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The Periodic Table of Tools
- djmips 3y agoYou can't search the text in the webpage - it feels rather old fashioned. Also, where are the CHANNEL LOCK style pliers?
- sindoc 3y agoThank you for sharing. Seems like well organized dataset. I like datasets that connect the real world to the digital world
- mpolichette 3y agoI like the cataloging, but I dont see the periodic part of this.
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- tyingq 3y ago"The arrangement follows loosely the characteristic of the regular periodic table: tools with similar functions in each column, getting heavier as you move down the rows."[1] I can see perhaps not agreeing with their decisions, so maybe the groupings don't look correct to you, but they seem to have made some effort to be "periodic". [1] https://home.theodoregray.com/printed-products https://home.theodoregray.com/printed-products
- NeoTar 3y agoIt feels like they were perhaps hindered by wanting to conform to the chemical periodic table format.
- gcanyon 3y agoI'm not criticizing you for this, obviously, but "heavier" is a silly attribute to increase as you go down the table. It makes sense for the actual periodic table, but here something like "complexity" "modernity" or "scale" would have made much more sense (to me, obviously).
- jprete 3y agoBut atoms literally get heavier as you go down the table. If the actual elements were ordered in complexity of compounds, hydrogen would be at the bottom of the table, and periodic table posters would have to come with a special “carbon” sticker to attach to the floor.
- gcanyon 3y agoYes, I'm agreeing that mass (or more accurately, proton count) makes sense for the elements. I'm saying it doesn't make sense for tools.
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- phkahler 3y agoDid I miss profile gauge?
- mc32 3y agoDepends. They had dial instruments and micrometers, but not like spark “feeler” plug gauges. Also no voltmeters (they had powered equipment though) Come to think of it, I didn’t notice some of tools you’d need to work on an engine.
- theodoregray 3y agoUnfortunately fixed gauges (feeler gauges, spark gap tools, profile gauges, wire gauge tools, bolt sizers, etc) didn't make it into any of the top-level categories, so they are lumped in with the mess of "Other Tools": https://www.periodictableoftools.com/Categories/Other.html https://www.periodictableoftools.com/Categories/Other.html Some day I might create some new rows, because there are a lot of important categories that are completely absent.
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- mauvehaus 3y agoThis displays what I would consider to be a fairly limited knowledge of tools. Saws, for instance, take a variety of forms, and lumping all of the large ones into "big saws" rather ignores the fact that their use is fundamentally dependent on what kind of saw they are. Not their size. And perplexingly, miniature table saws are lumped in with other big saws. I'd also submit that a bung hole auger (lumped in with antique augers) is a reaming tool, not a drilling tool. Though one of the ones shown is a combination tool. There's an auger at the front to drill the hole, followed by the reamer to ream the taper. The important bit is still the reamer though, meaning the tool could properly be called a bung hole reamer.
- solomonb 3y agoI 100% agree and I think the periodic table is an inappropriate abstraction for organizing tools.
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- IshKebab 3y agoToo pedantic. I don't think the categories are meant to imply that the tools are similar to each other.
- f1shy 3y agoAgree about pedantic. But “periodic table” for me implies some similarity.
- spurgu 3y agoYeah I was also expecting a more well-thought-out structure given the periodic table layout.
- theodoregray 3y agoPlease see my long rant on this subject. There is quite a lot of periodic table structure....
- kbutler 3y agoWas I alone in expecting software engineering tools?
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- ofrzeta 3y agoI indeed thought about software tools although not software engineering in particular. More like classic Unix tools.
- remram 3y agoIt would probably be very interesting, since everything old is new. A column with RRD/Graphite/Grafana, inetd/systems/Kubernetes, fat/ext2/btrfs, Lustre/GlusterFS/Ceph, grep/ack/ripgrep
- 082349872349872 3y agoIf columns were arranged as "can be used as a quick and dirty substitute for" going up and "subsumes but is often overkill for" going down I guess we'd wind up with a Periodic Tree of Tools (with emacs and web browsers somewhere near the trunk)?
- theodoregray 3y agoI wanted to include them. Believe me, I wanted to! My publisher felt strongly that I should not stretch the definition of tools into metaphor. Beds are tools: they help you sleep better. There's just too many narrow-definition tools I needed to fit in. Otherwise I would have been more than happy to including a dig about how Jupyter Notebooks are a poor imitation of my Mathematica notebook design.
- IshKebab 3y agoThis is really cool. He sure owns a lot of tools! You could make a pretty neat display of them in a museum. Way more interesting than endless paintings and porcelain.
- massysett 3y agoThere is such a thing where I live. A guy collected random tools, including tools from a dentist. It's a lot of household things and farm implements from the 19th and 20th centuries. His collection is now a museum. I can't find a good website unfortunately.
