M-D Building Products’ SmartTool Level resembles your ordinary bubble level about as much as a refrigerator resembles a portable beverage cooler. Their level digitally displays degrees, percent slope, and pitch — plus it can audibly report when it’s level or plumb, so you can keep your eyes on other aspects of the job.
You’ll see checkering most often on firearms, where a good grip on a tool is highly desirable, but you can add this “finish” to any project you want to look beautiful. As with so many arts, artists seem to be divided by their choice of media, wood and metal being the most popular. If you’d rather do it yourself instead of paying an artist for a slick checkering job, you can check out some DIY books and videos on the subject.
Checkering files run $30 and up on the street, and groove-cutting tools are similarly priced.
Metal Checkering Files [Brownells]
File Street Pricing [Google Products]
Wood Checkering Set [Wood Carver Supply]
Checkering Tool Street Pricing [Google Products]
Checkering Book Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Electronic Goldmine is selling this 8-piece miniature Torx driver set for $3 — it’s handy for taking apart all sorts of items with tiny Torx screws.
Mini 8-in-1 Precision Torx Driver Set [Electronic Goldmine]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
(TV Tonight, Saturday, November 24th, 2008) A new How Do They Do It keeps Monday night from completely sucking.
All times are central.
Enjoy.
(TV Tonight, Sunday, November 23rd, 2008) There’s nothing new to see tonight, alas.
All times are central.
Enjoy.
(TV Tonight, Saturday, November 22nd, 2008) We’ve got new episodes of Build It Bigger: Rebuilding Greensburg tonight, as well as the usual reruns.
All times are central.
Enjoy.
I love making tile-top projects. However I’m pretty miserable at making grout correctly. Maybe I don’t measure right, or I mix at the wrong intervals, but it always seems to go south by the time I’m through — always, that is, until I tried the SpectraLock grout system about two years ago. Since then I’ve never had a problem with grouting tile, and it involves a great deal less swearing. Here’s how it works.
Sure, you could drop the money on a new Power Squid, but if you already own serviceable power strips with a few blocked outlets, why not just buy a few Power Strip Liberator cables from Ziotek? They’re not just for power strips — you probably have a few regular outlets blocked by power adapters somewhere in your house or shop.
Special projects often involve loading and unloading a lot of stuff from the back of the shop truck, and a tailgate ladder can make the whole process more pleasant. This one’s side-mount position caught my eye — powder-coated and rated at 300 pounds, it should be durable and sturdy enough for most one-man jobs.
There’s no pricing on R.E.L. Stapleton’s website, but it should run in the same ballpark as other tailgate ladders, say $150 or so.
Tailgate Ladder [R.E.L. Stapleton]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
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:
Industrial Moisture Checker
A woodworker’s going to feel disappointed when he sees checking or warping in a beautiful piece of furniture after he’s already finished it, but imagine seeing those flaws in an entire hardwood floor. Flooring guys don’t have time to look at moisture readings on every piece of wood, so Delmhorst designed this contractor-grade moisture meter to tell you more than just how much moisture there is where you stick the pins.
An Expensive Alternative To A Few Scrap 2×4s
Impatient with the setup time required by drywall jacks or lifts, John V Santiago invented Free Hands drywall supports as a cheap and easy solution for wrestling sheets of drywall solo. Free Hands also allow you to adjust and align sheets of drywall before securing them, all by yourself.
Hot or Not? Halogen Shop Heaters
We don’t experience the blood-freezing temperatures here in the South that they do further north, but it does get cold enough that we start looking for heating options in the shop during the winter. Talk of halogen heaters starts making the rounds as soon as the first frost hits — but are they effective in the shop? The Toolmonger readership says, “Not really.”
What’s That Funny-Shaped Piece Of Metal?
You’ve got your rectangular scraper, your curved scraper, and your gooseneck scraper. Back up. What’s a gooseneck scraper? Well, you could say it looks a little like a French curve, and it serves a similar purpose. It’s composed of many different-radius curves, so you can try to match a section of the scraper to a curve on the molding, bowl, or other curved piece you’re finishing.
The Spring Is The Thing
Add a spring to a hand tool and you’ve changed it drastically. Take for instance, scissors: You wouldn’t want to cut fabric or thread all day with even the best pair of scissors, because with every snip you have to reopen the scissors — literally a pain. But a pair of spring-loaded thread nippers open themselves, so you just have to squeeze.
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.
While the Gordon wrench will help you turn stuck shutoff valves, to reach the valve you still might have to bend like a contortionist. Plus you probably don’t want to venture that close to the scummy area behind the toilet or under the sink. Although the WaterShutOff wrench from Superior Tool may not let you apply as much torque on stuck valves, it can keep you 11″ farther away from all that unpleasantness that hasn’t seen the light of day in years.
