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Appreciation post: A simple magnet trick for finding dropped tools
Lost a wrench in the muck on a job near Jacksonville last year. Tied a strong neodymium magnet to a rope and dragged it along the dredge path, found it in about 20 minutes. Anyone have other good recovery methods for when stuff goes overboard?
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the_fiona5mo ago
Yeah, the "fishing blind" thing is so true. A buddy of mine dropped a Dewalt impact driver off his boat near Daytona and we had no luck with just a magnet. Tried that trick @brianreed mentioned about the flashlight taped to a pole, but the water was too murky to see anything. Ended up tying a smaller magnet to the end of a long wooden stick and just dragged it slow, felt like I was panning for gold.
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brianreed7mo ago
That Jacksonville muck sounds like it eats tools for breakfast. I dropped a brand new pair of channel locks off a dock once and just had to watch them sink into the murk, gone forever. My magnet trick only works if you drop things on dry land, which I seem to do a lot. Maybe I should start tying everything to my belt with a string like a toddler's mittens.
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lewis.mila7mo ago
My old crew in Tampa swore by a big magnet on a rope too, but we added a cheap underwater camera. Hooked a GoPro knockoff to the magnet line so we could see what we were dragging over. Found a whole drill set that way once, saved us a trip to the store. The murky water down there makes it feel like you're fishing blind otherwise.
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