- theodoregray 3y agoI do actually have a small museum in my studio... but it's rather small and informal. You can see some of it in this interview: https://kk.org/cooltools/theodore-gray-co-founder-of-wolfram-research-3/ https://kk.org/cooltools/theodore-gray-co-founder-of-wolfram...
- CapitalistCartr 3y agoWoohoo! There's tools here I don't have.
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- smeej 3y agoThis has a great auxiliary use for those of us who don't know about all the tools, and/or don't know the names of the tools. It's going to make me sound a lot less stupid at the hardware store!
- gumby 3y agoOne of the great things about having a German speaking kid is the number of books that show all the entries in a given category (e.g. a huge book with hundreds of earth moving apparatus and the specific name of each) In America I could only get close with farm animals and guns.
- PTOB 3y agoCould you recommend some titles? I not only enjoy German thoroughness, but I am also tickled by the schlamminvordstogezah style of German tool naming.
- gumby 3y agoSorry, kid has long grown up and moved out. I guess I’ll get a second wave when grandkids start appearing. But any bookshop kids’ section will have heaps of them. IIRC Gerstenberg Verlag was a good source, but that was a while ago. Also the Was ist Was series had the best explanations of how real stuff (locomotives, printing press, sexual reproduction, etc) works. If you can’t find the books I’m sure some of the videos are on YouTube.
- Prcmaker 3y agoCan't agree more. When we get tool or parts catalogues through work on the break room table, I recommend to all our graduates they spend time going through it, and to look up things they don't understand. Knowing the tool for the job already exists can save so much time and money, and while that genre of tool may change significantly, it applies to all fields of engineering.
- oooyay 3y agoI'm chuckling a bit because I get this feeling of consternation every time I run into something that doesn't go very smoothly. For instance, learning I was using the wrong kind of hammer for roofing saved my wrist from breaking. I've been collecting woodworking and carpentry tools and teaching myself as I go. If you really want to develop some intuition for what to use and when then learn about the basics of carpentry and wood working: routing, planing, joining/jointing, sawing, drilling, gluing, sanding, and finishing. The difference between machine and hand tools often comes down to surface area and/or density (that may not be holistically correct, but it satisfies my bar for a rule of thumb).
- gcanyon 3y agoI find myself unreasonably frustrated by this arrangement. "Screwdriver Bits" are not the base level of the screwdriver column -- "Screwdrivers" are. And the second column from left is just a mess: stampers are similar to rivets are similar to nail guns... how? I'm sure this is a personal preference thing but (to me) the columns should be thematically similar, off the top of my head (I am not skilled at manufacturing nor construction): 1. Things that pound things into other things (hammers) 2. Things that twist things into other things (screwdrivers) 3. Things that join things (staples, rivets, etc. -- yes, I get that this covers both nails and screws) 4. Things that shape things 5. Things that split things 6. Things that cut things 7. Things that break things down 8. Things that mix things 9. Things that contain things 10. Things that move single things 11. Things that move aggregate things 12. Things that etch things 13. Things that measure the size of things 14. Things that measure the mass of things 15. Things that measure force 16. Things that measure other attributes? I'm sure there are more.
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- pvg 3y agoI'm sure there are more. things that have just broken a flower vase, things that tremble as if they were mad, suckling pigs
- gcanyon 3y agoI'm not sure how this is a valid criticism? I gave actual categories of things-tools-do. You just made up nonsense tasks?
- yorwba 3y agoIt's a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevolent_Knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_Emporium_of_Benevole...
- fhjhrjrjrg 3y ago[flagged]
- cush 3y agoCould they have chosen a worse image to depict Screwdriver Bits? https://periodictableoftools.com/Images/002/002.640.jpg https://periodictableoftools.com/Images/002/002.640.jpg
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- dinkleberg 3y agoHaha I had the opposite reaction. This page was worth checking out for that alone.
- theodoregray 3y agoI put screwdrivers bits at the top of the drivers column specifically because I think that photo is hilarious and I want to make it as prominent as possible. This is why 3D printers were invented.
- analog31 3y ago>>>> This thing is called a chain whip. No, it’s not what you think. It’s a wrench, but with no way to close the chain into a ring. So how can you use it to grip anything? It's for grabbing a sprocket on a bike wheel.
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- chongli 3y agoI really like the idea but it needs to be a giant poster. On my 13" laptop screen it's so tiny and so compact that it presents an all-out high-frequency visual information assault on my senses. It's very unsettling and uncomfortable to use, for that reason. I really just want everything to be spread out a bit more.
- furyofantares 3y agoIt is http://home.theodoregray.com/printed-products http://home.theodoregray.com/printed-products
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- Tomte 3y agoJust today I put https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780762498307 https://mitpressbookstore.mit.edu/book/9780762498307 on my Amazon wish list.
