Irwin’s 25′ Strait-Line tape measure features a pencil-less, quick-marking tip. Simply measure out your distance, press the bottom of the tape against your material, and mark your line. I wouldn’t recommend using this for precision work, but for rough marks I’d use it all day long.
Protect your ears, the ozone, and your wallet, all at the same time. Amazon is selling bulk boxes of 50 corded, reusable earplugs via Mytoolplace.com for $30, with free shipping. The earplugs feature a noise reduction rating (NNR) of 27dB.
Bulk Milwaukee Earplugs [dealnews.com]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Removing a stripped screw or a drywall screw that missed the stud can be a trial — you try to back the screw out with a screwdriver, you almost get it, but it slips back into the hole again. Sometimes you can grab the deviant screw with your fingers or a set of pliers, but Lee Valley sells a tool designed especially for removing stripped screws.
If you want to make full use of your drill press or milling machine table, Palmgren makes a kit with just about everything you’d ever need, including a steel storage rack to neatly organize all the pieces.
Here’s the complete list of what’s included:
At $140, this kit isn’t cheap, and it weighs 28 lbs, so shipping will definitely cost you — but you’ll never be lacking for ways to hold down your work. Sears sells what appears to be the identical kit, rebranded as Craftsman, for $100.
Clamping Kit [Palmgren]
Clamping Kit [Grainger]
Clamping Kit [Sears]
Via Amazon(B0007ZFK0S) [What’s This?]
We recently discovered Cheeseboroughs and all the wonderful things you can build with them. After seeing some talk about Cheeseboroughs on the site, Reader David Erlichman kindly sent in some pics of a sweet project that required more than a few of these bad-ass connectors.
The Bessey WS angle clamps differ quite a bit from your standard corner clamps. They’re designed to hold, fix, and align material at a 90° angle, and they adjust to variations in wood thickness. They also feature a slot in the clamp, so you can drive fasteners in the joint while the glue’s drying, without the entire piece shifting.
They look pretty handy for furniture assembly and framing, plus they’re pretty small so you can throw them in a drawer or toolbox when they aren’t needed. We can definitely see ourselves taking advantage of the added slot in the clamp. If you think you need these, you might have to hurry, though — we’ve heard a rumor that Bessey’s going to discontinue them soon.
WS Angle Clamp [Coastal Tool]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
Spend any amount of time working with your hands, and you’ll definitely find yourself shopping for gloves. Whether you work inside or out, a good set of work gloves can make all the difference in the world. They keep your hands clean, provide a better grip on your tools and your work, and improve your overall comfort. Today you can choose from hundreds of gloves — but, in my opinion, most of them can’t hold a candle to the Atlas gloves.
Instantly recognizable and widely used, you’ll see the Atlas Fit 300 gloves on all kinds of jobs, from landscaping and construction to security system installations and even tree climbing — the uses are limited only by your imagination. I even read of a guy who uses ‘em to protect his fingers while playing the guitar — no joke.
We’ve seen a ton of ladders on the market recently, from little giants to finger-crunching foldable kinds, but the telescoping ladder caught our eye as a great improvement over the folding ladders most folks keep in and around the house.
The ladder works just like an old-fashioned telescope, with each rung scoping out and locking in place after it’s extended. They come in lengths from 10′ to 12-1/2′ and can support up to 225 pounds — not great if you’re stout of build, but still very serviceable around the house. One con we can see right off is that you have to unlock each rung when putting it away, but we think the small footprint and fold-down might make up for it.
What do you think? Is the time of the telescoping ladder upon us, or are more conventional, less expensive methods still around for a reason? Let us know in comments.
Street pricing starts at around $130.
Xtend And Climb Ladder [Xtend And Climb]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Using simple geometry, Rockler’s mortise-centering router baseplate can help you make perfectly centered mortises. Rockler makes the baseplate from 1/4″ clear acrylic, so you can see exactly what you’re routing. Two solid brass, 11/16″ pins screw into one of three sets of inserts drilled into the baseplate to accommodate different board thicknesses.
Setting router bits to the correct height takes patience and plenty of test scrap pieces. To aid in this process, Sommerfeld Tools recently released two Easy-Set (EZSET) gauges: a red one with eight different Freud profiles, and a yellow version with eight different Sommerfeld profiles.
First thing after purchasing a shiny new circ-saw, most guys toss the blade in favor of a higher quality rig. Talk to any framing guy or contractor, and that’ll almost always be true. Skil’s new contractor series blades might actually entice you to try a few cuts with it.
The new blades incorporate a thin-kerf design which results in a faster cut versus fat-body blades. “J”-hook expansion slots allow the blade to dissipate heat during cutting, which helps the blade run straight and true. The anti-stick coating also reduces heat, friction, and binding, for smooth, easy cutting.
It’s not earth-shattering news, and you can certainly find other blades out there right now that fit this description — but it’s nice to know that you might not have to blow $12 on a new blade right out of the box when you purchase a new Skilsaw this year.
Skil says these will ship to stores this month, and they should be priced competitively with others in the same class.
Skil [Corporate Site]
We’ve covered tools to help collect sawdust from your miter saw here, but this model from FastCap collapses for portability and easy storage. The ChopShop saw hood keeps your work area cleaner by catching the sawdust that sprays behind your saw. When working outside, the saw hood can also help protect your equipment from the elements.
Sometimes simple tools make our lives easier, like this bench stop from Big Horn. It sits flush in a mortise on your bench top and pops up when you need a stop. Sure, you could use a bench dog — but when you’re planing or sanding, it’s handy to have a stop that doesn’t extend past the top of the board.
When we sat down with the guys from Stanley, we noticed the adjustable sawhorse holding up a few tables. The coolest thing about it was that each leg was on a different plane. You can adjust the horse for uneven terrain, with up to eight inches difference between the lowest and the highest foot.
They look pretty sturdy as plastic sawhorses go. They’re sneaky, though — they don’t seem very special, until you notice they’re balancing heavy loads on uneven ground and are still as stable as a workbench. We haven’t got our hands on ‘em in the shop yet, but we look forward to testing ‘em out.
Street pricing starts at $50.
Adjustable Sawhorse [Stanley Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Locating exactly where to put the nail can be tricky when you’re hanging things on the wall. Often times you put several holes in your wall before you get your picture placed where you want it. Stots created a tool that makes placement easy. The Wallsaver helps you position picture frames perfectly, especially when you’re trying to line up several pictures.
With the smorgasbord of router jigs available today, the router has become one of the most versatile machines in the shop. With versatility comes trade-offs — each different jig usually requires removing the old jig and the router baseplate. But a system like the Router Buddy reduces setup time by allowing you to follow profiles and templates, and to cut circles, ellipses, dadoes, and rabbets, all with the same baseplate.
Conventional feather boards exert downward force at the point where the bit removes material. This results in the tendency of the panel to tip towards the bit. Bench Dog’s Panel-Loc solves this problem by moving the hold-down pressure two inches away from the fence, where the table fully supports the panel.
The Panel-Loc isn’t just useful for panels — it works well for most router operations on wider boards. The hold-down strip won’t mar the workpiece surface because it’s made from a low-friction, ultra-high molecular weight plastic. The Panel-Loc also makes cutting panels safer, since the wide hold-down doubles as a guard to protect your digits from large bits.
The Panel-Loc comes with a 20″ T-Loc track which mounts to most fences, including all Bench Dog router tables and fences. Expect to pay about $60 for the Panel-Loc.
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