Tool ID

Let'sgoflying!

Let'sgoflying!

Touchdown! Greaser!
Joined
Feb 23, 2005
Messages
21,872
Location
west Texas
Display Name
Dave Taylor
Home Airfield
KMRF
Found outside my hangar.
Chapstick for size.
I know of no dentists at the airport lol
Maybe it is an aviation tool? ‍<shrug>
 

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Let'sgoflying! said:
Found outside my hangar.
Chapstick for size.
I know of no dentists at the airport lol
Maybe it is an aviation tool? ‍<shrug>
Click to expand...

I probably could use something like that when restringing a piano, but there are better versions available.
 
Safety wire pigtail tucking tool? I use something similar when tucking the pigtail on surgical wire when repairing facial fractures. We use 24ga wire most frequently and tuck the cut end of the twisted wire back against the bone. We affectionately call it a ‘pickle fork’ or a gauze packer (which was a much less common use for the instrument). As a side story, when in training we had an exchange fellowship with another residency program in Adelaide, Australia. They called gauze ‘tampons’. When one of the Aussies asked for a tampon pusher, the young surgical tech manning the Mayo stand gave him her finger. True story. :biggrin:

Edit for clarity- the young lady was not offended, she was laughing while she gave him a finger, not ‘The Finger’, as in the one she used for such a feminine specific maneuver. ;)
 
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robin ardoin said:
As a side story, when in training we had an exchange fellowship with another residency program in Adelaide, Australia. They called gauze ‘tampons’. When one of the Aussies asked for a tampon pusher, the young surgical tech manning the Mayo stand gave him her finger. True story. :biggrin:
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I was at a medchem conference in DC some years ago, and one evening I suggested going to a nearby tapas bar for dinner. A woman in the group got VERY offended.
 
SCCutler said:
Spring hook/installer.

Use the hook to pull a spring to install; the forks, to push.

Used often in my earlier life, working at Bell & Howell and servicing microfilm equipment.
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Exactly correct. I think I still have one or two around. I used them often in my own previous (long past) life working in IBM systems, including the Selectric which was used as a console device on some really old mainframes.
 
DaleB said:
Exactly correct. I think I still have one or two around. I used them often in my own previous (long past) life working in IBM systems, including the Selectric which was used as a console device on some really old mainframes
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Ditto!
Can't replace a Selectric rotate tape without a spring hook.
 
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DaleB said:
Exactly correct. I think I still have one or two around. I used them often in my own previous (long past) life working in IBM systems, including the Selectric which was used as a console device on some really old mainframes.
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A1Topgun said:
Ditto!
Can't replace a Selectric rotate tape without a spring hook.
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You guys do know that to anyone under 40 it sounds like you're just making up words, right? :biggrin:
 
Jim K said:
You guys do know that to anyone under 40 it sounds like you're just making up words, right? :biggrin:
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It's also used to perform adjustments to the turbo encabulator which increases billable hours for the service department while providing no useful function.
 
A1Topgun said:
Ditto!
Can't replace a Selectric rotate tape without a spring hook.
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Yer dam skippy you can't.
Jim K said:
You guys do know that to anyone under 40 it sounds like you're just making up words, right? :biggrin:
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That's OK. There's a vast amount of pop culture references that I see and hear daily that are exactly the same.
 
flyingron said:
It's also used to perform adjustments to the turbo encabulator which increases billable hours for the service department while providing no useful function.
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Just don’t get the hydrocoptic marzel vanes out of alignment
 
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DaleB said:
...including the Selectric which was used as a console device on some really old mainframes.
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Ah, those were the days. Sigh....

1 a.m. in the computer lab, cold pizza, large bag of Doritos, a couple gallons of Mountain Dew, a mile-long printout on watermelon paper, chasing some @$#%! bug for so long that I can only speak in FORTRAN,....
 
Half Fast said:
Ah, those were the days. Sigh....

