Here’s another tool guaranteed to help holiday shoppers please their gadget-loving friends and family: Skil’s new li-ion Power Wrench. Based on Skil’s proven 7.2V li-ion batteries, the power wrench can maintain its charge even when stashed away for up to 18 months. And with a reversible 1/4″ square drive, the Power Wrench can do just about everything that a socket wrench can do, only quicker and easier.
The carpenter’s pencil hasn’t seen much innovation in the last 300 years, primarily because it works pretty darn well. But C.H. Hanson claims to have found room for improvement, resulting in their Superpencil — which they say lasts seven times longer than the standard shop pencil. We recently got our hands on a Superpencil in the Toolmonger test shop and gave it a go. Read on past the jump for our experiences and lots of pictures.
Now you have absolutely no excuse for owning both a pair of dirty work gloves for out in the shop and a pair of clean gloves for moving furniture and such. Harbor Freight, who normally offers these split-leather work gloves for $3, has them marked down to $1.
Buy early. Buy often.
Split Leather Work Gloves [Harbor Freight]
(Friday, November 16th, 2007) Tonight isn’t so bad, with a new episode of How It’s Made that shows us how they make tape measures and another chapter of Burt Builds a Bandit.
All times are central.
Enjoy.
Long time friend-of-Toolmonger Joe Brown now lives in San Francisco. And according to him, Cali landlords are less forgiving the New Yorkers when you tear down your Moto Guzzi in your living room.
Bastards.
So he’s looking for some shop space to rent. He writes: “I went on Craigslist, and there ain’t s#!$. I emailed everyone who is renting out garage space, and got the same response every time: PARKING ONLY. I even have a buddy who is willing to go in on a larger space with me, and I’d love to set up some kind of co-op for people who need a place to work on their cars, but I think I just don’t know where to look.”
Obviously most residential-district garage owners are scared shop work’ll burn the place down. But I can’t believe that there’s not some kind of shop-space collective in the Bay Area, considering the other great opportunities I’ve heard of, like TechShop and The Crucible. Do any of you West coast Toolmongers have some helpful advice?
(Thanks, Andrew Ciscel, for the great cc-licensed photo. And yes, we know that’s not Joe’s Guzzi. It’s a Bimmer. It’s a stock photo.)
Update: Reward! We’ll send the first person who clues Joe in on space he rents something nice. And not gloves nice. Like tool nice.
The New Yankee cam is up and running again today — for the last time this year! I don’t know about everyone else but I’m curious to see the all the episodes for season 20 now that I’ve seen them behind the scenes a bit. This is great stuff to check out instead of doing work. C’mon — you know you want to look.
Norm Cam [New Yankee Workshop]
Repositionable vises are great additions to any shop as you can temporarily attach them to nonconventional work surfaces such as mobile project centers and dinner tables. But while adjustable vises like the Dremel Multi-Vise are great for precision work, they’re too fragile for anything but light-duty tasks. On the other hand, cast iron vises are constructed to endure massive abuse, but are not adjustable enough for precision tasks.
With the MaxSteel Multi-Angle Vise, Stanley combines the two, offering both flexibility and durability. They claim the MaxSteel vise can handle all materials delicately, from heavy steel bars, to soft precise wooden model components.
My shop often felt like a Vegas casino — there’s lots of things going on there, there wasn’t a clock on the wall, and I tended to lose all track of time. But now my problem’s solved. I recently ran across a sweet garden clock that’s actually perfect for wood shop use. Why? It also displays temperature and humidity — important to anyone who’s ever applied stain.
Question: how much Dremel gear can you buy for $125? Answer: a freakin’ lot! And right now Amazon’s encouraging you to stock up on that uber-bit-set or attachment — or maybe a Stylus? — that you’ve been eyeing all year by offering an instant 20% rebate at checkout when you purchase $125 or more worth of Dremel products.
As always, there’s fine print which you’ll need to read for yourself. The link below shows you some of the eligible gear.
(Thursday, November 15th, 2007) Tonight: a new Street Customs and a bunch of HIM and HDTDT reruns. We’re still waiting for some new Foose.
All times are central.
Enjoy.
Since I can remember, I’ve watched my father slice up Thanksgiving turkey with a long, sharp blade and serve the rest of the family like we lived in a Norman Rockwell painting. (We didn’t.) So when my dad took me aside this year and showed me his new tool for carving up the bird — and it had a cord – I was shocked.
Though I’m sure the electric meat carver is a perfectly good tool (for cutting automotive seat foam) I just can’t get over the negative idea of a small, humming recip saw at the Thanksgiving dinner table. Something about this corded blade wounds my sense of traditional holiday spirit even more than the thought of my brother eating all the cranberry sauce before I get any.
Then I think of how much faster that thing can rip off hunks of meat for us to wolf down (with stuffing and homemade rolls) and it’s a complete toss up. What do you think? Let us know in comments.
Electric Carving Knife [Cuisinart]
Street Pricing [Google Product Search]
Via Amazon
It can happen to the best of us: one moment of inattention results in a cross-threaded spark plug hole. You can either install a helicoil and hope for the best, or send it out to have the whole shebang re-tapped. Now you have another option. The Back-Tap can fix that cross-threaded hole from the inside — without pulling the head.
Fastcap’s third hand support may not be the cheapest support pole on the market, but it’s hard to beat a company that actually gives you instructions on how to shorten their product with a hacksaw! It’s unclear whether they honor their lifetime guarantee and no charge replacement parts after that operation, though.
If you’re looking for a small, high-powered air compressor for your vehicle, I highly recommend the Master Flow. I picked one up a while back, but finally got around to using it this morning to inflate a flat tire at 6 a.m. in the rain — and I was very impressed.
The Tsunami is powered by a 1/3 HP oil-less motor that delivers a maximum of 150 psi and features a built-in serviceable air filter. Its large gauge makes it easy to read — like, say, from inside a warm car — and the compressor connects to your car battery with alligator clip connectors. Or, you can permantently mount it and wired it in directly. It comes in a carrying case with 16′ of coiled hose and an easy-twist screw-on brass inflator nozzle.
And I paid considerable more than the $49 — with free shipping, too, dammit — that Amazon wants for it now.
Master Flow 1050 [Q Industries]
Via Amazon
Street Pricing [Google Products]
(Wednesday, November 14th, 2007) Tonight: a new two-hour supersized Mythbusters with sharks, jet taxis, and cruise ship waterskiing!
All times are central.
Enjoy.
It’s hard to believe that there was a time in this country when children were encouraged to do risky (and interesting) things. But it’s true! Boys and Girls were given simple items and allowed to experiment with the way the world works by making and doing things that could possibly poke an eye out. Nothing exemplifies this better than The Boy Mechanic, a collection of simple projects that graced the pages of Popular Mechanics during the end of 19th and first half of the 20th century.
There’s been a dearth of shop pictures posted to the photo pool lately. But maybe the tide is turning with BobbyMikeWalters’ post of this photo of his shop. He writes in comments: “Yes, I work here. And I make a living. Heh.”
This, by the way, is our definition of a “good” shop: one that actually sees use. A beautiful shop that stays clean because nothing ever generates sawdust, metal chips, or grinding debris within it is (by our definition) a bad shop.
Thanks for the post, Bobby. And thanks for reminding us that we need to get out and dirty up the Toolmonger shop a bit this week, too.
Toolmonger’s Photo Pool [Flickr]
www.flickr.com
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