Watch how magnetizer/demagnetizer tools work in this excellent video

During some recent work on an older SUV, I was absolutely fed up. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I had just finished a fair bit of grinding and filing, and when I reached for my screwdriver to start installing some parts, I saw that the tool’s tip looked like the Wooly Willy toy you might have had as a kid with its fuzzing of ferrous dust. I own a few screwdrivers with magnetic tips, but this wasn’t one of them and I needed to keep that debris away from my work. So I did what many of you would probably do: walked over to the toolbox, rummaged around to find the magnetizer/demagnetizer tool I use maybe twice a year, and slid the screwdriver through the stepped slot until the tip’s magnetism was no more.

I wasn’t fed up with the job or the mess or the screwdriver. What bothered me was that I had absolutely no idea how that magnetizer/demagnetizer tool worked, even though I had owned the thing for about a decade. Sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke once wrote that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” My little magnets in a plastic box, probably purchased for a quarter at a garage sale, were hardly the stuff of science fiction. So I put down my tools and decided to learn, for once and for all, how this sorcery worked. This insightful video helped the most in explaining what really goes on inside a magnetizer/demagnetizer tool.

Magnetic fields aren’t really my forte, but I have a much better understanding of what’s going on inside the tool after watching that video. If you have one of these tools, I hope you learned something today. And if you don’t have one yet, consider picking one up for a few bucks. Beyond screwdrivers, I’ve used mine for drill bits, taps, tweezers, small wrenches, picks, and even small hardware. That’s a lot of benefit for not a lot of space in your box.