Chris Peterson - Manskills How to Avoid Embarrassing Yourself and Impress Everyone Else

MANSKILLS
How to
Avoid Embarrassing Yourself
AND Impress Everyone Else

MAN. THE NOBLE ANIMAL. WELL, KIND OF. MEN HAVE thumbs and we walk upright, which helps us stand out in the animal kingdom. But its these things we can do, our own unique skills that make us special. Not just any skills. Certain skills define a man, make him the pride of his pride, the envy of others, the... well you get the picture.

We call those particular skills Manskills, and they are captured handily and succinctly in this book.

These are the proficiencies that all great males must have. If there were an SAT for manhood, these would be on it. They lie beyond the simple tricks and stunts that sometimes pass for manliness: burping the alphabet, burning rubber from a dead stop, deciphering box scores. Sure, all those are very useful. Very useful.

But if you want to be a real man, admired by peers, desired by women, and generally carried on the shoulders of the world, you must master Manskills. Like Luke mastered Jedi mind tricks. Just like that.

Many of these may already be second nature to you. As king of your own little castle, you may have already mastered the plumbing arts and know everything there is to know about how to unstick a door without the aid of small explosives. You may be a pro behind the wheel, able to slip away from that black sedan that has been tailing you like so much smoke in the wind.

But Manskills is about the total picture, the total man. Its about everything you should know to be a complete and thoroughly alpha male. And why would you ever want to be anything but the complete man. After all, you wouldnt go out of the house with half a shirt on, would you? Okay, maybe you would, but the point is that you should never sally forth as anything but a fully, 100-percent skilled hombre.

You see, the man who has mastered ManSkills has mastered his own fate, owns his destiny. He is the man of the beer commercial and the Arrow Shirt ad. He is confident, and a winner, and in control. He is the prince among lesser men, the captain of the ship, the... well you get the picture.

So the question is not whether you master ManSkills. No. That is not the question. The question is: What the heck are you waiting for, Bumble?

Weve set you up, put all the skills in neat little categories, thrown in some instructive illustrations, and covered all the bases. Now, dear friend, its up to you. Time to turn the page, learn the skills, and claim the badge of manskillfulness!

CHAPTER No 1

Shelter Savvy

FIRST THERE WAS THE CAVE. BUT THE CAVE LEAKED, and there was graffiti on the walls, and the plumbing sucked, and there was no door to hide behind so the sabertooth tiger used the cave as his personal pantry.

So man invented rudimentary tools, and then there was the hut. The hut was nice, but the roof leaked, the placed smelled of mud and decay, mice nested in the walls, and the dirt floor was, well, dirt. Woman complained until man couldnt take it anymore.

So then there was the house. Solid roof, nice wood floor, and no sabertooth tigers. One bronze age, one Iron Age and one industrial revolution later and, ta da, lots of tools for the house. Given that the great law of houses is that, left to their own devices, they crumble, there are many uses for the tools. And then there are new tools. And more uses. Its a wonderful hardware store-sponsored circle of life. All of which is why, as part of a complete repertoire of Manskills, you must master both the tools and techniques that will keep the house together.

Luckily, this is often fun. Its the jaded man who doesnt enjoy an afternoon spent destroying a hard surface with a jackhammer. And few feelings can rival the satisfaction of a perfectly straight painted line that exactly separates trim from wall. And thats to say nothing of simple self-preservation of quieting that running toilet that is messing with your sleep. Yes, there are many rewards to mastering the plentitude of home skills.

Should you ever grow weary of exercising those skills, the raw mechanical abilities it takes to make your home a castle, just think what it would be like to battle sabertooth tigers when mowing the lawn. Things could be much, much worse, chum.

The most basic of Manskills is handling a handsaw. It starts with knowing which kind of saw you should use, rip or crosscut. Pretty simple really: if you need to cut across the grain you usewait for ita crosscut saw. If youre cutting parallel to the grain, use a ripsaw. Regardless of which type youre using, both can bind when the kerf (the gap of your cutline) closes down, cinching the blade. Its a frustrating experience and it can lead to sawing off line (not to mention a whole lot of words the kids shouldnt be hearing).

Prevent binding by keeping saws sharp and in good condition. When sawing, use a spacer such as a thin piece of scrap, an awl, or a nail to keep the kerf open. Just stick the spacer in the kerf behind the saw, as you saw along the cut line.

A stripped screw has to rank in the top three among the all-time great frustrations of any do-it-yourselfer. Getting that bothersome fastener out of its hole is like a lot of life: you can do it the easy way or the hard way. If the screw is just slightly stripped, stop before you do any further damage and use the easy way. Press a piece of rubber gasket or a rubber band down over the screw head, and then press down hard with the screwdriver, jamming the blade into whats left of the screw-head channels. The rubber often creates enough tension in the stripped head to hold onto the blade of the screwdriver so that the screw can be slowly removed.

However, if youve let your frustration get the better of you and you really stripped that sucker out, time to do things the hard way. Buy a screw extractor (or better yet, a set) of the smallest size that comes closest to matching the screw size. Drill a pilot hole in the center of the stripped screw head using a bit that is at least a size smaller than the screw. Now use a hammer to tap the point of the extractor into the pilot hole. Attach the T handle onto the square shank of the extractor (or use vise grip pliers if your forgot to buy the T handle) and start slowly turning the extractor counterclockwise. With a little bit of patience, youll have an empty screw hole in no time.

If its the screw hole that stripped, youll need a slightly different solution. Basically, you want to create friction where there is none. Wrap the screw in unstripped electrical wire (speaker wire will work as well) counterclockwise. Then screw it in slowly and the threads should bite securely into the surrounding surface.