It’s been a busy week here at Toolmonger. If you’ve been spending time in the shop — you should! — and you haven’t had a chance to keep up with Toolmonger this week, we suggest you start with these posts, which our readers helped to select:
Backsaver Pick-Up Rake
Yes, fall is coming, and soon we’ll start bringing out the leaf blowers and rakes to clean up Mother Nature’s leafy mess. If your preferred method of cleanup is to rake leaves into a pile and scoop them into bags, forget the leaf scoops this year and give the Backsaver from Garden Brand Products a try.
Cheap-Ass Tools: Homemade Push-Stick
Nothing says “cheap tool” like leftover plywood found on the shop floor. We needed a push-stick last year and, being the tightwads that we are, we weren’t going to pay five bucks for a decent one. So a search of the scrap pile yielded a stick of adequate dimensions to fashion our own.
A Framing Square With 100′ Legs
Laser Products modified the simple but versatile framing square by adding some lasers. Now, instead of checking just a two-foot section of the wall for square, turn on the lasers and you can check the entire length of the wall.
Hands-On: Wolverine Raider 8″ Work Boots
How do you tell Toolmongers from average folk? Look at their feet! Flip-flops are for the pool (or community shower) and sneakers are perfect for walkin’ the swap meet. But around the shop, boots rule the roost. When we recently got our hands on a few pairs of Wolverine Raider 8” work boots, we jumped at the chance to wear ‘em around the shop to see what would happen.
Watch The Telephone Ring
The phone rings while you’re in the shop, but you never know it because you’ve got your earmuffs on, happily working away. Too bad for you — that was your kid, calling from her cell to tell you she’s locked out of the house in the rain. If you’d had the Shop Flash hooked up to your shop phone, maybe your daughter wouldn’t be giving you the Look right now.
Help us choose next week’s Top 5!
We’d appreciate your help in choosing next week’s Top 5, which’ll be featured here, elsewhere, and in the podcast as well. While you’re reading TM this week, look out for the “Interesting Post” button at the bottom of the article:
When you see an article that piques your interest, click the button once. You’ll return to the same page, but TM’s software’ll score your click for future reference. We’ll check in on the totals before selecting next week’s Top 5.
