My father always told me that you need to have a couple of good files around.  So whenever we used to find ourselves walking together around the flea market or tool shop putting together a toolkit for my apartment or car, he’d suggest I add a file or two.

I’m embarassed to admit that even though there are files in every toolkit I’ve ever owned, I’ve never really used them much.  That all changed yesterday when I needed to create a small rectangular hole in a piece of 1″ x 1/8″ steel bar stock. 

I tried numerous different techniques, but the one that truly worked well was drilling a hole to the correct diameter and filing it square.  After spending a few hours of quality time with the drawer full of files I inherited from Dad, I’ve found lots and lots of uses for them in the shop and home, and now I finally understand why he was such a file fan.  I am, too.

(more…)

(Saturday, September 16th, 2006) It’s “leftovers” on the weekend, but there is enough to keep you sated until Monday. (Never mind Sunday…)  The Mythbusters movie special is definitely worth watching if you missed it on Wednesday. 

DIY saves the day with their weekend programming.  We’ve suggested another movie, for the insomniacs at least, so consider this blurb: “a fanatical German model-aircraft designer attempts to build, out of the wreckage, a single-engine plane that will lift them out of the desert before the heat and sand take their toll.” What could be more toolmonger worthy?

All times are central.

• MythBusters: Mega Movie Myths (Discovery, 6 p.m.)
• Handmade Music: Los Lonely Boys (DIY, 6 p.m.)
• Holmes on Homes: Cold Comfort (Discovery Home, 6:30 p.m.)
• Freeform Furniture: Accent Table (DIY, 8 p.m.)
• Wood Works: Woodturned Vessel (DIY, 8:30 p.m.)
• Iraq Confidential with Jesse James (Military, 9 p.m.)
• Pimp My Ride (MTV, 9 p.m.)
• Handmade Music: Handmade Violin, Episode 3: The Neck and Scroll (DIY, 9 p.m.)
• Pimp My Ride (MTV, 9:30 p.m.)
• Woodturning Techniques: Twice Turned Bowl (DIY, 9:30 p.m.)
• Mark Williams On The Rails: Moving Mountains (Science, 10 p.m.)
• MythBusters: Cooling a Six-Pack (Discovery, 11 p.m.)

Our insomniac’s suggestions: Robot Rivals: Earth-Moving Robots (DIY, 1 a.m.), The Flight of the Phoenix (AMC, 2 a.m.)

MAKE just sent out the fifth round in their new Tools-N-Tips email, this time focusing on tips related to food and cooking.  Our favorite: An easy kitchen counter mod (pictured above) that lets you scoop food scraps right into the trashcan below.

As Arwen O’Reilly points out, “This could also work well with a compost bucket below.  Simple and brilliant!”  Right on.

Check out the Tools-N-Tips site at Make for more information about the above (and other) cool items, or better yet just sign up for the newsletter yourself and let them deliver it right to you.

Speaking of food, it’s lunch time.

Wow!  What a week.  We’re out in the shop right now shooting some video coverage that you’ll see next week here on Toolmonger, but in the meantime, let’s take a look at the best of this (awesome) week:

Hands-On: We Put 946.5 lbs. on Husky’s X-Workhorse
Believe it or not, we don’t really want to break things all the time.  We do, however, question any plastic-y portable workbench that says it’ll hold 750 lbs.  But rather than just wonder, we decided to find out by loading up the X-Workhorse — a cool little folding table designed to hold a miter saw or serve as a workbench on the jobsite — with lots more than even the advertised 750 lbs.  In short: It held the load.  It even held it when we whacked on it with a 2×4.  Check out the post for pix.

Finds: Swench Manual Impact Wrench
A reader (thanks, Kevin) wrote in to call our attention to this incredible tool which he used in the Navy.  It’s a spring-loaded impact wrench; You crank it around 30-degrees or so winding up the spring, then BANG!  It lets go and drives (with the biggest version) up to 7,000 ft-lbs of force.  Holy crap.  Even the little version whacks out 500 ft-lbs.

News: Dealing With Tool Failures On-Orbit
Why is it that NASA only makes the news when things go wrong?  When astronauts lost a bolt and broke a tool while installing a new solar panel array on the ISS this week, CNN and others dutifully covered it.  We were just glad to see the sweet tools these guys use get some attention.  The tool that broke was essentially a socket extension, and luckily they had another about 70′ away in a toolbox.  Check out this post for some pictures of the (incredible) toolbox. 

