After all the prepping and painting is over, you still have to clean your equipment. Ryobi is looking to make that last step a little easier with its paint brush cleaner. Plug in the cleaner, fill it with water or thinner, and it’ll supposedly clean any brush up to 3″ wide in a few seconds.

What’s more, they claim the cleaner will make your brushes last longer and perform better. Soft brushes rotate at 950RPM to “gently” clean the inserted paint brush. The 10″ x 11″ x 12″ cleaner weighs 4 lbs. and can hold up to 1 gallon of cleaning fluid.

The paint brush cleaner only seems to be available online at Home Depot for $30, but at least it looks like there’s free shipping.

Paint Brush Cleaner [Ryobi]
Paint Brush Cleaner [Home Depot]

Unless you have a fully-enclosed router table, your chip and dust collection probably leaves something to be desired. Instead of fully enclosing the entire table, Rockler’s Dust Bucket just encloses the router to get the same level of dust collection. When used in conjunction with a fence collection port, the Dust Bucket will allow you to collect virtually all the dust from your table.

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Ever since we launched Toolmonger and started letting hundreds of thousands of other tool folks in on our tool-related conversations, we’ve tried to excise our habits of calling all tools by one manufacturer’s brand name. Just like people down here in the South call all soft drinks “a Coke” (No, really. We do), we used to call all circ saws Skilsaws, all portable band saws Porta-Bands, and all adjustable wrenches Crescent wrenches.

So you’ll have to forgive me when I think of every small, elongated, cordless vacuum as a Dustbuster. They’re not — especially when they’re completely different, like this model from Makita. This one’s clearly designed as a floor sweeper, kind of like the cheap-o model I have at home for sucking up stray cat litter in the utility room or peppercorns in the kitchen. But more importantly, it’s powered by Makita’s 10.8V tool batteries.

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The smarter we become, the more we realize that wood dust and other airborne pollution isn’t very healthy for us to inhale — not to mention the how pissed off the homeowner becomes when there’s a thick layer of sawdust or drywall dust over everything in the house. For your shop you can install permanent air cleaners, but are you going to drag them with you to every job site?

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Sometimes the time-tested methods work best; sometimes they work even better with modern technology. A broom has no cords or hoses to catch and will reach every corner of your shop. Instead of tripping over the vacuum or dust collection hose, just connect Woodstock International’s floor sweep to your dust collection system and sweep the debris away.

The floor sweep works best when used in conjunction with a gate — that way you can just open the gate when you’re sweeping and close it when you’re done. It measures 24″ wide by 3-1/2″ high by 7″ deep and is made from 3/32″ thick plastic. It connects to any 4″ dust collection hose and can be attached to the floor using double sided tape.

Pricing for most plastic floor sweeps start at $4.

Floor Sweep [Woodstock Int]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

The DeoxIT® Service Kit, $60 from Caig Laboratories, comes in a zip-top bag with a variety of products incorporating their DeoxIT® contact cleaner including sprays, wipes, and brush applicators. Caig claims that DeoxIT® is a “fast-acting, deoxidizing solution that cleans, protects, lubricates, and improves conductivity on all metal connectors and contacts.”

Different versions and sizes of DeoxIT® are available through Amazon and other web sites.

I have used DeoxIT® on many connections including tool battery packs, flashlight batteries, vehicle batteries, vehicle audio and antennas, and computers — and found that it does work. Have you used DeoxIT®, or similar contact cleaners? What’s your opinion of it?

Caig Laboratories [Manufacturer's Site]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

The 1-hp BucketVac vacuum head fits any standard 5-gallon bucket like a lid and turns it into a shop vacuum. This is brilliant — not only does it make use of buckets lying around the shop or jobsite; you can lug it around or store it in the shop in a minimal space.

Once attached to a bucket the BucketVac is a wet/dry vacuum just like any other model except with no wheels. It comes standard with a 2″ diameter hose and looks like a great way to put to work all the extra 5-gallon buckets that need to be filled with stuff you’d rather not touch.

The bad news is the price point appears to hover around $70. Simply put, you could buy two five-gallon Shop Vacs for what it would cost for one of these things, so it may be a little steep for someone that doesn’t really need it.

