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:

DeWalt’s New(ish) Heat Gun
I’ll admit that most heat guns look the same. This one makes hot air (adjustable from 120 to 1100 degrees F) and offers a nice nozzle protector to keep the heat on the project and off your hands. You can also kind of see at the bottom a swing-out hook that makes the gun easier to store hanging up.

Saving Cash With An Arbor
One of the biggest complaints I hear when the word “Shopsmith” is brought up is cost. It’s true SS products can be a little on the pricey side, but being the cheap bastard I am I can’t bring myself to send the cash down the $80-a-pop hole that is the Shopsmith saw blade product line. That’s where the 5/8” Saw Arbor comes in.

Basic Automotive Troubleshooting, Explained
Reader Scott pointed us to his blog where he asks the following: What are these little blue and grey caps called? What do they do? Are they part of the cooling system? What happens if they are not there?

Hog Ringer Pliers
Unused hog rings kinda look like rounded staples. When you squeeze them with hog ringer pliers they form a ring capturing whatever happens to be in the center. They’re used in all sorts of applications, like fencing, landscaping, mattress and automobile seat construction, and even holding sausage casings closed.

Easydriver Set
Many years ago I either bought or was given the original Easydriver. This version did not use standard hex bits: It has a simple shaft with a slotted screwdriver on one end and a Phillips on the other. Nevertheless, I did find it useful, and I still keep it in the kitchen tool drawer.

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.

I’ve gotta go along with Sean when he said (in reporting a similar recall last August) “sometimes I’m glad I don’t own a gas grill.” The manufacturer and importer of the SLG series “Perfect Flame” brand outdoor propane or natural gas grills is voluntarily recalling almost 663,000 of the above-pictured model in the United States and an other 1,700 in Canada. Why?

The firm has received about 40 reports of fires from the burners deteriorating and about 23 reports of the lids catching fire. The firm is aware of one report of an eye injury requiring surgery and 21 incidents of minor burns to the hands, arms, or face.

Ouch!

(more…)

Full disclosure: I know very little about TIG welding. I’m okay with a MIG rig, and I can stick weld well enough to hook things together, but I’ve never handled a TIG torch. So when I received a press release from Weldcraft indicating that they’d expanded their gas lens line a bit, I had to hit the ‘net to discover that a gas lens is simply a fitting that re-directs the gas normally emitted from the torch, focusing it to provide more even coverage and flow for a given welding situation.

It makes sense to me, then, why Weldcraft would be proud of offering a relatively wide range of lenses in standard size, large diameter, and stubby to fit just about all their air and water-cooled TIG torches.

Gas Lenses Improve TIG Welding Performance [Weldcraft]

If given the choice I almost always gravitate towards shops that look like this — mostly because it’s simply not possible to get a space to look this way without putting some time and effort into it. Also, because there is always an unfinished something in the works hanging around that catches our eye.

Right off the bat in this case, we’d ask about the homebrew toolbox in the center there propping up some other items and find out what its story is — we’re sure it has one. As always, reader ghb624 has an interesting-looking workspace even if it is a bit on the busy side. Well done, sir!

Toolmonger Photo Pool [Flickr]

On a recent junkyard trip Sean and I came across this monstrosity in a Ford. Sean’s comment: “Wanna take one guess as to how this guy crashed?” Known most commonly as a “spinner knob” (or alternatively as a “suicide knob”), more sturdy and functional versions of this thing made cranking a whopping huge steering wheel around three or four full revolutions lock-to-lock easier. But with the advent of modern power steering — and a strong desire among most state motor vehicle departments to discourage the inaccurate steering inputs that lead to over-control — spinners are actually illegal in some places around the U.S.

But a non-spinning version made from nylon tape and a golf ball? That’s just an accident waiting to happen.

(more…)

Everybody’s trying to come up with the next gotta-have-it multi-tool like the try-square. Great Neck Saw’s attempt packs 10 measuring tools in one device. The Mayes Squangle is basically a square with an extra adjustable arm that swings from 45° to 90° and locks with two thumbscrews. To increase their tool count, they threw in a bubble vial.

