The Great Indoors 3

The best little invention I saw at the National Fieldays was, without doubt, The Nibbler.

It’s unlikely that I’d ever buy one, because I have no reason to use one, yet it was so neat and efficient that one couldn’t help but admire both the gadget itself and the person who dreamed up such a nifty device.

The Nibbler is a small tool, no bigger than a child’s fist and perhaps a little longer. It’s fitted to an electric drill and is used to cut heavy plastic or light sheet-steel such as guttering or thin metal plate, either for close-fitting work, or for decoration. The mechanism works on a punch-cutting system, the punch being rapidly driven up and down on a cam turned at speed by the drill. The result was a clean, fine, exact cut and, of particular benefit, there was no jagged or rough edge to be filed smooth.

It was a very neat little device, and the man demonstrating and selling them did it with considerable skill. He was doing so from the smallest of sites along one of the huge event’s main thoroughfares, and all he had was a bench to display and demonstrate his cuttings, the electric drill, which he cradled in the crook of his elbow, and a few boxes of Nibblers. Every time I passed him he had a small group of interested spectators watching and listening to his patter. I hope he makes a poultice from the four-day show.

Another dinky device – though I saw a number of faces screwed up in revulsion as a video showed how it worked – was called The Breaster. It was simple, straightforward and a classic piece of Kiwi practicality. Built of good solid slabs of metal, the device was fitted to a fencepost and held in place by a hefty metal spike driven into the top of the post. Protruding from the side was a blunt, round-nosed metal finger about 20cm in length, and, as was uncompromisingly displayed on the video, the body of a game-bird – in this case a duck – was forcibly driven onto the spike.

Using the gadget was not for the faint-hearted. The wings and feet were first neatly pruned off with a foot-operated guillotine, followed by a good solid shove to impale the bird through the gizzard, breast up, on the spike. Further grisly work was then carried out. The skin, complete with feathers attached, was ripped open, like a paper wrapping, and simply peeled away from the carcase.

It was all very neat and clinical, and as the video showed, a practiced hand could complete the task in about 30 seconds, making it a good and useful in-the-field tool if several people had made limit bags on a duck-shooting expedition.

There’s no end to the inventiveness when solidly practical Kiwis put their minds to it – and the National Fieldays is the ideal place to show them off.