Last night I did some roughing out of various shapes, and as is often the case, needed to change jaws on the chuck. I usually find the set of jaws to go on, open the box and then use the lid to receive the jaws coming off the chuck.
Same procedure here. Except right at the end, I managed to toss the lid with the jaws onto the floor. 3 of them were quickly retrieved, but I could not find the 4th one.
At this point the shop floor was covered about 4 inches deep in shavings, and there were shavings everywhere in the workshop. I decided to have a bit of a cleanup, and filled a refuse bag with shavings. The missing jaw, however, was not there. Nowhere to be seen.
So I emptied the entire refuse bag onto the shop floor and searched through it. Still no luck. At that point I decided that I’d had enough, and went to bed.
This morning I put everything back in the bag, half-filled another, cleaned the work shop, in short I made quite an effort. But no jaw. OK, I thought, I must have missed it somehow. So I took the entire refuse bag to my wife’s horse yard, spread it out on the floor of an empty horse box, and sifted through it with a rake. No jaw.
Back home, some more cleaning of the workshop. Then a cigarette to get the brain cells working. A coffee. Nothing.
Eventually I got down on my belly, and with a search light looked under all the cupboards. And there it was. About as far from the lathe as it could have gone, and camouflaged behind a cupboard leg and some styrofoam.
Now I ask you: this is a piece of metal with an odd shape. It doesn’t roll, it cannot roll. It’s heavy. If I drop this from 1m onto your foot, you’re going to scream (I have on occasion). How did this thing end up in that remote corner? I haven’t the foggiest idea.
The only conclusion I can offer is that gravity must have been suspended in that very moment it fell out of the box.