OT: I Found My Vice-Grips

[terry_g]

Over twenty years ago I was working on a truck and needed an extra hand to hold a wrench. Since no one was available to help I clamped my trusty Vice-grips on the nut so they would jam against something and continued on. After the truck left I realized that my vice-grips were still clamped on the nut.
Today after work I was driving to my hotel and I saw what looked like a pair of vice-grips on the centreline of the highway so I stopped to pick them up.
I recognized them immediately as the ones that I had lost years ago from some of the marks on them. The release latch is bent to one side from using a screwdriver on it because I had clamped them so tight fingers could not release them. There are a couple marks on the sides of the jaws one is from grinding a woodruff key to fit a metric motorcycle the other mark was from wrestling a stud extractor from the exhaust port of a cylinder head in a very confined space.
There is no doubt in my mind that these are the same vice-grips that I lost years ago.

[914Wilhelm]

So are you going to look up the guy you did the repair for and offer him a refund as your repair has obviously failed after 20 years?

[Evan]

I did something similar. I used my favorite pair of vice grips to hold a nut on the underside of my Land Rover. It was some time later that I realized they were missing but I never thought of looking under the Rover. Several years later I was under there for some reason and there they were, a bit rusty but still clamped on the same nut. I still have them.

[wierdscience]

I had lain my 24" Williams cresent wrench on the bumper of my truck after changing a trailer ball.An hour later I was 50 miles away and pumping gas when I noted it was still there.

[darryl]

That's one I can relate to. I laid a pair of vice grips on the bumper of the land cruiser and forgot them there. Only when I 'found them missing' did I wonder where they had gotten to. Just by accident I noticed them on the bumper. Probably had a good couple hundred miles on them.

I wonder if anybody ever found my side-cutters- I installed a speaker system in a building where I needed a 30 ft step ladder to reach the ceiling. Managed to leave the cutters by one of the speakers, and I wasn't about to set up the ladder again.

[macona]

My great great grandfather had built a work wooden workbench. My dad remembers is when he was a kid. When they moved when he was a kid they had sold it. Then probably about 15 year ago what do they find at a garage sale? You guessed it. Its now in my dads shop.

[gwilson]

Months after my wife had had her car worked on,I found a huge screwdriver over 2' long laid across the radiator in a recess. It never shook its way out.

[Robin R]

You obviously had better luck with the screwdriver than me, in my case the screwdriver fell of the radiator and was impaled by the fan. It then proceeded to act as a core drill on the radiator, that was many years ago and I wish I could say I wouldn't do the same again.

[Doc Nickel]

About two years ago, I did a bed swap on an old Dodge. Took the old stock bed off and replaced it with a utility box- the service truck style with the drawers and storage boxes.

When we took the bed off, laying on top of one frame rail, where it hadn't been 'held down' by anything, was a pair of needle-nose pliers. Not locked to anything, and where there was over 2" of clearance to the underside of the bed, just resting on top of the frame.

Badly rusted, there was actually an outline of the pliers in the rust on the frame. They'd been there for many years.

Interestingly enough, with a good soak in some vinegar and a bit of WD-40, I was able to salvage 'em. They're badly pitted, of course, and the handles are a bit lumpy from the rust pockets under the rubber dip, but they work and they're good quality steel.

Doc.

[PixMan]

I had been gifted a Shrade pocketknife by my brother one Christmas. The following spring, he helped me build a deck on the back of my home. During the construction, I lost that pocketknife. I had by that time become quite fond of it, and had engraved my name and town on one of the blades.

It was gone for 6 years when I found it at my feet while raking leaves. It now has a beautiful patina.