Finds: Olson’s “Cool Blocks” Bandsaw Blade Guides
We just discovered these, but apparently they’re widely known among lifer woodworkers as “the best first upgrade for your bandsaw.”  They’re composite layered blocks that replace the metal guide blocks that usually come with your bandsaw.  They not only do a better job of guiding, but they also cool the blade, which increases its lifespan.  Best of all, you can actually afford this upgrade.

Finds: GearWrench’s New X-Beam
This week GearWrench announced their new X-Beam wrenches.  They’re just like standard ratcheting combo wrenches but with a twist — literally: They have a 90-degree twist in the center which lets you push on the flat side instead of the knife-edge like usual.  Why didn’t someone think of this 10 years ago?

Next Week

Look out for our new video content.  We’re also launching a survey contest to try and better understand what kind of Toolmonger content you like best and where you’d like to see us expand coverage.  We’ve been jumping around trying to cover just about everything you can do in the shop, but we’re sure there’s more we could do.  Hopefully you’ll let us in on what that could be.

Don’t forget that your comments during the month of September could win you a RIDGID XLi Lithium-Ion combo kit.  Last month’s winner picked up a combo kit from Milwaukee.  All you have to do is what you always do: share your ideas and opinions here on Toolmonger.  Tell us we’re full of it!  We can handle the truth!

Here’s another idea to add to the “Why didn’t someone think of this earlier?” file: the X-Beam.  It’s a ratcheting combination wrench with a 90-degree twist in the center that lets you bear down on the wide flat side instead of the “knife-edged” side.

(more…)

(Friday, September 15th, 2006) DIY rescues the night with some good car-centric shows. A new Trick My Truck airs tonight; Expect CMT to show it 1000 times until the next episode.  All in all, tonight’s not too bad, although there’s precious little to watch past midnight.

All times are central.

• DIY Tools & Techniques: Traditional Tools (DIY, 5 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 11: Plastic Bags, Solar Panels, Plastic Gasoline Containers, Hockey Sticks (Discovery, 6 p.m.)
• Modern Marvels : Bathroom Tech (History, 6 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 41: Plastic Injection Moulds, Automotive Oil Filters, Filing Cabinets, Blown Glass (Discovery, 6:30 p.m.)
• Trick My Truck: Stacy Toney’s Category 5  (CMT, 7 p.m.)
• Toolbelt Diva: Work Bench (Discovery Home, 8 p.m.)
• Classic Car Restoration: 1968 Chevrolet Camaro: Brake System (DIY, 8 p.m.)
• Toolbelt Diva: Restaurant Restoration (Discovery Home, 8:30 p.m.)
• Classic Rides: Paint and Seat Re-Cover (DIY, 8:30 p.m.)
• Dirty Jobs: Casino Food Recycler (Discovery, 9 p.m.)
• Tricked Out: Mitsubishi Eclipse Show-Car Display (DIY, 9:30 p.m.)
• I Want That! Electric Lawnmower, Solar Fountain, Learn About Tornados (HGTV, 10:30 p.m.)

Our insomniac’s suggestion: There’s lots of NASCAR on Speed if that’s your bag.

We stumbled across this deal at National Tool Warehouse — someone we’ve never heard of but might give a shot if we needed some tape measures: Four “Titan” brand tape measures for $11.79.  It includes 12′, 16′,’ 25′, and 33′ tapes. 

We can’t vouch for the quality of the tool or the store, but we’re always on the lookout for inexpensive tools — especially the ones that our non-Toolmonger friends like to borrow (read: pilfer).  If anyone has any experience with this company or these tapes, drop a comment and share with the rest of us.

4 pc. Getta Grip(tm) Tape Measure Set [National Tool Warehouse]

Update: We also found the same deal at Northern Tool & Equipment, which means you could probably pick these up from their brick & mortar stores if one’s near you.

Controlling wood dust in the shop is a major concern.  If you do a good job of it, clean up is a breeze.  If not, it’s a major PITA.  And tools like the Dremel Stylus make keeping your work area clean even harder because they remove tons of wood quickly and efficiently — turning it into tiny dust particles that go everywhere. 

