Tools

November 26, 2023 10:05 AM

The Periodic Table of Tools. (via Kevin Kelly)
posted by storybored (36 comments total)

This very slightly bothers me. It seems to try to hew to the organizing principles of the periodic table but only somewhat, because it turns out that a periodic table is a good organization for elements but not for tools. For example, all the screwdriver-related things are more or less together where the noble gases would be in the regular table.

But then some stuff is just sort of randomly tossed in. Why separate odd and even sided wrenches but not flat head and phillips screw driver bits? There's also spots for "other tools" and "toy tools" which, okay, are you trying to prevent sternly worded emails from "well, actually" guys and toddlers?

Feels like they're trying to force a square peg into a round hole. There's probably a tool for that.
posted by axiom at 11:41 AM on November 26, 2023 [10 favorites]

They put step bits under "reamers". Mendeleev wept.
posted by phooky at 11:54 AM on November 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

Agree about NotAPeriodicTable but this is nevertheless a great dive and quite funny in parts. "This may look like a brick, but I used it countless times over the course of a week to knock fence boards into place. My intentions made it a tool, and it returned to being a brick when I set it down."

A couple of years ago I downloaded the PDF of a 1940-vintage catalog from Joseph Tyzack & Sons Ltd, Meersbrook Works, Sheffield, England. Manufacturers of trowels, saws and tools of every description. Someone has lovingly scanned this profusely illustrated book from a copy shipped out to a hardware store in New Zealand. There's an index, of course, offering a variety of hammers: brick, builders', Canterbury, claw, coal, comb, engineers', Exeter, fruiterers', gardeners', grocers', joiners', Kent, lath; Masons' club, Masons' mosaic, Masons' punch, Masons' walling; (nail, adze-eye), plumbers', rivetting, scaffolding, scutch, slaters', tack, telephonist or pattern-makers, Warrington.

This is so informative about how life was 80 years ago. Grocers needed a tool that was a combi axe / hammer / pry-bar for accessing robustly crated tea, fruit and nuts. Shipping containers did away with the need for a lot of intermediate packaging to make the product water- and pilfer-proof. Our friend the upholsterer can order a tack-hammer as well. Not clear to me why telephonists need a hammer at all, let alone customised to the profession. And a word to the wise: the gardener's hammer on p 157 is exactly the same as the 3-leg best steel claw hammer p 45 - you won't need both.
posted by BobTheScientist at 11:56 AM on November 26, 2023 [13 favorites]

(to be fair they also put the "Butt Out" under reamers, which is darkly funny.)
posted by phooky at 12:00 PM on November 26, 2023

The description of the table is that the

arrangement follows loosely the characteristic of the regular periodic table: tools with similar functions in each column, getting heavier as you move down the rows. The diagonal line between metals and non-metals on the right side becomes a line between drills and wrenches. The fiery 17th column, the halogens, is a column of tools that use heat, including soldering, welding, casting, and 3D printing.

Which fits the museum of oddities approach. Love that everything is pictured with a ruler* and its location, but not weight.

*using a unit I don’t recognize
posted by zenon at 12:06 PM on November 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I liked "tools to add material" and it made me want to have "tools to remove material" and "tools to divide material". For the latter zero kerf would be an improvement, for the former, not… there are probably counter examples still.

Really useful for my repairing pottering life.
posted by clew at 12:08 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Something I think about sometimes is how there are only so many things you need tools to do (hit things, cut things, attach things, unattach things, reshape things, move or reorient things, &c. &c.) but an almost endless variety of tools to complete these tasks in a variety of situations. I thought about this a lot with grooming stuff when I was younger, like how wire cutters and nail clippers or files and nail files are very similar and sometimes I'd use them interchangeably just because it amused me (I turned out to be a transgender man and I have no idea if using a wire cutter to cut my fingernails is related).

