Let me use your . . .

I hate it when someone that was too lazy or too careless or too cheap to have their own stuff wants to borrow mine. This applies to any tools, but especially knives and flashlights.

My rule is NEVER loan a knife to anyone. The kind of people that don't carry a knife with them daily don't know how to use one or how to take care of it. If you load your knife to one of these people expect the blade to need a lot of work when you get it back.

My wife loaned her Spyderco Delica to a guy at work once and I think he tried to use it cut a hole in the concrete parking lot. The gouges in the blade were so deep I never could get them all out. I ended up sharpening around them and leaving them.

My wife's stepfather once wanted to use my Cold Steel Voyager to cut up some cardboard boxes. He even got angry that I wouldn't let him use it.

Back when I used to belong to a private gun range another member asked if I had a screwdriver he could use to tighten up some screw on his gun. I handed him my Midway screwdriver set and didn't think anything of it. I didn't think about it again until the next time I needed a screwdriver to work on a gun. The jerk had used the smallest screwdriver tip (the one that I use to adjust rear sights on revolvers) and tightened something with it up to about 100 ft-lbs. The tip was twisted about 45 degrees. After he ruined the tip he just put it back in the box and gave it back to me like nothing was wrong.

I keep a few utility flashlights at my desk at work and I loaned one to someone. I had to ask several times to get it back and when I did the batteries were dead. Apparently the guy left it on and ran them down completely.

Don't loan out things that you can't do without.