Machinist gifts, with every joke explained.

A time card with a clock-in time and no clock-out time. A good machinist stays until the part is right, so dinner waits.

Make a thousand parts and nobody mentions the 999 good ones. Everyone asks about the one that went wrong.

A holiday dinner, and where the turkey should be he sets down a small metal part he made. Machinists bring their work home to be admired, and the family is polite about it. You may be in the picture.

It's the mad scientist's laboratory from the old horror stories, except the thing on the slab is an old lathe. Machinists rescue dead machines and bring them back to life in the garage, and the night one finally runs is a big night.

It's the famous moon-landing photograph, but the astronaut is standing on a machine shop floor. The engineers who draw the parts rarely come down to where they are made, so when one does, he looks like this.

It's the old cartoon of the caveman inventing the wheel, except the wheel is square, because the drawing he was handed showed a square. Machinists make exactly what the drawing says, even when the drawing is wrong, and they are proud of it.

A jigsaw puzzle with one lost piece, and in its place a shiny metal piece he made himself. When something small breaks or goes missing, a machinist does not buy a new one. He makes it.

It's the driving-school car with the sign on the roof, except the car is a shop machine and the new hire is at the controls. The older machinist who trains him is stamping on a brake pedal that is not there.

It's the red emergency cabinet from the wall of every public building, with an older machinist standing inside where the fire extinguisher would be. When the new machines are down or the job is a strange one, he is the one they come and get.

Coolant is the fluid that keeps the cutting tool cool. Its smell comes home on a machinist's clothes. Drawn the way a kid would.

The garage holds a lathe and a mill, so there is no room for the car. It has not been inside in years.

Friends and neighbors keep turning up with something broken, asking for a new one "real quick". The answer: get in line.

The hardest part of machining is working out how to clamp an odd-shaped part. It looks like doing nothing. It is the job.

"The print" is the engineer's drawing of the part. This one shows a shape that cannot be made. Machinists get handed those.

"Tenths" are ten-thousandths of an inch, far thinner than a hair. Working that close is real skill, and nobody at the party knows.