(more…)

Amazon has a good deal on the Earthway 1001-B Precision Garden Seeder right now at $39.99 with super saver shipping.

Okay, maybe it’s a little late to seed your garden this year (although depending where you are, it could be the right time for some winter crops) but an implement like this can make seeding a garden a lot easier than flinging handfuls of seed, or manually placing seed along a 100′ row. The 1001-B Seeder has 6 seed plates for seeding sweet corn, bean, peas, carrots, beets, and radishes. Other plates are available as well as blank ones. It plants to the correct depth, covers the seed and packs the soil. Easy!

Via Amazon [What’s This?]

(TV Tonight, Friday, November 20th, 2009) We get Stud Finder tonight, where finalists compete to be the next DIY network useless host. Worth watching if only to give you another reason to hate the DIY network. We also get a new How It’s Made.

All times are central

• Holmes on Homes: Completing a Nursery and Bathroom Renovation (HGTV, 5:00 pm)
• How Do They Do It?: Space Shuttle, Rollercoaster, Pool Tables (Science, 5:00 pm)
• How Do They Do It?: Empire State Building, Extracting Copper (Science, 5:30 pm)
• Cool Tools: Classic Update (DIY, 6:00 pm)
• Dirty Jobs: Leather Tanner (Discovery, 6:00 pm)
• How Do They Do It?: Fighter Jet, Baseball, Sports Car (Science, 6:00 pm)
• Ask This Old House: Pruning, Hot Water Heating (DIY, 6:30 pm)
• How Do They Do It?: Rescue Services, Rotating Boat, Parachutists (Science, 6:30 pm)
• Top Gear (BBC America, 7:00 pm)
• How It’s Made: Playing cards, crossbows, technical glass, washing machines (Science, 7:00 pm)
• How It’s Made: Giant tires, movie cameras, glass Christmas ornaments (Science, 7:30 pm)
• Stud Finder (DIY, 8:00 pm) NEW/Stupid
• How It’s Made: Headphones, Diving Regulators, Reflector Light Bulbs (Science, 8:00 pm) NEW
• How It’s Made: Surfboard, stickers, sandwich cookies, concrete rooking tiles (Science, 8:30 pm)
• Deconstruction: Copper (DIY, 10:30 pm) NEW

Will lasers make wigglers obsolete? There’s a case to be made that you can set up your mill faster and with less fuss with a tool like the pictured laser edge/center finder. Move the laser beam to the edge of the workpiece and zero your scale. You can just as easily locate the mill over scribed lines or center-punch divots by aligning the laser dot over them.

The finder is accurate to 0.001″ and the dot size is adjustable with a polarizing attachment. The finder uses SR44 batteries that last for over three hours of continuous operation; of course you’ll probably only turn on the finder for short sessions, so the batteries should last a while.

(more…)

Specialty tools for a given engine family drive me nuts. Is it really that difficult to design something which works with thousands of preexisting tools? Unfortunately, General Motors didn’t do that with their Ecotec engines’ oil filter caps, which are so common that nearly every mechanic is going to run into one at some point. Ecotecs have an unusual cartridge-style filter design. Instead of a paper filter element contained in a disposable metal casing, there’s an aluminum housing cast into the block which accepts a standalone paper filter, and it’s covered by a plastic cap with unusual artillery-pattern threads and a 32mm male hex on top.

(more…)

Right now CPO has a reconditioned Skil 7-1/4″ Worm Drive Circular Saw for $99.99.

A friend’s Skil saw recently gave up the ghost so I looked around for the cost of a replacement saw. This seems to be the best deal, especially if their free shipping offer works and you don’t have problems with buying a reconditioned saw. The saw has a 2-7/16″ depth of cut, 15 amp motor (for all that’s worth…), a worm gear drive, and it uses a 7-1/4″ blade.

