(TV Tonight, Saturday, May 23rd, 2009) Enjoy your weekend doing, not watching!

All times are central.

• Weapon Masters: Katana (Military, 6:00 pm)
• Under Construction: A Happy Ending (DIY, 8:30 pm)
• Under Construction: Saana’s Soffit (DIY, 9:00 pm)

Enjoy.

You may have seen optical tables on TV or in a lab somewhere — thick metal-topped tables with threaded 1/4″ holes spaced every inch or so.  They’re very flat and stable, and the grid of holes allows you to precisely place equipment.

Strong Hand Tools’ BuildPro Welding Table is reminiscent of this design, but instead of threaded holes, the ground-steel 5/8″-thick plates have CNC-machined 5/8″ through-holes spaced in a grid every 2″ apart.  The table is flat to within 0.004” per foot, and the hole spacing is accurate to ±0.0015″.

(more…)

To get the best quality cut out of your lawn mower, you’ve got to keep the blade sharp — but it’s not exactly easy holding that thin sheet of rusty metal at just the right angle over the rapidly spinning abrasive stone on your bench grinder, without losing a finger or at the very least taking a bite out of your blade’s cutting edge.  Lawn-conscious consumers can make the job safer and easier with Dremel’s lawn mower and garden tool sharpening attachment.

(more…)

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:

Sports Team Tool Belts
With Father’s Day about a month away, I’m sure many of us are scrambling to find this year’s present.  If your dad’s a sports fan and a Toolmonger, you might want to check out these sports-themed tool belts from Fantasia Memorabilia.

Dual-Cut Lopper
When you’re pruning, you don’t want to carry around a bunch of tools, so Fiskars’ Dual-Cut lopper lets you cut both large and small branches cleanly with the same tool.

Installing A Heated Tile Floor
You can count on the good Southern boys at Extreme How-To for good content and solid plans for tackling projects you may not have considered for the homestead.  Right now in a three-minute video on the main page of the site, Matt Weber runs through some of the major steps involved in laying down a radiant heat tile floor.

Get Your Bins Off The Floor
Create more space in your garage, shop, basement, or other room by getting your bins off the floor and hanging them on the wall with the Enviro Stacker.

In-Outlet Surge Protection
If you don’t own a surge suppressor for your whole house or building, the next best thing might be surge suppressors built right into key outlets around your home or office.  There’s less clutter without the power strips, and you’re protected even if you plug your electronics right into the wall.

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.

You can’t swing a hammer to save your life — is a bigger head going to help?  Stanley claims the larger sweet spot on their new hammer will reduce the number of misses and deliver more power to the blows that do hit the nail on the head.

(more…)

Dynamite Tool Co. is selling this Porter Cable Corner Chisel for $10.  Routing or drilling a hole leaves an internal radius.  A corner chisel allows you to remove that radius and leave square corners for tenons in your woodworking project.

Porter Cable Corner Chisel [Dynamite Tool Co.]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Join us as we run down this week’s top five. We also talk about our experiences returning tools over the years and offer some advice as to when you should and shouldn’t try to return a tool — and how to do so successfully. Remember: If you’ve got a question or comment you can call us at 214-296-9229. (Podcast Download)

(TV Tonight, Friday, May 22nd, 2009) We get a new How It’s Made tonight on a number of interesting items. You have to love the unemotional purity of How It’s Made, compared to the emo-fest that so many other shows have devolved into.

All times are central.

• Holmes on Homes: Gone to Pot (HGTV, 5:00 pm)
• This Old House: Austin Green Remodel Project (DIY, 5:30 pm)
• How It’s Made: Hockey Gloves, Snack Cakes, Remolded Tires, Wastewater Treatment (Discovery, 6:00 pm)
• How Do They Do It?: Cruise Liner, Satellite, Suspension Bridge (Science, 6:00 pm)
• Ask This Old House: An Unpleasant Smelling Dishwasher, Transplanting a Rose Bush (DIY, 6:30 pm)
• How It’s Made: Bacon, Snowblowers, Luxury Cars (Discovery, 6:30 pm)
• How Do They Do It?: Speeding Car, Water Display, White Wash (Science, 6:30 pm)
• MythBusters: Alcohol Myths (Discovery, 7:00 pm)
• MythBusters: YouTube Special (Discovery, 8:00 pm)
• How It’s Made: Copper Pipe Fittings, Cylinder Music Boxes, Pepper Mills, and Hot Rod Steering Columns (Science, 8:00 pm) NEW
• How It’s Made: Swiss Army Knives, Player Piano Rolls, Oil Tankers, and Racing Wheels (Science, 8:30 pm)
• MythBusters: Banana Slip, Double Dip (Discovery, 9:00 pm)
• How It’s Made: Remix: Hockey (Science, 9:30 pm)

Enjoy.

