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Just realized the new guy at the shop calls a cable snake a 'fishing rod' because his old boss in Phoenix called it that.
Heard him say it while we were prepping a job in a tight attic crawlspace, and it made me wonder how many other weird regional terms for tools are floating around out there.
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kim_martin3mo agoTop Commenter
My uncle calls a level a "bubble stick"! It's wild how these things spread.
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robinson.leo3mo ago
That's a great point. Regional tool slang is everywhere once you start listening. In some places, a crescent wrench is a "knuckle buster." Heard a plumber call a pipe threader a "Roto-Rooter" once, which just confused everyone. Makes you wonder how these names even get started.
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Wonder where "knuckle buster" even came from. Did some poor guy smash his hand so bad with a crescent wrench that the name just stuck? Feel like most of these slang names come from one guy yelling something after he messed up, and it just spreads. Like who was the first person to call an adjustable wrench a "monkey wrench" and why did that catch on instead of something else? Bet there's a story behind every one of these, even if nobody remembers it now.
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