I've wondered idly many times if anyone has made a comprehensive taxonomy of tools based on function across different contexts (e.g. construction, sewing, grooming, cooking, really anything that uses tools). I think it's a neat question and this is the closest I've seen to what I've imagined. Thank you for posting!
posted by an octopus IRL at 12:20 PM on November 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

Every tool is also a hammer.
posted by aramaic at 12:37 PM on November 26, 2023 [6 favorites]

Very cool project! Theodore Gray has been doing nifty stuff like this for awhile.

I think perhaps the spiritual predecessor of this might be the McMaster-Carr online catalog.
posted by gwint at 12:44 PM on November 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

I like that is has a separate entry for "Hammers" and "Fancy Hammers".
posted by signal at 1:07 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not disturbing at all...
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:55 PM on November 26, 2023

No inclined plane?
posted by Sphinx at 1:56 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I like that is has a separate entry for "Hammers" and "Fancy Hammers".

Then where are the Prom Hammers? Formal Hammers? Business Casual Hammers?
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:59 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

One useful classification, at least for machining, is to look at the movement of the workpiece, and the movement of the cutter.

So if the workpiece rotates and the cutter is moved in translation to feed, you have a lathe. If the cutter rotates and the workpiece moves in translation, you have a mill. If the cutter moves back and forth and the workpiece is mostly fixed, you have a shaper, and if the workpice moves back and forth and the cutter is mostly fixed, you have a planer.
posted by Monday, stony Monday at 2:17 PM on November 26, 2023 [5 favorites]

I organize all of my tools by verb. Whatever I hope to do to something, there's a spot for the tools that will help me to accomplish just that.
posted by dsword at 2:45 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

The Scrape Section, the Bang Section, and the Blow Section.
posted by The Ardship of Cambry at 3:01 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

GAHHHHHH the "Scrapers" item has images of cutting/shaving tools. A drawknife isn't a scraping tool unless you are a) using it incorrectly and b) it's mad dull. And by those criteria, a saw, a screwdriver, and chisels are scraping tools too.

I do think the profusion of saw "elements" (and the deeply unnecessary vises vs "big vises" ) are where they let the format of the periodic table of the elements overrule what could have been a really cool schema for tools. The groups representing the type of action (as Monday, stony Monday asserts), and I'd organize them vertically not by mass (or weight ffs) but by how foundational they are in the Formation of the Tool Universe following the Big Garage Sale. E.g., screwdrivers should probably condense before *screwdriver bits*, and rightly should be in the Main Group (specifically a "Twisting" family) .
Same same for
"Whacking" (hammers, mallets, sledges, percussion drivers, jackhammers)
"Holding something still" (clamps, holdfasts, vises)
"Compressing" (different clamps, presses,
There are several obvious families associated with separating:
"Splitting"(hatchets, axes, mauls, froes, mattocks)
"Rotational Slicing" (scythe, sickle)
"Linear Slicing Towards" (hook knives, drawknives, spokeshaves, bookbinders guillotine and board shear)
"Linear Slicing Away" (chisels, gouges, hand planes, bookbinders plough)
"Scraping"
"Sawing" (maybe linear and rotational families separated?)
"Abrading/Ablating" (whetstones, rasps, files, sandpaper, sanders).
Routers are transitional somewhere -- between twisting and ablating?
"Brushing" (adjacent to ablating, but brooms to polishing wheels)
"Measuring"

Equivalent to the transition metals group (or the lanthanides, depending):
"Targeted melting-and-freezing family" -- soldering gun, welding rig, 3D-printer.
"Sucking" ? (domestic vacuum, shop vac, dust collection systems, vacuum-chucking vises seem like they might exist)
"Fastening" (needle, sewing awl, sewing machine, stapler)
"Splooging" aka "Dispensing" (caulking gun, glue buddy, hot glue gun ... adjacent to the melting/freezing family)
...

I need to go do something else or I'll have to actually make this thing.
posted by janell at 3:41 PM on November 26, 2023 [6 favorites]

Feels like they're trying to force a square peg into a round hole. There's probably a tool for that.
There is. Me, I'd just use a hammer.

