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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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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