Not Too Late
Some tasks require a special tool. This is one of those tools. The thing is really nothing more than a bit of rolled and folded steel, but it works the best doing the task it was designed for. This one uses single edge injector razor blades. Handmade by a very long established company, the proper name of this tool is a contraction of the informal name of the task and the tool combined.
No, it is not the world’s sharpest vegetable peeler, but I bet it could skin carrots like nobody’s business.
Extra credit if you can explain to me how the job this tool does came to be the particularly British name for a not well respected activity.
PS - I haven’t gone and checked, but I don’t think anyone guessed what the green thing was in last week’s WhatsIt. It is a plastic cased LED bicycle lamp, that snaps on over the handlebar stem.
Well, I haven’t seen one bent quite like that one in the handle, but it looks like a leather Safety Beveler.
There are a whole host of uses, one that comes to mind is using it for a leather wrap on an handle. it is used to skive the leather to make a flat joint where the two ends of the leather overlap, so it is completely flat.
One use in English slang; it means the practice of avoiding responsibilities because you want to do something fun, IE truancy or skipping out of work
A link to some really ‘anal’ group of people that are having a discussion on the origin of skive, skiver, skivvy, skivey
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1318024
Posted by B3
11/28/2010 at 07:04 PM
...but it looks like a leather Safety Beveler.
...also known as a skiving knife, IIRC.
Posted by GrumpyOldFart 11/28/2010 at 08:41 PM
Absolutely! This is the Osborne No. 925, called by them a skife. Skiving + Knife = Skife.
It looks exactly like the Tandy Safety Beveler.Having a skive, or skiving off, is a term almost never used in America. We cut out, slack off, jerk off, play hooky, and a host of other terms that mean the same thing, but we don’t skive. Well, some of us probably do, but we don’t have that term or one like it. Do we?
Excellent link! The first post gave me exactly the explanation I wanted: in the same way that this tool thins down a piece of leather, the skiver cuts off thick slices of time and effort from what he owes his employer.
Posted by Drew458 11/28/2010 at 10:12 PM
Ya beat me to it.
Actually I had no clue but Im bored and its sunday so there it is.
Posted by Rich K 11/28/2010 at 10:52 PM
BTW, Im here to do due diligence on the local terrorist thingy in Oregon ( my home,Ugh).
And NO, it wasnt me.
http://my.earthlink.net/article/us?guid=20101128/4032e61e-ac73-4a09-88f7-e450fb65d934Posted by Rich K 11/28/2010 at 10:56 PM
How much you want to bet that this fire was self-set, just like all the other ones? And look at the article - “80% of the office was burned, but no part of the worship area”. What an awful coincidence, all the papers that would show this guys connection to the mosque went up in smoke.
Hmmm, makes one wonder, don’t it?
Posted by Drew458 11/29/2010 at 10:16 AM
Thats why you run this place. That had not occured to me. And it should have. But Im rather dim these days. Yet I dont have a cold, or the flu. So I shall just label myself slow for now. That is all.
Posted by Rich K 11/29/2010 at 12:04 PM
Hey Rich, there are still 2 empty seats on the short bus, up front behind the driver where you can make “vroom vroom” noises all you want!
Posted by Drew458 11/29/2010 at 04:23 PM
VROOM VROOOM VROOOOM, Ya Baby,Thats the shit!!!!
Posted by Rich K 11/29/2010 at 11:07 PM
Its really me on one of ‘Those days’;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnzHtm1jhL4&feature=list_related&playnext=1&list=MLGxdCwVVULXe2D8UU2Hh82Jn_DdwDymdr