Tool Abuse

How to abuse common hand tools in new and interesting ways. You've all heard the axiom, Use the right tool for the job. I'm here to tell you it just ain't so, any machinist knows this, the first thing they do when they get a new bit for their milling machine is start whittling on it. They grind out funny nooks and crannies, that make the bit into a new and different kind of bit. One that serves their needs. They don't stop there, if you ever look in the jig box, of a well equipped, seasoned machinist, you will find numerous special tools for doing God only knows what, by now the machinist has long since forgotten what they were for and reworked them into some new and different tool. Any of the tools you see, may have been reworked numerous times. The point here is that good tools are invented, and reinvented. These creative people are tool makers not simply tool users. In this mind set, one often selects a tool for purchase, partly based on how easily it can be modified for a given purpose. I intend this file to be an inspiration to people who read it, not as a recipe for any of the strange uses of tools I have encountered, or invented, but to demonstrate by example how to think like a tool creator, rather than a tool buyer.

However since I live in one of the most litigious countries in the world who's citizens, are allowed to roam the net, with the lens cap of their mind securely in place the following must be stated.

The legal stuff, I do not take any responsibility for any harm, or injury arising from the application of any of these techniques. You are on your own.

The Dremel fly cutter: If you don't have a Dremel tool, or something like it get one... You need it! It's one of those tools you'll wonder how you ever got along without. If you have one, take a piece of strip metal, I used plumbers tape, and form a band with a screw to tighten it around the body of the Dremel. At a right angle to the strip that forms the band, in the middle of the band, securely attach another strip of the same material about two inches long. At the end of this strip drill a hole the size of a bolt that you have a nut to match. The bolt should be at least 3/8" long and preferably no longer than two inches. When fitted onto the Dremel tool the bolt serves as a pivot point to guide the Dremel cutting tool in a circle, much the same way a circle drawing compass is used on a drawing board. If you wish to cut a perfect circle in the side of your PC case to bolt on a fan, you simply drill a hole the body size of the bolt mentioned earlier, chuck a fiber, and stone cutoff wheel in the Dremel, switch the Dremel on, insert the bolt into the hole you drilled into the PC case, and gently rock the cutting wheel down to meet the metal case, than with a twisting motion rock the Dremel back and forth in a twisting motion to cut about a third of a circle of arc about halfway through the metal. Do not cut clear through. Do all three thirds to the same depth. Then repeat this operation cutting half the way through the remaining metal, all three thirds. In theory you will never get there, but in practice the metal becomes thin as foil and at some point you can't avoid breaking through. Soon after you break through your center pivot point will become unstable, and to use the Dremel to go deeper becomes risky. At this point remove and turn off the Dremel. Next whack the pivot point with a suitable hammer, and with any luck the slug will pop out, leaving this perfect hole for your fan, and a really nice fender washer for your junk drawer!

Rolling your own sheet metal screw threads: If used the way they suggest you are supposed to use them, sheet metal screws simply tear their way into a hole in sheet metal, leaving only the thickness of the metal to do any holding. If you drill the hole using a drill bit about two thirds the size they tell you to use, and grab a high carbon steel sheet-rock screw. These are very very hard metal, and they have a very aggressive double helix thread. Dip this screw into some 40w motor oil and force it to screw part way into the hole you drilled, being careful not to expand the metal larger than the sheet metal screw you intend to screw into the hole. Unscrew, and remove it. Now put a dob of grease on your sheet metal screw, and when you screw it into the hole, it will flare and reform the partially formed threads made by the sheet-rock screw. When you get done you will have a nice deep formed thread, that looks upon close inspection rather like a funnel, and provides much more secure fastening than the skimpy tinny fastening you would have had.

Rolling your own sheet metal screw threads in plastic: This has to be one of the stranger uses of a soldering iron. Drill the hole into the plastic, using a drill about four fifths the size you're supposed to use, and deliberately dull the outside of the cutting edge of the tip of drill bit with a grinder before you drill the hole into the plastic. A dull drill bit will get hot, and hot plastic, is much less likely to grab, instead it kind of acts as a lubricant right where you need it most. Once the hole has been drilled start the screw into the hole, but don't press your luck... When it starts to bind stop. Now the next part is a little tricky, so if you don't have a feel for this kind of thing, maybe you should experiment on some scrap material. Place a hot soldering iron directly on the head of the screw. Keep it there until it starts to get wobbly, remove it and gently place the screw driver on the screw turning with light force. What you're doing is allowing the screw to melt its way into the plastic, don't rush this phase, if it cools off you can always re-heat it. When you get done you will have plastic threads that exactly match the shape of the screw. Note: When you reach the depth you wish the screw threads to be formed, rotate the screw driver back and forth about a third of a turn until the screw cools, to prevent the plastic from fusing to the screw. Don't remove the screw until it cools to the point that the plastic around it is solid.

