I watched a news segment about some of the "tools" the engineers came up with for them to repair the shuttle with. It was something like this:
"Here we have the hacksaw blade duck taped to a stick, we can use it to cut away the damaged tiles. Now, we can use this putty knife which I found in my basement and included on the mission to pull them out..."
That was my reaction anyway, you think with all the $ thrown at the space program you wouldn't have "filler material" sticking out in the first place. Good luck to them.