Customers sometimes ask how long I will guarantee my work. My tongue-in-cheek stock answer, when working in the field is, “Fifty feet or 50 seconds, whichever comes first.”
It’s not that I’m not confident of my work; it’s just that when you’re working on equipment there is no such thing as fail-proof. Having said that, there are several things I will guarantee, such as the following:
- If I so much as pick up a container of Never-Seize, within 30 seconds my hands, wrists, fore- arms, and much of my clothes will be splotched with that pernicious stuff.
- If I open a new spray can of WD-40, spray paint or other aerosol, there is a 50/50 chance that within the next hour I will knock over that can so it lands on the spray nozzle, breaks off the nozzle, and renders the can useless before I’ve used any of it.
- Any time I need to use our shop’s welder, the argon bottle will be nearly empty, and there will be just enough gas to start a weld but not enough to finish it. Yes, it’s my fault for not checking the tank’s gauge, but that just double-annoys me.
- Any time I need to rip off a long piece of duct tape, the tape will fold back on itself, sticky side to sticky side, before I can get it stretched out and laid in the place I need to tape.
- And I can guarantee that all of the used cans of spray paint in my storage cabinet, no matter how carefully I turned them upside down and sprayed them to clear their nozzles after I used them, have clogged nozzles.