Making your own aerosols: Don't throw away that empty freeze mist can, it's clean inside, and it's empty. You can mix up stuff and turn it into an aerosol. I'll leave the choice of substances to you, we'll just call it stuff. Find two caps that fit those thin red tubes used for directing the spray. Next obtain one of those thin red tubes. Now connect a cap to the tube, and plug it into the empty can. Obtain an 18 gauge hypodermic needle and syringe. Grind the sharp point off the end of the needle, fit it to the syringe, and draw up the stuff. Carefully poke the tip of the needle into the red tube. Now while pushing down on the cap, thus opening the valve in the can, use your free hand to push the plunger, to inject the stuff into the empty can. Next remove the needle from the red tube, and place the other cap on the end of the red tube. Now push that into a can of freeze spray. Next prepare two pans of water. One full of ice, the other full of warm water, but no hotter than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Place the Freeze mist can in the warm water, and the can with the stuff in it in the ice water. Press and hold both caps until hissing stops. Disconnect everything. You now have a somewhat emptier freeze mist can, and a custom can of aerosol "Stuff"

Shearing off bolts: They make this wonderful tool to cut and strip wire, crimp wire ends onto wire, and shear bolts, without damaging the threads at the end of the bolt, so that after the bolt has been cut, the end easily screws into the nut. To anyone who uses such a tool, the word "easily" is probably greeted with rounds of laughter. Ya' these tools do cut the bolt, and they attempt to do a nice job, but the steel pivot, even on a new plier, if tight enough to live up to the promise of the tool, makes the tool too tight to use for the other purposes for which it was intended, and since it is intended to be primarily a wire stripper, the pivot is never tight enough to flawlessly cut the bolt. Further, even if the pivot was tight enough, the force on the jaw would over time cause enough separation between the two rotating plates, that a tissue thin spur of metal from the bolt is galled, and upon extraction of the screw that spur is bent outward, forming a burr that makes the nut difficult to start. This separation is angular such that the pivot, no matter how tight won't ever produce a clean cut. However, if you place a pair of Vice-grips on the end of the two rotating plates, nearest the screw, the tool will do a beautifully clean cut, that the nut just glides on to the screw in giddy appreciation of your efforts.

Shearing off bolts revisited: There is another, rather non-traditional way to cut bolts, and not damage either the thread of the bolt end, or the remaining length of thread stock. Find two threaded spacers at least ten times as long as the diameter of the bolt you wish to cut. Screw the first one on, half a diameter above the point where you intend to cut the bolt, and screw the other up to half a diameter below that point. Place the second threaded spacer in the jaws of a vice, and tighten securely, note: hexagon shaped spacers work much better than round ones. Next with Vice-grips, or a piece of suitable tubing, grasp the first spacer, and bend the bolt about 5 to 7 degrees, the less the better. Then bend it back 5 to 7 degrees in the opposite direction. Repeat the procedure and about ten to twenty times into rebending the bolt, the bolt will fatigue and break, right at the point that is un-reinforced by the spacers. If your bends were gentle enough, the break will be so clean, that the spacers will glide off with ease. In addition to making a clean cut, the metal right at the end, is soft and fatigued, so dressing with a file is all the easier.

Shearing off bolts, beating a dead horse: Chuck the bolt into the drill press, even with the point you wish to cut it off. Start the drill press running. Take a hacksaw, and using the end of the spinning drill press chuck as a tool rest, bring the hack saw down to meet the spinning screw. This takes surprisingly little force. Slowly glide the saw back and forth to avoid building up metal chips in just a few teeth of the saw blade. Continue until the screw is cut three quarters through. Stop drill press, unchuck, and remove screw. You should be able to snap screw apart with your bare hands. DON'T TRY TO CUT CLEAR THROUGH!!! Your muscles acquire remembered tension, and your reflexes are too slow to respond to the saw suddenly giving way, this will inevitably push your hands right into the whirling machinery, not to mention the cut off end, suddenly becomes a high speed projectile heading in any of 360 degrees!

