Audra Brown: Issues aside, few tools beat trustworthy jack

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There are certain tools that are hard to replace with any other. A hammer is a hammer, but a rock or a Crescent, or quite a few other things can be used in a pinch to serve as a hammer, albeit of inferior efficiency. In the other hand, we have a jack.

There are different kinds, but they all produce essentially the same effect, and do not have any other purpose to the design. That is to say, a jack is a device that you put between two surfaces, and it tries to push them apart.

The most common misconception is that a jack is only for lifting things up, even if that is perhaps a most common use.

Jacks can be used sideways, upside down, and all angles in-between. They are handy, irreplaceable, and also frequently dangerous. The true trick, though, is having the right jack for the job, because all jacks are not created equal.

Consider those little hydraulic ones that come stashed behind the seat of a new pickup. They are barely adequate when conditions are best — like when you get that flat on level concrete/asphalt on a lovely spring day.

I don’t know about you, but I rarely ruin my tires on such nice surfaces. No, I’m usually a few inches deep in sand, in a ditch steep enough to ski down, or maybe I’m just smack in the middle of a grass-burr infestation.

Floor-jacks, manual or air-powered, are great in the shop, but that’s as far as they roll. Portable air jacks are nice, but require a bit more than just getting thrown in the back of the pickup and left there. That’s to say, required accessories (air compressor) not included.

Jacks in general are dangerous because they are usually holding things up/apart that would cause more than a little damage if they were released.

The most handy and similarly nefarious jack has to be the handyman jack. Although it goes by many names, it is so useful that all the smashed digits, broken bones, and worse that we’ve heard of or experienced, doesn’t stop anyone from using it all the time.

Audra Brown still has all her digits. Contact her at:

[email protected]