Tuesday, June 05, 2007

WD-40 Makes a Decent Hammer

I'm not quite a member of the WD-40 fan club, but the stuff is pretty amazing. A couple days ago, I discovered that one of our drain pipes was leaking. I tore off the wood paneling to find the leak and noted several rotten 2x4s that I had to remove before I could access the leaking pipe.

With my trusty hammer, it was easy to remove most of the nails and wood. However, one beam just wouldn't come loose. Two nails held it fast. The first nail I cut through with a hacksaw. The second nail was too far back for the blade to reach. I pried and pried but could only get it loose about 1/4". While I was staring at my toolbox, suddenly es fällt mir ein: use the WD-40. I stood there for a minute dumbfounded. How do I use WD-40 to pry out a nail?

Eventually my brain caught on. I sprayed the WD-40 onto the 1/4" of nail that I had exposed. Then I hammered the nail back into its hole. After a few seconds, I pried with the hammer again. Now it came out about 1/2". After a few more rounds of spray, hammer, pry, the nail came out and the timber was free.

If I had been better versed in WD-40 canon, I would have known that on page 4 of 2000 Uses of WD-40 is this great proverb: Lubricates nails to ease disassembly of pallets.

2 comments:

JJ Hendricks said...

Funny post. I had no idea that WD-40 had a fan club. I guess WD-40 and duct tape are the only tools a guy needs.

Travis Hendricks said...

I thought for sure this was going to be a disaster story with you smashing the can of WD-40 on the nail and some sort of small-scale explosion ensued. Your use was much better thought-out.