LOX screws are so strip-proof, you’d practically have to take a drill bit to ‘em to ruin ‘em. The same goes for spline bolts — good luck stripping them — plus many spline wrenches are “backwards compatible” with hex, twelve-point, female Torx, and square-heads, and they’re more effective at turning 50% rounded fasteners. Now the Wright Spline takes another step.
According to the Wright website, “Most wrenching problems occur in removing fasteners, because the removal torque is frequently twice or more the installation torque,” so they took that into account when designing the Wright Splines. Go figure; a tool manufacturer looks at when we all have the most trouble — removing bolts — and figures out how to handle it.
Here’s the problem with loving the technology so much: It looks like technology has gotten ahead of industry, because I can’t find them for sale anywhere. As if I really need them…
Wright Spline [Wright Tool]
Enco has the Phase II quick-change tool post set (10″-15″ swing) on sale for $119. If you own a lathe, you need a quick-change tool post set. While you can get by with older systems, these new sets allow you to set tools exactly on center and rapidly change between tools.
Phase II Quick-Change Tool Post Set [Enco]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
(TV Tonight, Friday, November 21st, 2008) It’s all about How It’s Made tonight, with one new episode at 8:00.
All times are central.
Enjoy.
Some individuals like to defy convention, and they decide to cobble together a system to get their shop tools working correctly — and a few folks, like reader Lungofish, do it with sufficient panache to make the rest of us look bad.
Sometimes you can’t move a job to a place with proper light and heat for human beings to work in. Spaceflights, ship repair in the North Atlantic in winter, and underwater construction all require special tools and special outfits. Though the Gorilla Tool isn’t specific to any of them, it could come in handy — especially if you or your assistant haven’t got a good eye for bolt and nut sizes.
The Gorilla tool combines bolt-sizing and thread-sizing in a tight package with a pre-drilled lanyard hole. Gorilla makes it of stainless steel so it won’t rust, and the large tension wheels seem designed for easy use — maybe easy enough for gloved hands. The quality looks good, but it runs $45 for either the American or metric version.
Most of us will have the luxury of not needing a tool like this — going back to the toolbox isn’t likely to freeze off our delicate bits or run us out of air. But if you really needed to be sure the first time…
Gorilla Tool [Corporate Site]
With so many ways to carry panel goods — tools like the Dolly-Cartin, the Gorilla Gripper, and the Panel Carry — do we need the Troll model 46? Read on and you can decide.
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What's In Your Kitchen Tool Drawer?
Tool Talk #53: Old Hardware Stores & Pocket Knives
Tool Talk #52: Listener Calls & Reader Projects
Tool Talk #51: DIY Wedding Rings & Heirloom Shopsmiths
Tool Talk #50: Router Safety & Pointless Tools
Tool Talk #49: Bookcases & Ending Laziness
Tool Talk #48: Christmas & (Paint) Strippers
One Beer Projects: Repairing Wood Surfaces
One Beer Projects: Fixing Simple Problems With Your Dryer
One Beer Projects: Winterizing/Storing Your Bike
One Beer Projects: De-Badging Your Truck
One Beer Projects: Staining Your Fence
One Beer Projects: Doing Your Own Brakes
One Beer Projects: Balancing Your A/C For The Summer
One Beer Projects: Installing A Dimmer Switch
Hands-On: Milwaukee M12 Power Port
Hands-On: Caterpillars Fix Wiggly Outlets For Good
Head 2 Head Hands-On: Bosch SPS10 vs LI3000 SmartDriver
Hands-On: Striker Magnetic LED Light
Hands-On: Dremel Duo Kit -- Dremel Driver
Hands-On: Elmer's ProBond Wood Filler
Hands-On: Duo-Fast DF350S Framing Nailer
Hands-On: Watco Danish Oil - Cherry Finish
Budget Shop Truck Build, Part 5: Engine Teardown
Budget Shop Truck Build, Part 4: A New Transmission
Budget Shop Truck Build, Part 3: Building An Engine Stand
Budget Shop Truck Build, Part 2: Pulling The Engine
Budget Shop Truck Build, Part 1: The Truck
How-To: Cut Angles With A Circular Saw
Project Garage: Yukon Engine Swap (Part 5) -- Complete!
Project Garage: Yukon Engine Swap (Part 4) -- Installation!
Project Garage: Yukon Engine Swap (Part 3) -- Fabricating Engine Brackets
Project Garage: Yukon Engine Swap (Part 2) -- GM Performance Parts
