Discussion Main / PercussiveMaintenance

Does this trope also apply to stuff that aren't machines?

In the example I'm thinking of (which is Played for Laughs and I'm certain must be a parody), a character had fallen off a cliff and broke his leg in the fall. Another character comes by and restores it back to normal by pounding it with a mallet. (Said mallet has no supernatural properties, and no explanation is given how the mallet fixed the character's leg. The narrative behaves like as if this is a common use for a mallet.)

John Ringo's _The Hot Gate_ - Grandica makes use of the 'first rule of engineering' to open a stuck hatch on the Thermopylae. It's the main hatch - roughly 1 km thick steel - and the hammer is a heavily modified (squished) space cruiser.

“First law of engineering, Leonidas,” Granadica sent. “If you can’t fix it, you’re not using a bigenough hammer.”