Drilling holes in plastic, rubber, and paper: Don't throw away that old broken telescopic antenna. Save it. Take it apart. There's a nice set of drill bits inside it. Drilling plastic, rubber, and paper poses a particularly vexing problem, namely that the material just galls up and after the drill is removed the hole if drilled at all, is NOT pretty. Placing a hollow thin walled tube in the drill press, however, has just the opposite effect. When the flat spinning end of the thin walled tube comes in contact with the work piece, it forms a friction cutter, and because of it's hollow center, waste material is held captive inside the tube. In days gone bye, I used to use this method to drill an extra hole into 720k 3 1/2" floppy diskettes to make the machine format them to 1.44 meg. This sort of thing demands that no particles of waste material are ever generated, because bits of waste plastic that get into the floppy diskette would almost certainly degrade performance. I never had a single failure using this method! The hole made by such a process, is amazingly clean, and must be seen to be appreciated.

Scissors as food cutters: Knives are ok, but there is this amazing new invention that cuts things, by essentially forming a plier like pivot, or hinge point, near the handle, of two knives. This incredible invention cuts things by causing the two knives to slide sharp edge to sharp edge against one another. If you had been the inventor of this marvelous device you would probably have gone out in search of good practical uses to put it to. At some point you would have been asked what to call it, you'd have paused for a moment and replied, uhh, Scissors? It is in this spirit I want you to be thinking, unbridled by convention, as I show you a novel new use for such a tool. Take a pair of scissors preferably stainless steel, and wash them as throughly as you would any kitchen utensil, and place them on a clean cutting board, take some ground meat, flatten it out in a patty, and cook enough on both sides to make it stiff enough to withstand handling. Turn on the tap, using cold water. Scoop out the partially cooked patty with a spatula, and place it under the cold running water, being careful not to drop in into the sink! When it is cool enough to handle, grab hold of it with your bare hand, and with the free hand use the scissors to cut it into strips, allowing the strips to fall directly into the pan. If the width of the strips are equal to the thickness you can cook all four sides. When you get done you have finger food that resembles skinless sausages.

Using a pair of Alligator Clips for cooling: Select a length of test lead at least 18 inches long, with a suitably strong jawed alligator clip on at least one end. Clip it securely to one end of some workpiece you are going to heat up in soldering, and will subsequently wish to rapidly cool. Do your soldering. Now to cool the workpiece, grab hold of the other end of the testlead and whirl the workpiece around in about a three foot diameter circle at about three rotations per second. Ten to fifteen seconds of this usually cools a hot part to such a point it is barely warm to the touch. This method works much better than blowing on the part.

Using a Dremel tool as a box brake: If you don't have a box brake you can set up a jig to angle a dremel fiber glass and grit friction cutoff wheel such that sliding a piece of sheet metal through the jig repeatedly will score the sheet metal about one third the way through the metal. This weakened point will focus all the bending stress. Chuck it a section at a time in a vice, bending a little bit at a time, until you achieve the desired bend. You can use this same method to cut the metal by repeatedly bending it, until it fatigues. Note: I have also seen the above technique performed using a stylus against a straight edge to score the metal.

Using a metal straight edge as a "Box" box brake: If you're like me you often re-make cardboard boxes, to fit exactly, as opposed to serendipitously finding that perfect box. Folding card board against the grain is easy, and predictable, if you first, hold a straight edge along the line you wish to bend, and holding it vertically, use it like a chisel, whacking the back of it with a hammer, to flatten the ribs of the cardboard, at the point where the straight edge makes contact with the cardboard. The cardboard now willingly, and predictably bends exactly where you want it to.

Drilling holes down through the center of bolts: Have you ever wanted to sneak a wire down through a bolt, the long way, I.E. from the end down through the bolt and have the wire pop out of the head. If you've ever tried to drill a hole this way, you're probably laughing, saying what I'm talking about is utterly impossible. It's not. And it's easy, you could even do it with a hand drill! File an "X" across the end of the bolt. Chuck the bolt into a vice and very carefully start the drill at the point where the "X" crosses. You don't have to drill very deep, just enough to adequately start the hole. Now unchuck both the bolt from the vice, and the drill bit, from the drill. Place the bolt in the in the drill chuck, and place the drill in the vice. Now with the bolt spinning, and the drill bit securely fastened in the vice, carefully mate the two surfaces once again. As the hole cuts, an amazing thing happens, the drill is self aligned as it proceeds through the bolt. The reason is that any angular error, is subtracted out of the equation every 180 degrees of rotation.

