How I find lost items

Bill DeShivs

Bill DeShivs

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Jun 6, 2000
Messages
12,723
I'm slowly making some changes in my shop and taking mental inventory of where things are.

Many years ago, I did some work for a major Rolex retailer. I Florentine finished quite a few Rolex bands for them and for my own customers. I had purchased a carbide burr specifically for this. It cost $32 in the early 1980s. I knew it was on my bench, but I couldn't locate it. I have been fiddling with a few watches lately. So I ordered another one and it arrived today.

This evening, I took it to the shop to try it out. It worked great. I looked up at the back of my bench, and there was not one, but two Florentining burrs! It's OK- they are different sizes.

Happens every time. If I can't find something I just order a new one and magically-the old one shows up I now have multiples of everything!
 
Same here! I ordered a foot pedal for my mister for the 2x72 several months ago, can't find it. New one came in earlier this week, so that usually means I will find it in my shop this evening when I go out there!
 
Amazing how things disappear like David Copperfield in the house. I have extra 10MM sockets and plenty of cross tip screwdrivers,they seem to relocate on their own and come back unexpectedly.
 
Bill, I can't tell you how many specialty burrs (including the same one you just bought) I have ordered because I can't find the one I have only to find it just after the new one arrives. Often, I will go to put the new one in one of the burr carrousels and spot the missing one with the ball burrs or somewhere it doesn't belong.
I love those carbide florentine burrs. They restore old watches and h[jewelry perfect. My flame shape and barrel shape probably have hundreds of hours use and still cut perfect lines. I don't miss the old days when I did that by hand with an 18/10 liner graver.

"If one is good, several is better!" -That is probably why I have 50 screwdrivers.

I buy things for projects ahead of time to spread out the cost. I bought a cordless tool rack for the tools, chargers, and batteries a couple years ago ... and put the unopened box where I could find it when I was ready to do the new forge ... now, I can't find it anywhere. I ordered another one and will be installing it sometime this week. I bet I will find the other a day or two after the new one is bolted on the wall. I will probably put the missing one in the main shop, so no waste when I find it..
 
And here I thought I was the only one with this super power.

I lost a Leatherman Wingman multitool once. I found one on ebay, ordered it, and it showed up 3 or 4 days later in my mailbox. It was a nice day, so I thought, "why not sit in my hammock while open this package?"
I get situated in my hammock and start tearing open the package containing my new Leatherman, only to see the sun glinting off of something right between my feet. Guess what? It was my old Leatherman.

That's only one of about 100 times I've bought something, and then proceeded to carry the replacement directly over to the one I'd spent hours (or days) looking for already. I'm sure there's got to be a scientific law named after this...
 
Bill DeShivs said:
I'm slowly making some changes in my shop and taking mental inventory of where things are.

Many years ago, I did some work for a major Rolex retailer. I Florentine finished quite a few Rolex bands for them and for my own customers. I had purchased a carbide burr specifically for this. It cost $32 in the early 1980s. I knew it was on my bench, but I couldn't locate it. I have been fiddling with a few watches lately. So I ordered another one and it arrived today.

This evening, I took it to the shop to try it out. It worked great. I looked up at the back of my bench, and there was not one, but two Florentining burrs! It's OK- they are different sizes.

Happens every time. If I can't find something I just order a new one and magically-the old one shows up I now have multiples of everything!
Click to expand...

This reminds of the Twilight Zone episode from the 1985 reboot called Matter of Minutes about the how there are these faceless people dressed in blue that create the scenes around us. They are responsible for things not being there one second then being there the next.
 
The most bizarre thing that ever happen to me as far as losing something....me and a friend were hog hunting near Ceder Key Fl. about 30 years ago, I knew the area well so i told him lets go thru this swamp and about a half mile in it opens to a high spot with a field, i had a tree stand back there. so we go back there, split up and hunted till dark. we made our way back to the truck when he starts telling me he can't find his glasses and he knows he had them cause he was wearing them back in there, and they were over $300.00. he was pissed because we were scheduled to head home that night. he didn't want to go back with flashlights looking for them and said he had a spare pair at home.
Fast forward three weeks later I'm back there by myself, in that tree stand and of course I had thought about him losing his glasses back then. so just sitting up in that tree i was scanning around and caught a glint from the sun coming off something about 50 yrds away. I thought there's no way that could be a pair of glasses. when I climbed down from my stand a couple hours later I went over to where I saw that glint, and damn if it wasn't his glasses! I couldn't believe it.
When I got back home I met him at his favorite pub and said...Jim, you ain't going to believe this, I found your glasses. he got all pissed off thinking I was joking. I pulled them out and told him the story. That was absolutely unbelievable!
 
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In the jewelers trade we call it, "The black hole in the bench". It is the mysterious cosmic hole small things fall into and disappear, travel down a wormhole, and fall back out later. You search the bench for that gemstone/tool/burr/etc. for an hour and finally give up and get a new one ... only to find it right in front of you the next day.
European jewelers used to call it "The Gremlin on the bench." It was a mischievous imp that moved or took things when you were not looking.

There is a scientific reason for this phenomena. Your eyes do not actually see anything. Your brain processes the image that falls on your retina and "sees" what it deems as pertinent to what you are looking at. If it knows what it wants to "see", it disregards most all the other sensory input and concentrates on the subject. If reading a book, the brain does not "see" the rest of the room, just the letters on the page. If looking hard for something that your brain is sure it knows what it looks like and where it is, it ignores other input that does not match that description. Your eyes may look right at the object and the brain will not see it if it doesn't consider it a match for what it is looking for. This is often caused by you thinking something is a different color or shape than it actually is. It is very common when looking for a box that you are sure you know what it looks like. If it is a different color/ size/label box, you may not find it. Someone else will walk up and pick up the box where you just looked because they do not have a pre-conceived idea of exactly what the box looks like. They usually say, "If it was a snake it would have bit you."

There is a psychological method of searching for things that works well. Go and look from the opposite, or a different direction. This makes your brain scan all the area in view fully, and will often see the object you are looking for. Even looking form a 90° different angle will usually find the object.
 
I don't know how many times I inadvertently found something while looking for a different thing. While looking for my missing AA flashlight, instead, I found that knife I was missing. What this taught me is to look beyond where I thought something would logically be. I've subsequently used that strategy to locate missing items.
 
My bench eats tools all the time!
I call the wife, tell/show her what it looks like, and she finds it pretty quickly!
 
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