Noel Hankamer has built up a badass collection of wrenches, and it seems the Alvin Historical Museum agrees — they’ve put a portion of Noel’s collection on display for the next few months.

Just looking at the pics he loaded up is impressive, and we encourage anyone in the Houston area to go check out the exhibit.  From what we can tell, the large case holds dozens of monkey, pipe, bicycle, and alligator wrenches.

All of ‘em look pretty old but well taken care of.  Hats off to Noel for collecting these treasures, which the uninformed might incorrectly call “junk,” and for being gracious enough to loan them out to the Alvin Historical Museum, who had the good sense to put them on display.

Toolmonger Photo Pool [Flickr]
Alvin Historical Museum [Blog]

Wooden shims have their advantages — for instance, with just two cheap tapered shims, you can adjust their width almost infinitely — but they’re not very handy if you want a bunch of 1/8″ shims.  Plus if you don’t stack an even number of shims, the surfaces aren’t parallel.  Although these Handi-Shims are more expensive, they might work better for some applications.

(more…)

One of the books on my “buy if I ever find it cheap” list is Oppi Untracht’s Jewelry Concepts and Technology — possibly the best textbook on jewelry and related decorative metal techniques ever written.  Untracht traveled the world documenting both modern and ancient practices, and the only flaw in the book is that it’s now somewhat out of date, having last been revised in the 1980s.

It’s definitely one to check out from your local library (as I have, often).  At 860 pages, there’s something in here for every metalworker.

Via Amazon [What’s This?]

I’ve been cleaning up all the tools for the ShopSmith, and it’s an uphill battle — however, the process got a little more interesting when I got to the scroll saw and found out it’s the only attachment that’s not SS-branded.  It was obviously made to work with the ShopSmith since it sports the telltale driveshaft that hooks into the headstock, but this is the first time I’ve run across a Dunlop brand power tool.

(more…)

We’ve grown accustomed to oddly named heavy-duty glues — Krazy Glue has been around for decades, and Gorilla Glue has claimed some market share in the last few years.  But a glue with a picture of a giant man in a diaper on it?  Has Loctite finally gone too far with their Sumo Glue?

(more…)

Depth stops like we recently mentioned don’t work with Forstner bits — or spade bits for that matter.   That’s where you need a depth stop like this one from Peachtree Woodworking Supply.  It works with bits up to 2-1/8″ in diameter with 3/8″, 7/16″, or 9/16″ shafts.

(more…)

Here’s a great way to start feeling old: the Dustbuster is 30 years old this year.  Of all the products to make it 30 years, I would not have picked the Dustbuster as one that would stand the test of time — however it has done that and more. Almost everyone has owned one at some point, and the 2009 model kicks the crap out of the old 1979 version both in power and also, thankfully, in style.

(more…)

(TV Tonight, Thursday, May 21st, 2009)  “Paul Sr. calls in Paul Jr. as a consultant to keep production running smoothly while he promotes his new book in talk show appearances,” which pretty much nails why American Chopper has completely “jumped the shark” — not that we don’t want to see Mikey actually jump over a shark on a moped.  We also get new eps of Street Customs and Wrecked.

All times are central.

• This Old House: Austin Green Remodel Project (DIY, 5:30 pm)
• How It’s Made: Yacht Wheels, Braided Rugs, Automobile Thermostats, Chisels (Discovery, 6:00 pm)
• Overhaulin: Chip & Chris Flipped (TLC, 6:00 pm)
• Ask This Old House: Controlling Radiators, Tangled Bungee Cords (DIY, 6:30 pm)
• How It’s Made: Firefighter Helmets, Nautical Compasses, Packaging Tubes, Hand Saws (Discovery, 6:30 pm)
• Top Gear: Season 9 Ep. 2 (BBC America, 7:00 pm)
• Dirty Jobs: Big Animal Vet (Discovery, 7:00 pm)
• American Chopper: Teutul Triumph Bike (TLC, 7:00 pm)
• Dirty Jobs: Diaper Cleaner (Discovery, 8:00 pm)
• American Chopper: Mountain Creek Bike (TLC, 8:00 pm) NEW
• Wrecked: Thanksgiving (Speed, 8:30 pm) NEW
• Wrecked: Hogs (Speed, 9:00 pm) NEW
• Street Customs: ‘58 Chevy Nomad Wagon (TLC, 9:00 pm) NEW

Enjoy.

Reader Simple Simon posted up this image of a Beijing hardware boutique shop.  It’s funny — I’ve never been to China, and the layout is obviously a little different than what I’m used to, but this storefront still feels familiar.  I guess no matter where it is or what language it’s in, construction supplies are construction supplies.

(more…)