SpeedClean [Manufacturer's Site]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

I’ve used nails, pencils, dowels, and even packing tape to try to keep my glue nozzles clear, and none consistently work; when I try to use them again, the tube is soft but the nozzle is solid. The Twist-n-Seal Stopper forms an air-tight seal on plastic nozzles by tapping threads in the malleable plastic. The threads will withstand 40 lbs of axial force so it won’t pop out. The glass-reinforced plastic plug is non-stick and is removed by unscrewing from the tube. The top is flattened to stand upright when removed, keeping things clean on your workspace. You can find the Twist-n-Seal at Lee Valley for $3.20/pkg of five.

Twist-n-Seal Stopper [Lee Valley]

Whenever you work with drywall, dust gets everywhere — ceiling, walls, and floor — and getting it off all those surfaces is a chore.  That’s where Wooster’s Drywall Dust Eater comes in.  It’s a triangular tool that looks like a mop but uses a specially-treated material that attracts and holds dust without water.

The 16″ Dust Eater head attaches to threaded extension poles with a 360° double-action pivot that keeps the head flat against whatever surface you use it on.  The triangular shape lets you clean large areas quickly and reaches all the way into corners.

You can pick one up for about $25.

Drywall Dust Eater [Wooster]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

I really hate cleaning out my hot tub.  Here in Florida, even if you overdose your tub with chemicals, you’re bound to see algae and scale buildup when you get close to the six-month cleaning.  I especially hate trying to remove that 10-15 gallons at the bottom, below the drain pipe. Today, instead of my classic method of bucket removal and swearing, I broke out my Craftsman two-gallon portable wet/dry vac.

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Brush and roller cleaners like the one above have stood the test of time.  As a boy, I remember helping my dad clean his paint brushes by attaching them to the cleaner and pumping like mad inside of a bucket to spin them as fast as I could — I learned fast how big of a mess I could make without the bucket.

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Connect the Turbo Water Jet Broom to a standard garden hose and its “high-pressure” water jets will “sweep” your patio, deck, driveway, sidewalk, garage floor, or other outdoor surface, using just three gallons per minute.

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Dirt and metal particles on your bike’s chain can accelerate chain and sprocket wear and cause shifting or other performance problems.  Park Tool sells its Cyclone chain scrubber to keep your bike’s chain clean and operating at peak performance.

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As it gets warmer this spring, your ambient room temperature goes up, too — at least if you have your furnace and AC set to reasonable levels — which means your computer has to work harder to get rid of the heat it produces, so the CPU doesn’t turn into a molten pile of goo.  I didn’t know just how stressed my computer was till it started beeping at me as I was getting ready for bed the other night.

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After accidentally kicking the front access panel off the dryer, I noticed that it’s time to clean out all the lint buildup.  While I’m at it I figured I should probably clean the vent, too — in searching for an easy method to do this I found Harbor Freight’s vent cleaning brush.

Besides reducing the fire hazard, cleaning your vent supposedly improves the efficiency of your dryer — who wouldn’t want that?  The brush’s nylon bristles are mounted on a 10ft flexible steel shaft. The idea is you run the brush through a length of vent pipe, either by hand or chucked into your drill.  This loosens the lint stuck to the sides of the pipe.  Then you either blow the lint out the pipe or suck it out with a shop vac.

Is there any reason to splurge for more than the $3 Harbor Freight version, or is even that too much to pay because these type of brushes don’t really do much?  Is this tool hot or not?  Let us know in the comments.

Vent Brush [Harbor Freight]

I was reminded of Ben’s excellent post on vacuuming the ash in your fireplace when I was cleaning mine out a few days ago.  I’ve always just waited till the ash was cold, then I bust out a brush and dustpan.  With a price tag of over a hundred bucks, are ash vacuums really worth it?

I know that the regular old unmodified shop-vac will turn your living room into an ashen fallout zone, but can the specialized fireplace vac be used for other things?  That’s an awful lot of space taken up to just clean the fireplace.

Is the powered way just that much better, or does your name need to be Casanova before you actually run that many fires through your fireplace for this to become worthwhile?  Let us know in comments.

Cougar Ash Vacuum [Love-less Ash Company]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Yes, it’s called the Original Bootie Butler.  I saw this on a recent Cool Tools episode — it keeps you from tracking dirt, oil, grease, or paint through your house or car.  That’s what happens to me when I paint indoors:  I always seem to get paint on my shoes, probably because I suck at painting, but that’s another story.  So if I could cover my shoes before working and take the covers off when I leave the shop or drop cloth, that would be good.

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