Skil 7-1/4″ Worm Drive Circular Saw [www.skilshop.com]

Deep.See.Bits™ are bits with marking bands every ½” (in the Imperial-sized bits; 10mm in the metric-sized bits). They look like they could be a reasonable alternative to plastic or metal depth stops and the ever-popular masking tape. I recently tried to drill some shallow holes in plywood using a metal depth stop, and the drill flutes kept getting clogged because the depth stop prevented the drill from clearing. M.POWER®, from Wiltshire, England, makes Deep.See.Bits™ as HSS twist bits for hardwoods, metal, and plastics, or as carbon steel brad points specifically for woodworking. All bits are available in both metric and Imperial sizes. Japan Woodworker carries an eight-piece brad-point set (1/8″, 5/32″, 3/16″, 1/4″, 9/32″, 5/16″, 11/32″, and 3/8″) for $19.75, but it can be found online for $12.63.

Deep.See.Bits™ [Manufacturer's Site]
Etched-Index 8 Piece Bradpoint Drill Set [Japan Woodworker]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

This is definitely in the don’t-try-this-at-home category, but this guy pulls off a neat trick. He uses a large screwdriver to change what I believe is the water pump drive belt on an old VW Bug engine while it’s running. The video’s only 33 seconds long, and the guy doesn’t even use that entire time to pull off the change. I can’t imagine when you’d need to change a belt that fast, but it’s impressive nonetheless. Try this with a modern serpentine system, and you’d find yourself in the ER with a five-rib belt wrapped around your neck, a few broken fingers, and a running engine busy seizing itself in the workshop.

The video is on YouTube, located through Streetfire.
Fastest Belt Change Ever [YouTube]

(TV Tonight, Thursday, November 19th, 2009) An odd night of TV for sure… We get a new Street Customs where they try to make a Lamborghini sexier? Then a new American Chopper builds bikes for a White Sox pitcher and Coleman Corp. At the same time we get a new How Do They Do It? about more stuff being done. The weirdest bit is the special, Family Armor, which blends Mormonism, car customization and firearms together into what will be either the best or worst reality show ever.

All times are central

• Junkyard Wars: Submarine Racers (Science, 5:00 pm)
• Cool Tools: Multi-Task (DIY, 6:00 pm)
• American Chopper: Ornge Rescue Bike (TLC, 6:00 pm)
• Junkyard Wars: Railroad Racers (Science, 6:00 pm)
• Ask This Old House: Mulching, Sash Balancers (DIY, 6:30 pm)
• MythBusters: Swimming In Syrup (Discovery, 7:00 pm)
• Street Customs: Lamborghini (TLC, 7:00 pm) NEW
• American Chopper: Mark Buehrle Bike (TLC, 8:00 pm) NEW
• How Do They Do It?: Military helicopters, metro systems, artificial reefs (Science, 8:00 pm) NEW
• Successful Farming Machinery Show (RFD-TV, 8:00 pm)
• How Do They Do It?: batteries, perfume and artificial islands  (Science, 8:30 pm)
• Family Armor (TLC, 9:00 pm) NEW

Our old friend Harry Sawyer wrote a piece a few weeks back for Popular Mechanics imagining five (funny) fake products that could result from the Stanley/Black & Decker merger. Harry’s mashup of Black & Decker’s campiest holiday gags and Stanley’s popular products result in flights of fantasy like the AutoFat tape measure and the AlligatorVibe AntiLopper — great for yuk value.

But what if you mash up these corporate giants’ home runs? Read on past the jump for five serious results we’d like to see from the merger.

(more…)

Few things in woodworking are more satisfying than making a perfect paper-thin shaving with a well-maintained plane. If you’re using a spill plane you’re actually trying to make special shavings called spills rather than trimming wood from a work piece. A spill is a long coiled wood shaving that was used to transfer flame, such as from fireplace to candles, before the advent of matches. Before finding this spill plane from Lee Valley, as far as I was aware, you either had to buy an antique spill plane or make one yourself.

(more…)

I made a replacement sight elevator for an air rifle the other day. It required me to undercut a groove in a tiny piece of plastic (1/4″x1/4″x1/2″). I found that I had some micro keyseat cutters (marked “Richards”) and gave them a try. Normally keyseat cutters are used to cut semicircular woodruff keyseats but they work okay for tee slotting and other slotting jobs. (more…)