Using a Hair Drier to remove adhesive labels: Many adhesive labels that tear rather than peel off, lift off with ease if you first heat them with a common 1000 watt blow drier. Some however are designed as tamper resistant devices, that defy even the Hair Drier; Power drafting eraser to the rescue! An electric drafting eraser, will harmlessly friction heat the offending adhesive, mixing bits of eraser rubber into the adhesive, until it looses it's effectiveness.

Using ice to cut Plexiglas: A reciprocating saw will cut Plexiglas, but it mostly melts it's way through. If you grab a large ice cube, and hold it against the back of the saw blade two things happen, one the blade remains cool for the entire cut, and two the melting ice, serves to keep the saw blade moist. That moisture, serves as a lubricant, and the cut that results is almost polished. How polished? Well with a fine toothed saw blade we got results good enough you could see through both the sawed edges!

Using a refrigerator to power up your hand drill: There are times when the job you have to do, is just a little more than the power tool you have can handle. I'm sure every body out there has stressed a power tool beyond reasonable limits a time or two. You don't have to do harm to get that last extra boost out of your power tool. Most drills come with a lock button that keep them running with out the need to hold the trigger, for those that lack this feature, I'm sure you can improvise something. Before you overheat your poor power tool, the next time you feel such a need, lock the switch in the on position, with the power cord disconnected from the wall. Carry the tool into the kitchen, open the freezer and place the tool in it, in such a way, that it won't creep due to vibration, close the freezer door on the power cord, such that the power cord reaches out of the refrigerator, and plug it into the wall allowing it to run for five minutes or so. It's internal motor cooling fan will draw in super cold air, rapidly cooling the stressed motor down to acceptable levels, then it's temperature will soon fall way below that. Now abusing that power tool is far less damaging to the coils, who's windings melt, and short out at 180 degrees Fahrenheit.

Using an acid brush, and alcohol to localize cooling: Freeze spray is expensive, a low cost substitute is to paint a little alcohol or some other volatile liquid onto the electronic component that needs to be tested for thermal shift. The method doesn't get as cold as freeze spray, but it also has the benefit that only the component you want to cool is affected. Freeze spray is somewhat indiscriminant.

Using a resistor to heat test ICs: Some times cooling fails to expose a thermal, where heating succeeds. Chassis mount five watt resistors, that are manufacturered in an extruded aluminum housing, have a nice flat bottom, that you can smear some silicon thermal conductive grease onto, and then connect to a power supply to heat the resistor and then touch it to the IC, or other suspected component.

Using offset metal shears to cut PC boards: Rather than using ordinary tin snips to cut PC Boards, if you have a pair of offset metal shears, these are sometimes referred to as "Aircraft Shears" have the advantage of keeping the handles up out of the way of your work, and they don't bend the board as much.

Using a hair drier to shrink tubing, with hand over the input vent: Normally a hair drier lacks enough heat to shrink tubing, but partially blocking the intake vent, allows the temperature to rise to an adequate threshold. Safety is ofcourse a concern, but modern hair driers have a thermal cutout, and it will open the circuit, before a meltdown occurs however you don't want to press your luck, as soon as you shrink the tubing, to minimize the possible damage to the hair drier, don't simply shut it off, rather switch to the cooler setting, and open the vent to rapidly cool it down to a reasonable temperature.

Using a lighter to shrink tubing. Butane Cigarette Lighters work perfectly for this purpose, but don't stop on one place on the tubing, keep the flame moving back and forth. I recommend practicing on an unimportant piece of tubing first, until you get the hang of it.

Using a tape head to locate current paths. If you have an IC or bypass cap shorted somewhere on a large board, it can be a daunting task to locate it. Hewlett Packard makes an expensive probe to aid in this sort of thing, but there is a cheaper way... If you connect a suitable stepdown transformer to a audio generator, you can create fairly large 1000 hz currents through the shorted circuit foils, with only 50 millivolts of AC. A simple audio tape head connected to a suitably sensitive audio amplifier can pick up the 1000 hz magnetic fields radiated by the circuit foils that are carrying the current. By following the path you will locate the short in no time, the IC or cap will actually radiate a noticeable signal.