- digdugdirk 3y agoFor those people who find this frustratingly incorrect/incomplete - this is an art project, not a an attempt at creating a taxonomy of tools. For those people who have little experience with the trades - this is an art project, and building up your understanding of tools from this resource probably isn't a great idea. For those people who can't get the screwdriver bits image out of their mind - I'm with you.
- demondemidi 3y agoWe know. I think the main objection is that it is just more noise and clickbait that really teaches nothing[0], or this case, buybait. [0] I think it actually unteaches things as it obfuscates the point of the shape of the periodic table.
- synthos 3y agoDefinitely buybait and a shame that a blatant advertisement has made to YC news front page. What's next? Novelty toothpaste for nerds?
- demondemidi 3y ago> Novelty toothpaste for nerds? One that changes color the longer you brush so that you know you've brushed sufficiently (and not just blood-red to indicate your gums are now bleeding). One that changes color based on where the calculus on your teeth accumulated, so you can target you brushing. One that does the brushing for you, just keep it in your mouth for 3 minutes and rinse. Oh lord...
- schoen 3y ago> One that changes color based on where the calculus on your teeth accumulated, so you can target you brushing. This exists, although for some reason I'm not aware that it's available as part of a toothpaste. (Maybe the toothpaste foam would create false positive indications by making it seem to accumulate in places that don't actually have plaque.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disclosing_tablets https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disclosing_tablets
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- iamwil 3y agoThis is one of my few pet peeves on the internet. The periodic table of X often isn't periodic, and shouldn't look anything like the periodic table of elements.
- civilitty 3y agoThe author added granite surface plates at atomic #69 (way out in the lanthanides) because: > Granite flats can be used as mounting surfaces for machines that need to stay very accurately aligned. Dozens of these huge precision granite blocks were sold as scrap to a local stone dealer, and I happened to pull up in their lot just after they had unloaded them. Blocks were piled up everywhere, blocking the driveway and generally making a nuisance of themselves, so the owner offered to sell me a bunch cheap just to get them out of his hair. I was told that the two mounting surfaces on each block are flat and parallel within millionths of an inch. This could be true, and if it is you’re looking at some of the most expensive lawn furniture in the world. I rented a rough-terrain forklift to arranged them in my front yard. There they remain to this day, 25 years later. 25 million years from now they will probably still be there, buried under the debris of a thousand civilizations come and gone. [1] Not to be a debbie downer but there's zero order to this "periodic" table. If there were, the granite plates would be somewhere in the first couple of rows as the foundation to the industrial revolution. We wouldn't have had precision manufacturing or 95% of the modern tools on that table without them. Building them was the first time humans figured out how to make perfect flat surfaces without which our world wouldn't be possible. [1] https://periodictableoftools.com/Items/T0702.html https://periodictableoftools.com/Items/T0702.html
- theodoregray 3y agoSee my long comment in this thread: I categorically reject the notion that there isn't any order to my arrangement of tools. It's actually quite detailed in how it follows the chemical structure, because your pet peeve is also my pet peeve. I wrote a whole book about the actual periodic table ("The Elements" by me), so it's a subject dear to my heart. Please look more closely. (Also, I would name gauge blocks over granite flats as fundamental to precision, but in any case, all measuring tools are in the same row because they are related, just as are the lanthanides and actinides.) They are at the bottom because that's where they fit most naturally. My logic they should be the noble gasses, because they don't change anything. But there were too many I wanted to include. It was anodizing having to move them to a larger space.
- ericra 3y agoThe majority of comments here are pedantic nitpicking about proper tool categorization, improper use of the term "periodic", etc. Why? This is someone's art project, it's pretty cool. Enjoy the thing if you like it! It's not meant to be an encyclopedia.
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- pvg 3y agoA good way to improve the thread is to write about something you like or found interesting the submission. Writing meta about how terrible the thread is just makes it worse.
- CoastalCoder 3y agoSince this is just begging to be hung in a workshop / man-cave, I'd like to mention a related poster: [0] Extra legit because Nick Offerman's non-acting job is running a woodworking shop. [0] https://www.nbcstore.com/products/parks-and-recreation-swanson-pyramid-of-greatness-poster https://www.nbcstore.com/products/parks-and-recreation-swans...
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- theodoregray 3y agoSo you can in fact hang it in your shop, I'd like to mention this link for buying my periodic table of tools poster: https://home.theodoregray.com/printed-products https://home.theodoregray.com/printed-products
- causality0 3y agoThis more of a random sampling than anything attempting to include the most important tools. For example, the hammers section has a foam Minecraft pickaxe but doesn't have a slide hammer.
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- theodoregray 3y agoThere's a slide hammer in the book and on the website, just not in the poster. I wanted to include a bit of humor, sorry.
