Darth Lefty 

I love learning about little hidden features in my gear. For instance, I had no idea when I was a kid that the notch on the bottle opener/flat head screwdriver on my Swiss Army knife is a wire stripper, and it has a little hole for a pin or needle behind the corkscrew.

Today, I noticed for the first time in 20 years that the grips on my pump were removable. I pushed one off and found the accessories, which I’d never really missed before now. The other grip slides off too but is empty. I was kind of hoping it would have tire levers, or that the grips themselves would be tire levers.

Do you have any stories of things you had all along but never figured out until much later?

woodcraft

I've had this thing in a tool drawer for years, maybe decades, and could never figure out what it was for.

It's a common brand of kitchen ware. I could never bring myself to get rid of it as I figured I might modify it into something useful.

At some point earlier this year, I realized that it is a paint can opener, & it works quite well for that.

Reynolds 

I've been discovering little things in my computer for the last 20 years!

GlennR

Thanks for sharing, didn't know that.

jaxgtr

All the things you can do with a 14-1 painters tool is mind blowing....my Mom was a single parent of 3 and learned and taught the 3 kids many skills when we were young and one of the things she passed along was make sure you have this tool in your box.

Darth Lefty 

We have some computers at work that are not on the internet. In a small final cruelty they also don’t have minesweeper, free cell, or pinball

JohnDThompson 

But do they have Colossal Cave? That's all you really need.

Swampthing 

isn’t there an OSHA rule or something against that?

Phil_gretz

I've used mine to remove paint and decals from bike frames that I'm stripping, especially the concave stripper portions. Super useful for bikes, too!

jaxgtr

LOL....so a paper weight... Although I just recently had to say my final goodbyes to a 1998 IBM ThinkPad 560E I picked up off Ebay in 2000 for like 350 for my wife to use for her sewing\embroidery machine. I think new they were close to 4100 or something like that. Very stupid money when you think about how cheap they are today and for what you can do with them now. I loved IBM laptops, their parts channel was the best in the business and I think pc and laptop sales kept ebay afloat for many years as they sold the corporate returns. I replaced everything in that PC at least twice, so parts more than other,....case cooling fans a lot....... , I got very good at know what had to come out. The problem now is that they are getting harder to find old units still with working parts and then when you do....they prices are very steep. The hard drive died and I had run out of spare 40 pin drives from old systems I had or had worked on for people that were upgrading or whatever and since this machine was still running Windows 95, its not worth stuffing a drive in there it wont be able to read anyway. Plus, the real reason is I really was tire of maintaining it and she had really not used that sewing machine for the embroidery work anyway....so I told her it was time, she was old and tired and it was the time to put her down, sort of pull the plug if you will . We said our goodbyes and shed a tear as I left it at Staples to be recycled along with all the other crap I had in that closet I was never going to need anyway since I got out of the family\friend tech support business.

So all in all, it was a good day.

jaxgtr

yea I found they remove shoe molding like a champ and will cut through brad nails like a hot knife through butter.

jaxgtr

If you have a caulk gun with a little hole in the handle like this one, you can use that to cut the tube of caulk, thus you dont need a knife to open the caulk....

Deal4Fuji

I accidentally reduced the size of my viewing font on my desktop while using an Alt key code to make ½. I didn't know what I did as I was typing fast (for me) and wasn't paying attention. I found the fix today - hold the control key down and spin the mouse wheel and you can set the viewing font as big or small as you want it.

It's also easy to overlook the seal penetrating pin that's on the bottom of the front of the caulk gun you have pictured. Not all guns have them.

jaxgtr

Yep, forgot about that...my gun has that and it is very handy

Speedway2

The things you can do with a Swiss Army knife never ceases to amaze me! There are a ton of YT videos with creative uses that show what these iconic and reasonably priced tools can do.

I can be entertained with my modest collection for hours and I always take one on my rides.....

woodcraft

Then there's this thing- I got it out of a dumpster years ago, and finally figured out that it is a ...

oh wait, I still don't know what it is.

79pmooney

My mouse doesn't have a wheel. It's not even a unicycle. Pretty useless. I thought I was on my way to learning great things but stymied.

Darth Lefty 

It might be a Turboencabulator, but it’s probably just a Thing.

downtube42

I guess I was 40 years old, mindlessly pumping gas in my car at a Shell station, when I realized their logo is actually a shell. Not really a useful thing, other than to confirm my wife is correct in that I'm clueless.

tntyz

Ctrl+ to increase. Ctrl- (that's a minus sign) to decrease. Ctrl0 (zero) to reset to 100%

locolobo13 

25 yrs ago before we were on the internet at work part of the SOP for installing workstations was removing minesweeper, free cell and other games. Can't have people goofing off on the job! Of course people just brought their own from home and installed them.

mack_turtle

A spring on my garage door snapped last week and we had to get it replaced. I learned that a) while I love DIY home repairs, this one was beyond my skills and safety comfort level, and b) the spring on a garage door does most of the work to lift the door. if the door didn't have that spring, the automatic opener would not be powerful enough to lift it alone.

I looked up that company and it appears they made film projectors and related equipment. My grandfather worked on stuff like that can could probably tell you what it is if he was alive. The Smithsonian Museum of American History apparently has an archive of that company's products, so maybe they can tell you.

Swampthing 

I remember being shown that, and feeling so unobservant for not noticing.
that was about the time I realized my saw handle was a built in square for marking cuts. When that saw disappeared my new one did not have the 90 degree angle.
mold tools rarely did only one thing.

Darth Lefty 

I recalled I also posted this some years ago. It's a spoke wrench, but I've no explanation for the rest of it. Found in my Dad's tools after he passed, so can't ask him

Flip Flop Rider

TTHP!

I'm actually learning things, thanks guys