Repairing broken books: Although not really my idea, and not even really tool abuse, a friend taught me how to rebind paperback books that have some groups of pages that have separated from the glue that is the book's binding. The first step is to carefully separate the cover from the rest of the book trying not to damage either more than necessary. Many books are assembled using hot glue in the spine of the book to hold the cover to the spine, if this is the case, heating the spine with an iron, oops tool abuse, hey you don't really use that iron for it's intended purpose anymore, now do you, anyway heating and peeling, can help remove the cover intact. Once this is done, construct a vice to hold the body of the book, I use two pieces of 1 x 2 pine cut to a length two inches longer than the length of the spine of the book, and then I use two drywall screws one at each end, to clamp the body of the book in such a way that the spine is exposed by about a quarter of an inch beyond the edge of the homemade clamp, now with a reciprocating saw, using the thinnest blade you can find, make a series of cuts about 1/4 of an inch apart about 1/8 inch deep into the spine of the book. All of this presupposes that you were able to remove the layer of glue on the back of the spine, if not, the saw cuts need to be a little deeper. The next step is to find a suitable disposable vessel, a paper plate, or perhaps a blister pack top will do. Pour Elmer's Glue, or if you have wood glue, that's even better, into the vessel. Find a source of thin string, or heavy carpet thread. Cut lengths of string about 4 inches long, one for each cut you made in the spine of the book, plus about an extra twenty percent or so in case you screw up. Now place the book, and the clamp between two heavy immovable objects, so that the spine is facing up. Now with a Popsicle stick in one hand, and a piece of precut string in the other, use the Popsicle stick to submerge the string into the glue, about an inch away from your finger, and draw the string about two inches, don't coat the end of it, or when you take hold of it with the other hand things will get messy. Now grasp the other dry end of the string, pulling it taught, center it over the first saw cut in the spine of the book. Saw the string back and forth, a few times to get it partially embedded into the saw cut. Pick up a jewelers screwdriver, and use it to tamp down the areas of the string that didn't reach the bottom of the saw cut. Repeat this process for the rest of the saw cuts, and allow the glue to set. Once the glue has set, but before it has hardened, use a pair of side cutters to snip off the strings flush with the first and last pages, at the spine. Discard the Popsicle stick, and glue vessel. Clean things up, but don't disturb the book. Give ample time for the glue to harden. Now remove the body of the book from your homemade clamp, and glue the book's cover back onto the spine, and allow it to harden. I have done this to several books, they are much better than new, almost indestructible.

Copper Clad board as battery current jig: They make thin, on the order of 30 thousandths thick, two sided copper clad board. This is the kind of board you use to etch your own printed circuits onto, or at least that's the normal purpose it's used for. They make all sorts of insulator material for the base that the copper is laminated to. Some are flexible, some rigid. One rigid type, just happens to be Teflon, and Teflon, if you'll remember is the super slick stuff they make non-stick cookware out of. Cut a piece of this material that measures 3/8" wide by about an inch long, and with a grinder or sandpaper sharpen one end of it into a knife blade, on the other end of it attach some nicely flexible multistrand zipcord to it by soldering one each of the conductors of the zip cord to the non sharpened end, about an eighth of an inch from that end. Make the soldered connections as straight and parallel as possible, to the non sharpened end. If all went well, and you didn't over heat the copper clad adhesive... it will peel away if you get it too hot, as a final beautifying step, grind the eighth inch overhang down to where it's flush with the soldered wires. Now on the other end of the zip cord, that's maybe about a foot long, (you decide) solder on a clip lead to each wire. Now the next time you need to measure the current flowing in an apparatus that runs on battery power, simply connect the two clips to your ammeter and wedge the sharpened knife edge, in betwixt any two batteries in the battery holder. Your meter is now in series, and reading the current that is flowing in the circuit. Because the base material is made of Teflon, and sharpened into a knife blade, it slides easily into the crack between the two batteries, in the absents Teflon Clad board, the much more common Epoxy Glass composition will do, it's just not as slick

