Salute to the cotter pin

This update will focus on some of the wide variety of uses that can be found in our never-reusable friend, the cotter pin.  More than just the keeper of castle nuts, this simple bit of shaped wire has many tasks that it can fulfill beyond guarding against unwinding disasters.

While not the most glamorous off-label function it can be assigned, the cotter pin is a fantastic personal grooming device.  Those chunks of undercarriage debris that make their way right into your ear, nose, or medial canthus?  The ones that you have no hope of dislodging without removing the nitriles you just put on and don't want to waste?  Cotter pin can help you out, no problem!  Likewise, whenever you have an obstructed pore that's irritating the hell out of you and distracting from more worthy subjects of your attention (power tools being operated, an engine in mid-lift), the cotter pin makes a perfect expression loop.

Of course, the extra roles of the cotter pin aren't just limited to orifice scraping or infection relief.  The cotter pin is equal friend to dermatologist and researcher alike!  If you make regular use of your service manuals and can't find what you're looking for through all the dogeared pages, time to quit making corners pointless and open up the plastic box that contains hundreds of eager bookmarks in waiting!  Marking your place by clipping a cotter pin to the page makes it easier to find what you're after- especially if what you're after is a cotter pin in the middle of a ball joint change.

Cotter pins can be used in a pinch for securing wire or small lines if the old fastening loops have been broken off or lost.  Just feed the pin through an available hole, with the loop end on the other side of the panel from what you're trying to secure.  From there, spread the legs of the pin apart and wrap them around whatever needs to be kept in place while you're tracking down a more appropriate replacement.

The cotter pin's potential as picker, poker, and prodder are likely obvious, but what about tweezer?  You can file the ends of each leg to suit your needs, bend them slightly apart near the loop, and you'll find you now have tweezers that rival a lot of purpose-made sets.

When all is said and done, the cotter pin has a potential for nearly-limitless use.  I'll share even more uses for these underappreciated bits of mystery metal in the future.  Just remember the one thing it can't do: be reused.  Never reuse cotter pin.