- dvh 3y agoNo Burke bar among pry bars? Sacrilege!
- analog31 3y agoTry a Johnson bar, same thing, but with wheels.
- Animats 3y agoSo many old friends. I miss TechShop.
- AareyBaba 3y agoThere's MakerNexus as an alternative now.
- batguano 3y agoAmused to see the 10mm socket in an "in case of emergency break glass" box. So true about 10mm, though I'd lean towards the 10mm box wrench. I've disassembled many a motorcycle with not much more than that.
- Prcmaker 3y agoThe emergency 10mm box used to available to purchase from a couple chain stores in Australia. I bought a good few as gifts.
- LeonB 3y agoYeh, I love that the table has that playful sense of fun.
- theodoregray 3y agoAmazingly this is an actual product you can buy.
- kortex 3y agoAs a former chemist and all-around maker, I love this and this bugs me all at once. I love the concept, but as others have pointed out, this is less a "periodic table" and more "grab bag of related things". You see these all over the place: foods, drinks, cars, etc. All table, no periodicity. Why are wrenches and drills strewn across three groups? Put the wrenches in one group, drills in the other. Impact drivers somewhere in between. There's some vague grouping, but it's pretty hodge podge. The way I would do it, is use electronegativity (tendency to give or remove electrons) as a proxy for additive/subtractive. Atomic weight is a proxy for actual weight/scale. Group I would be like clay forming (the OG additive process), concrete, FDM, SLS, injection molding, casting. Group II is a bit less additive, more bonding: hot glue, soldering, brazing, welding. Halogens hog out material: thermic lance, plasma cutter, laser, waterjet. Chalcogens: hand router, (power) router, lathe, mill. Metrology doesn't add or subtract, so obviously that's your Noble group. Transition metals are all the fasteners. Lanthanides/Actinides are all the weirdos. I'd also add a group for just the simple machines. I think it's more important to have groups, periodicity, and trends, than sticking to the exact shape/size of the periodic table of elements. This is Theodore Gray too! Author of a bunch of books and posters on chemistry. Well, you know what they say, if you want something done right...
- hoosieree 3y agoInclined planes form a column. Unguided inclined planes: knives, axes. Guided: planes, scissors. Inclined planes wrapped around cylinders: drills, screws. Blunt objects form a column: Hammers, presses, brakes. I agree with your categorizations involving tools that rely on heat, but I guess the problem with any such taxonomy is the next person comes along and goes "well I would do this differently, and that..."
- kortex 3y agoObviously everyone has their own classification. But TFA doesn't even distinct cutters from air pressure tools. I'd at least make a group for Fluid Workers: air compressor, water pump, hydraulic ram, hydraulic press.
- quickthrower2 3y agoThe micrometers (you need one for every 25mm, e.g. 0-25mm, 25-50mm, 50-75mm, etc. is very interesting!).
- vikmals 3y agoI feel like this could be better visualized in a tech tree.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 3y agoI guess I was expecting things like the wheel, lever, and pulley.
- jjeaff 3y agoI like the "Grabbers" section. I'm always on the lookout for different types of grabbers or long cutters. I find that no matter how esoteric, the tool will end up being invaluable on some little project in the future. Lately, I have been collecting a lot of medical style grabbers like hemostats and laparoscopic operating tools. Just the other day, despite all my various little grabbers, I realized I needed something that can grab a stiff, round object as I was fishing wire through the attic for some new lighting. It probably would have saved me 30 minutes or more. So I'm on the lookout for a good option for that.
- theodoregray 3y agoAllow me to introduce you to uterine tenaculum forceps: https://periodictableoftools.com/Items/T0472.html https://periodictableoftools.com/Items/T0472.html
- jjeaff 3y agoHa, yes, I noticed those. I would prefer something a little more like a laparoscopic tool, but I might look around for one of those.
- ChuckMcM 3y agoI love these books, my favorite is the Engines[1] one but this one is a close second. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Inner-Workings-Machines-World/dp/076249834X/ https://www.amazon.com/Engines-Inner-Workings-Machines-World...
- vmfunction 3y agovery cool. It would be nice to have this for bike tools.
- javier_e06 3y agoAh the Vise Grip Plier. It should not exist. It destroys everything on its path. The presentation card of the no-good craftsman wannabe. Banned in my garage. The Arsenic of tools.
- dharmab 3y agoVice grips are a perfectly acceptable tool when you need to remove a small stripped screw and plan to replace it with a fresh one.
- theodoregray 3y agoNo, no, it's one of the most essential of all tools! If I had to recreate civilization, I would start with antibiotics and vise-grip pliers. I mean, what are you going to use if you can't find your wrench, pliers, screwdriver, hammer, or tooth extraction tool?