal comes along on a bike I'm not actively seeking I tell myself "Someone will be thrilled to find this one." Not easy to do, but with practice I've trained myself pretty well.
Brent