That’s why this tool caught our eye.  It’s essentially made of two large-ish computer fans in a box with a filter.  It draws up to 500 cu-ft/min of air from your work through its filter, putting the dust in the filter instead of all over you. 

(more…)

PeterP, our winner in last month’s Milwaukee V18 Giveaway, received his combo kit last week and took a little time to drop us a line with some pictures and his take on Milwaukee’s new line:

“These things are solid. The shipping weight was almost 40 pounds. The tools themselves come in a sturdy plastic box, with plenty of storage for extra blades, so it should be nice if you have to travel to a job site.

“The battery charger is pretty beefy, so you don’t need to be gentle with it.  I think nothing short of a large truck hitting it would cause it to fall off your workbench/shelves/wherever you put it.  The batteries are pretty slick as well. They have an integrated charge meter so you don’t have to constantly guess when you are about to run out of power.  It comes with two (although since the manual says to charge them overnight before use, so there is the brief anguish of new tools you can’t use sitting in your garage).”

Read past the jump for more from Peter and some great pictures of the full kit as shipped.

(more…)

(Thursday, September 14th, 2006) It’s a terrible Thursday, as evidenced by the fact that we’re listing suspect episodes of Modern Marvels. Building the Ultimate shows the construction of the space station, which seems quite Toolmonger-appropriate considering yesterday’s ISS tool breakage news.  At least our projects don’t have to cope with zero-G and extreme cold! 

As a follow up to our rant from yesterday: Discovery! Fix your calendar and do something about poorly formatted ads that leap over into the schedule space!

All times are central.

• DIY Tools & Techniques: Tool Maintenance (DIY, 5 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 33: Prepared Mustard, Violins, Nuts and Bolts, Toilet Paper (Discovery, 6 p.m.)
• Crash Science: Cars (National Geographic, 6 p.m.)
• Modern Marvels: Household Wonders (History, 6 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 23: Gummies Candy, Fish Farming, Aluminum Cans, Bronze Sculpture Erection (Discovery, 6:30 p.m.)
• Building the Ultimate: Some Assembly Required (Science, 7 p.m.)
• Classic Tractor Specials (RFD-TV, 7 p.m.)
• Rock Solid: Limestone Tile Entryway (DIY, 9 p.m.)
• Modern Marvels: ’80’s Tech. (History, 10 p.m.)
• Pimp My Ride (MTV, 10:30 p.m.)
• Unique Whips: Back With a Vengeance (Speed, 11 p.m.)

Our insomniac’s suggestions: Watch the Speed Channel, or try flipping on NASA Select/NASA TV for some ISS coverage.  If you’re lucky, you might catch some pretty cool tools in use.
 

Think it was bad the last time you broke a tool and had to head to the store for another?  Imagine that the closest Lowe’s or Home Depot was 150+ miles beneath you because you’re orbiting the Earth at 17,500 mph.  Wow.

That’s almost exactly the situation the crew of the space shuttle Atlantis and the International Space Station faced this morning.  During a 7 hour spacewalk, astronauts Dan Burbank and Steve MacLean attached a new 17-1/2 ton solar panel system to the station.  From all accounts it was a pretty difficult job.  During the process of removing the bolts that held the new assembly in place during launch, an “articulating socket” — essentially an extension with a socket in place — broke.  Thankfully, they had a spare just 70 feet or so away in the toolbox you see pictured above.  (The photo was taken before launch, of course, and some of the tools are already installed.  Thanks to the NASA press office for the photo!)

Past the jump you’ll find another toolbox photo and more information.

(more…)

While you’ve posted lots of useful and helpful comments this week on Toolmonger, this one in particular made our day.  In reference to our post about Bosch’s new very-accurate digital heat gun, Eli said:

So if you were to set the gun at 425 degrees and cut a hole into the side of a metal toolbox, could oyu cook a frozen pizza in the shop?  I guess we’ve got the next ‘Doh!’ of the Week: “Cooking in the shop.”  Grilled cheese on an iron doesn’t count; That’s cooking in your dorm room.

Nice, Eli.  Nice.  We totally agree, especially the part about grilled cheese on an iron.  Hey, if Paris Hilton can do it, it’s not really shop work, right?