Neon Glow tubes as rf sensors: Back in the by gone days of Television Repair they're were TV Techs that took the useless plastic tuning tool extender, this is a hollow plastic tube about the size of a Soda Straw, albeit with somewhat thicker walls, anyway they would press-fit an NE2 neon glow lamp, into one end. Often the lamp they chose was one that through abuse, had lost one or both of the wire leads. If any wire leads were still present, they were also disposed of. So what good is a long insulated plastic straw, with a neon glow tube stuck in the end of it? Well for starters if the flyback circuit is working, this is where all the high voltage comes from in a TV set, and you point the long straw that carries the neon so that the neon is in the vicinity of the secondary winding of the Flyback Transformer, magic happens, the neon glows, and not just a dim glow either, and it glows all over, not just near the electrodes. Nicola Tesla first observed this affect early last century. That's probably where the TV Techs got the idea, but it has application in radio, as a matter of fact, I used to observe the "standing wave" effect by holding a long fluorescent tube near the antenna of my second home brew transmitter, the first one was a total failure. The "standing wave" effect looks like bright, and dark rings of light, that appear to slowly creep up or down the fluorescent tube. Using devices this way, gives you a visual indication of the presents of Radio Frequency energy.

Using a Propane Torch to extract ICs: This is another idea that I had no part in, but it fits the theme here. If you have no use for the printed circuit board, but you'd like to save the ICs, this one works. First off, I have to say the immortal words, don't do this at home. Or more precisely, don't do it indoors! If you fail to heed my warning your house will permanently acquire the oder of an army surplus store, a thousand times over! Even worse the fumes of burning epoxy and solder mask, are somewhat toxic, no do this outside, on a mildly breezy day, and avoid standing upwind of the board being heated. Ok fasten the board securely with a vice, mounted to, a bench or table, that is outdoors. Start at the top of the board, and work down, because heat rises, and you want to control this as best you can. Using a pair of Channel Lock Pliers, grasp the ends of an IC, and pull on it a little, bending the board some what. Also make sure that the corner leads are not bent over, as that will make it much to difficult to remove. Now heat the other side of the board, near the IC leads, and in an area around the IC about two inches in diameter, but mostly heat nearest the IC. At the moment the solder liquefies, the IC will let go quite suddenly, so avoid standing directly in back of the board, as the board may spring back, flicking solder on you, and this would likely be somewhat painful. Sometimes a rocking motion, with the pliers is helpful with some of the stubborn ICs, but don't get too aggressive, or you'll damage it. Now the board is warmed up, the next one goes three times as fast, and as the board gets hotter, and you gain skill, you can begin pulling them about once every ten seconds. Connectors and IC sockets don't hold up to the heat, so if you must have these, desolder them first, the old fashioned way, because once you start torching a board, they are little more than blobs of plastic, with metal pins sticking out of them, and they more resemble some strange new cacti, than precision electronics.

Using a Hypodermic Needle to extract ICs: Here's yet another idea that I had no part in, but it fits the theme here. Go down to the corner Drugstore, and ask for the biggest hypodermic needle they have. Few sell them without the syringe, and you don't need the syringe for this purpose, but don't worry about it, you'll find plenty of uses for the syringe anyway. What you are looking for is a Stainless Steel needle that has an inside diameter large enough to fit down over an IC pin, and small enough for the outside diameter to fit inside the typical 30 thousandths hole in the printed circuit board. Now grind the tip of the needle so that it has about a 45 degree point. Next place the sharp end of the needle over the end of an IC pin, and press firmly against the board, while heating both the sharp end of the needle with a soldering iron, and by way of thermal conductivity, the IC pin, printed circuit board hole, and most importantly the solder. When the solder melts, slowly rotate the needle back and forth, so to screw it into the hole as the solder melts, until you get it through the board, and resting against the IC pin's shoulder. Remove the the iron, while continuing the rotation, as the solder cools. Because the needle is made of stainless steel it won't stick to the solder. Once the solder has safely hardened, remove the needle, and repeat the process on the next pin, until all pins are free. Now carefully pry the IC out of the board. If done with care, you will likely save both IC, and board.

Laziness is the mother of invention: We write macros, to simplify repetitive operations. We invent motorized transportation rather than walk. If you recognize this, and try to work toward this end, you can end up spending more time and effort trying to avoid dull repetitive work, than the work would have cost alone, BUT... it will be more interesting, and eventually you get better, and better at finding solutions, and at some point the payoff is that you work no harder than you would have, AND... it ain't boring either!