1 a.m. in the computer lab, cold pizza, large bag of Doritos, a couple gallons of Mountain Dew, a mile-long printout on watermelon paper, chasing some @$#%! bug for so long that I can only speak in FORTRAN,....
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LOL...I was in high cotton when I finally could afford a Fortran77 compiler for my IBM desktop at college..Still remember being amazed at how much faster everything ran when I got the daughter board and could load a total of 1 meg of RAM on it. o_O
 
So, the real question becomes, who’s running a mainframe with an IBM Selectric terminal in their hangar?
 
MauleSkinner said:
So, the real question becomes, who’s running a mainframe with an IBM Selectric terminal in their hangar?
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Not many Selectrics were used as mainframe terminals. Most Selectrics were stand alone typewriters. Millions were in steno pools and offices. Steno pools also had a MTST (Magnetic Tape Selectric) typewriter which used a 16mm sprocket driven magnetic tape cartridge to record and play back keystokes. Many legal offices used them for boilerplate contracts.
 
A1Topgun said:
Not many Selectrics were used as mainframe terminals.
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True. And they didn’t call it a Selectric; it was a 1052 printer/keyboard. The keyboard actuated contacts that were used as inputs to the S/360, and the system actuated solenoids in the 1052 to print using a Selectric mechanism. The keyboard and print mechanism were pretty much identical to the Selectric, other than there being no mechanical connection between the two.

All of this from distant memory. The Army was still using 360s into the mid 1980s; the 1052 console had to be present and functional, but it was rarely used. There was a 3272 controller and 3277 terminal for the operators.
 
R/C'ers from the 1970s-80s will recognize the little metal clevises with a #2-56 thread on the linkages inside Selectric typewriters. Supplied by Du-Bro for use on pushrod ends and sold in hobby shops, some people called them "IBM clevises"; Du-Bro called them "Kwik-Links".

And back to the tool that started this thread, I have an assortment of dental picks in my toolbox; they're useful for all sorts of things (including removing o-rings).

1767545555142.png
 
DaleB said:
Exactly correct. I think I still have one or two around. I used them often in my own previous (long past) life working in IBM systems, including the Selectric which was used as a console device on some really old mainframes.
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This reminded me of the System 38 that went down on a power surge from a PDU circuit with an improperly grounded neutral, I was there because they also called me, the UPS contract guy. I fixed the grounding issue, but the mainframe was a dead fish.

After he let me look at the schematics in the big blue books, I told the IBM tech the power supply likely had a blown time delay fuse, and if we opened it up I had a replacement for it. He got a horrified look on his face..."That's not an FRU! I can't touch it."

When I pointed out the customer was getting a murderous eye twitch, he relented, pulled the PS module out of the chassis, and I removed the cover. There it was, a blown 10 amp time delay fuse with soldered axial leads on the main PCB. I had it replaced and back in the unit in 10 minutes, and when the tech hit the button, it began the power up sequence.

The customer was happy, and the tech stopped sweating so profusely.

:biggrin:
 
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That’s the difference between IBM guys and those of who worked third party maintenance. And I’ll bet that S/38 took at least half a day to boot after an unscheduled power off event…
 
3393RP said:
"That's not an FRU! I can't touch it."
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After spending time fixing the Selctrics, Standards, E-trons and Displaywriters, I went to work for a company that trained techs how to fix those. We also provided replacement parts. The ROM's in the Displaywriters used to fail at an alarming rate. IBM wouldn't sell them because they weren't FRU's (Field Replacement Unit, for you non-IBM types). So you had to buy the whole board which was thousands of dollars. We figured out how to copy the ROMs and started exchanging those. That business was very good until the Displaywriters starting getting replaced by PC's running the IBM Displaywrite software.

Fun times.
 
The spring hook I use on drum brakes is quite a bit beefier… coulda used that back when I repaired stereo equipment in high school at a TV repair shop.
 
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