If you find yourself hanging a lot of drywall, you might look into buying this cheap-ass drywall lift. It’ll hoist and position sheets of drywall precisely where you need them, so you can hang drywall by yourself. Even though you can rent lifts for $100 or less a day, for $160 you could own your very own.

This model can lift drywall to 11 feet horizontally for ceilings and 15 feet vertically for walls. It can handle a sheet of drywall up to 4 x 16 feet and 150lbs. The three large 5″ casters make it easy to roll the lift where you need to, even when fully loaded. You can assemble and disassemble it easily without tools.

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Amazon is selling this 38-piece impact-ready accessory set for $24 — you’ll have to throw something else in your cart to get the free shipping. The set includes eight #2 Phillips 1″ insert bits, eight #2 Phillips 1″ reduced-diameter insert bits for drywall, five #2 Phillips 2″ black oxide power bits, eight #2 Phillips 1″ double-ended bit tips, a 1/4″ nut driver, a 5/16″ nut driver, a 3/8″ socket adapter, a pivoting bit tip holder, and a 3″ stainless steel bit tip holder with a hog ring. You also get 3/8″ drive sockets in a variety of depths — 9/16″, 3/8″, 7/16″, and 1/2″ deep.

Impact Driver Set [DeWalt]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Most woodworking workbenches make some provision for bench dogs — and if they don’t, a few minutes with a 3/4″ drill bit can fix that oversight.  You can use the holes not only for bench dogs, but also for hold-downs and other specialized clamps, such as this very well thought-out and elegant clamp from Veritas.

You can clamp materials as thick as 3-3/4″ with this brass, steel, and anodized aluminum clamp. A brass knob on the top of the clamp post controls the simple wedging mechanism, which makes inserting and removing the clamp quick and easy.

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Spend anytime in your shop and you’re bound to get splinters. A good pair of gloves can reduce the likelihood, but splinters are still an inevitability. If you pick at the splinter with some crappy tweezers and a sewing needle, you’re probably going to do more damage than the splinter would have done if you’d just left it alone. Why not buy the right tools for the job?  For $20 you can add a splinter removal kit to your first aid kit.

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Jeff Snell has all-but-solved the problem of how to keep your saw blade perfectly aligned when hand-cutting joints. He invented the AngleMag, which uses four neodymium magnets housed in a super-low-friction glide to hold any backless saw, such as a Japanese pull saw, at an exact cutting angle.

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Throw away the apple crate and cardboard box, and get yourself a Rousseau 2850 miter saw stand kit — ok, maybe that’s just my workshop setup. At 39″ tall, it stands at a comfortable working height for the average user. The large 19″x31″ platform will support all sizes of miter saws and planers, and easy fold-down wings give support for long lengths of lumber. Two larger storage shelves hold your accessories.

The Dynamite Tool Company has the lowest listing at $95. Amazon sells it for a few bucks more, but they’re offering free shipping.

Miter Stand [Rousseau]
Rousseau 2850 [Dynamite Tool Co.]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Toolmonger has covered both flexible claw pickup tools and lighted magnetic pickup tools, but Neiko Tools makes a pickup tool that can retrieve items either magnetically or by using a claw. In situations where the magnetic retrieval won’t work, like an object in a metal box or a non-ferrous object, you can unscrew the magnetic head (unfortunately taking the light with it) and expose the retractable claw tip.

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This does seem a little strange, but the multi-angle drill attachment adjusts (and locks) at any angle between 180 and 90 degrees so you can drill in all sorts of odd locations.  At least that’s the idea — it looks cumbersome and unwieldy to us, though.

The site says you just hook this thing to your drill like any other attachment, and off you go drilling holes at funny angles. However, even in the picture here, you clearly could’ve drilled that hole at that angle without the use of the funky contraption. Still, if you must have one, it runs about $38 from Garrett Wade. As luck would have it, they’re in stock and on sale.

Multi-Angle Drill Attachment [Garrett Wade]

Hanging crown molding can be tricky — often you’re working on ladders with long pieces, and even if you have a helper, the molding can still sag in the middle.  Crown Clips give you the extra support you need to secure the molding without a helper.  The 9/16” deep hooks on these reusable clips hold the crown molding in place while you fasten it to the wall.

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If you’ve ever lost a tool to the drink while working on your stalled outboard, you’ll appreciate the Tool Leash. You don’t even have to be in the middle of the lake — you could be on a ladder, on scaffolding, or on a roof. Dropping a tool means time lost retrieving it, or even worse, damaging the tool and whatever the falling tool hits. You can prevent damage or loss by hooking up your tool to the Tool Leash.

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We’re willing to try anything that makes caulking easier and gets us back to doing something else. The Flextension caulking tube tip attaches to all tubes of caulk and adhesive. It allows you to spread a bead in places that would be difficult or even impossible to reach with a normal caulking gun. Even though this looks like one of those As Seen On TV products, for $2 it can’t hurt to give it a shot.

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Dovetail joinery can be one mark of excellent craftsmanship, but woodworkers have been joining with ‘em for hundreds of years. You can always spice dovetails up a bit by varying the distance between the pins and tails — but if you really want your project to be noticed, you should check out Leigh’s Isoloc joint templates. Isoloc templates allow you to create curved and rounded fingers that are only possible with a router.

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You don’t always have enough clearance to drill a hole or drive a screw where you need it. Maybe an obstruction blocks the hole, or the combination of drill and bit just won’t fit, as with closely spaced studs. At times like these a tool like Fuller’s flexible extension could come in handy.

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If you’ve been itching for a cheap digital miter gauge/fence and didn’t want to pay uber bucks for one, Craftsman may have the cure for what ails you in the Digital Miter Gauge Model 29939 — an un-sexy name for what could prove to be a handy edition around the shop.

It features -50 to +50 degree miter/bevel/angle range, three adjustable expansion points for a precise fit in standard 3/4″ slots, and a 15″ aluminum miter fence. The backlit LCD screen reads right side up, even when it’s upside down. And Craftsman throws in a few other goodies that make the gauge look rather interesting to us. We don’t have one in the shop yet, but it has made the list.

The price is also rather attractive, hovering right around $80 for all this potential digital hotness.

Digital Miter Gauge Model 29939 [Craftsman]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Next time you have to bundle boards, pipes, siding, or whatever, don’t reach for tape or rope or twine — grab your roll of Stretch Wrap Flat Twine. If it’s good enough to withstand shipping by UPS, it’s good enough for Toolmongers.

Unlike tape, Flat Twine only sticks to itself, so there are no knots to remember — wrapping the Flat Twine over itself is sufficient. Since it stretches, you can bundle your stuff tighter than with rope or twine. And when you need to separate the materials, just unwrap the flat twine; no knots to untie, no sticky mess left behind.

Pricing starts at $4 for a 2″ x 178′ roll with dispenser. If you can find a rope that length for cheaper, I wouldn’t trust it.

Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

A miter lock router bit cuts matching tongues and grooves into a workpiece to create a strong angled joint. Not only does this bit increase the glueable surface area of a joint, but it also automatically aligns the opposite pieces, reducing the need for special clamps. You  can use the common 45° bit to create parallel or perpendicular joints, for such projects as drawers, boxes, and frames.

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Leatherman makes this bit driver extender/adapter for the current generation of multi-tools and knives which accept Leatherman’s proprietary removable bits. The bit extender increases the tools’ reach by 3-1/4″ and accepts both Leatherman’s unique flattened bits and standard hex bits. This greatly expands the driving capabilities of these tools since the flattened bits are costly, in limited variety, and sometimes hard to find in a timely manner.

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