I really liked this when I first saw it, but the closer I looked, the less I liked it. I get that the format puts a lot of restraints on categorising every tool, but I question many of the choices. The one that irks me the most is 'even-sided' wrenches' and 'odd-sided wrenches'. Given the restrain on total categories, I would have just used 'wrenches' but if there is a need to split them, 'ring' vs 'open-end' would make much more sense.

Nonetheless, this is a cool thing and I approve :-)
posted by dg at 3:51 PM on November 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

Hammer horror
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 4:02 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I organize all of my tools by verb

We do it by verb and object. (Acceptance criteria 1: the good sewing shears are not used for anything else.)
posted by clew at 4:21 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

I bought good sewing shears to use FOR everything else! Shear madness you say, but they do a great job and sharpen well.
posted by Greg_Ace at 4:50 PM on November 26, 2023 [2 favorites]

This thing is so Kevin Kelly that I’m a little surprised he didn’t make it himself.

That’s a compliment.
posted by box at 5:38 PM on November 26, 2023

I was expecting the top-level organization to be based on the 6 simple machines: lever, wheel, pulley, ramp, wedge and screw.
posted by rh at 7:14 PM on November 26, 2023 [4 favorites]

Whoever invented that that screwdriver bits display, drop your address in the chat, I just want to have a little talk about my trauma.
posted by EvaDestruction at 8:43 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

The poster's nice, but I'm going to take mine to go.
posted by fairmettle at 9:36 PM on November 26, 2023

Pretty sure this is the originator of the denture bit holder. Have fun.
posted by phooky at 9:39 PM on November 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Not all planes are block planes.
posted by Pembquist at 10:01 PM on November 26, 2023

Two out of three items in the scraper box are in no way scrapers. Definitely not put together by a woodworker and I doubt a metal worker either. This is kinda cool but a bit cockeyed too.

And the standalone term "maker" should be banned.
posted by deadwax at 1:47 AM on November 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Now that we've proven the periodicity of tool characteristics, we can anticipate the missing entries in the grid based on their properties and...what? Oh, it's just an æsthetic contrivance? Ah, very well then.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 2:39 AM on November 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

And the standalone term "maker" should be banned.

This is one of my pet peeves for sure.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:54 AM on November 27, 2023

Sadly almost everything in the ruler section are rules not rulers though recent conversations IRL lead me to think that is a distinction that has fallen out of use.
posted by Mitheral at 8:04 AM on November 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ahem, tools are arranged by: what horizontal surface was closest when you got your knees to unlock, and where is the least likely place to ever find that tool again (top of the freezer in the basement, bathtub shelf, car seat).
I enjoyed this chart, though; it's not accurate but there is something to be said for all that equipment porn just lolling around, taunting my budget and will to bash things together.
posted by winesong at 8:48 AM on November 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Ahem, tools are arranged by: what horizontal surface was closest when you got your knees to unlock, and where is the least likely place to ever find that tool again

Schrodinger's Toolbox is where all my tools go. Alive, dead, does it exist at all? Who knows until you dig in or more likely dump it out.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:58 AM on November 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Not all planes are block planes.

As any fool can planely see.
posted by Greg_Ace at 10:31 AM on November 27, 2023

Sadly almost everything in the ruler section are rules not rulers though recent conversations IRL lead me to think that is a distinction that has fallen out of use.

This was a pet peeve of one of my high school teachers in the 90's, the class's derision indicated it was a distinction lost even then. TBH I think I've only ever known one or two people to use the term rule in a professional setting and they are now well retired, for everyone else it's universally ruler.
posted by deadwax at 12:14 PM on November 27, 2023

+1 to dressmaker’s shears for other things. Based on Wirecutter, I just bought Kai’s dressmaking shears for the garage - mostly for gift wrapping - and they are awesome. I have no idea how to work with fabric! Maybe they should have a category for tools used for wrong purposes, like the huge flathead screwdriver I use to chisel out the fused ice in my freezer’s in-door ice maker … that’s the only thing I’ve ever used it for.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:38 PM on November 28, 2023