Last Sunday morning I used my spring loaded centre punch but a few hours later I could not find it. I keep my punches in a shelf with holes in it to suit the size of the punch and this particular punch has a gold anodised outer shell so it is usually very easy to see it on the shelf or if it falls on the floor.

I searched the usual places. Got down on hands and knees with a torch to look under benches etc, even got a bit of swarf embedded in a knee for my efforts, but no luck fining san punch.

I have other non-spring loaded punches which I used, but I really liked that punch and wanted to recover it. My usual tactic is to start a tidy up and eventually it surfaces but still no luck. Doing the week I looked for it again several times also nothing.

Yesterday I was in the hardware store and decided to buy another one. When I got it home and opened the packet to put the new one in the hole in the rack where I kept the old one - there it was! just two holes away from its usual place.


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