(more…)

What do you do when you need a lot — and we mean a lot – of torque in a place where you don’t necessarily have power or air available?  Kevin sent us a tip about a tool he used on nuclear-powered aircraft carriers while in the Navy that’ll fill that bill perfectly: the Swench Wrench.

It’s a spring-loaded impact wrench.  As you turn the wrench, it stores energy by loading up a spring inside its head.  Once you’ve turned the wrench about 30 degrees, it suddenly releases the spring, powering that energy back into the bolt or nut.  Kevin said, “When three guys and a four-foot cheater bar couldn’t free a bolt, we brought out the swench.”

(more…)

As we’ve said before, picking up some basic framing equipment helps deliver custom framing from the hands of the rich to the hands of the poor (read: us).  Even if you don’t want to assemble your own frames, you can save a ton by cutting your own mattes and glass.

Besides a matte cutter, you should also have at least one art deckle ruller in your basic framing toolkit.  They help you make those great-looking torn (”deckled”) edges perfectly.

(more…)

(Wednesday, September 13th, 2006) Mythbusters and How It’s Made keep up the fun on Wednesday.  Mythbusters is also new tonight, and sounds pretty cool.  The teaser ad on DSC showed someone flying out the sunroof of a vehicle via an ejection seat.  Nice!

There’s also a Modern Marvels marathon on tonight, so I figured I’d list them all as the History Channel website is useless when looking for episode content.

Pinks is on several times tonight but the Speed program guide shows it as the same episode, so I just figured I’d leave it out.  (It is out there if you want to see it, though.) 

Note to TV channel webmasters: Keep it simple, make sure I can get a synopsis of each episode, and have a calendar I can just click on. I know that for a lot of people in the media Middle America is a vast wasteland, but there are 4 timezones in the US, not two…

All times are central.

• DIY Tools & Techniques: Tools to Get You Moving (DIY, 5 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 12: Aluminum Screw Caps, Chocolate, Pills, Pasta (Discovery, 6 p.m.)
• Modern Marvels: Garage Gadgets (History, 6 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 26: Ball Bearings, Electrical Wires, Wax Casting, Automated Machines (Discovery, 6:30 p.m.)
• Chop Cut Rebuild: I’ve Got Kidney Beans (Speed, 6:30 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 17: Winter Jackets, Animation, Mushrooms, Gold (Discovery, 7 p.m.)
• Building the Ultimate: Robots for Hire (Science, 7 p.m.)
• Modern Marvels: Shovels (History, 7 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 51: Architectural Moldings, Pulleys, Industrial Rubber Hoses, Sheet Vinyl Flooring (Discovery, 7:30 p.m.)
• MythBusters: Salsa Escape (Discovery, 8:00 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 3: Toothpicks, Acrylic Bathtubs, Helicopters, Beer (Science, 8 p.m.)
• Modern Marvels: Drilling (History, 8 p.m.)
• How It’s Made: Episode 4: Hearing Aids, 3-D Puzzles, Rubber Mats, Toilets (Science, 8:30 p.m.)
• MythBusters: Mega Movie Myths (Discovery, 9 p.m.)
• Unique Whips: The White Stuff (Speed, 9 p.m.)
• Modern Marvels: Copper (History, 9 p.m.)
• Junk Brothers: The Chair and the Trunk (HGTV, 10 p.m.)
• MythBusters: Crimes and Myth-demeanors 1 (Discovery, 11 p.m.)
• Unique Whips: Dead Men Walking (Speed, 11 p.m.)
• I Love Toy Trains: Bruce Manson’s 30 x 40 foot S-Gauge layout. (RFD-TV, 11:30 p.m.)

Our insomniac’s suggestions: Junk Brothers (HGTV, 2 a.m.).

We’ve seen “incremental positioners” for your router table from Incra (and others).  They essentially let you clamp down your workpiece and move it very precisely to make repeating cuts, such as those used to make wooden hinges.  What we haven’t seen before is an easy way to drill our the hinge centers perfectly straight; Angling off even a little makes the hinges wobbly.

Now it appears that Inca also offers a drill guide designed for just that purpose.  They call it the “HingeCrafter.”

(more…)

We came across this handy tool from Vaughan & Bushnell today; It’s a hinged lever arm designed to help you straighten boards when installing them as flooring or decking.  Just tap it into place against the subfloor or adjacent joist and pull the handle to bend the board into place.

(more…)