I’ve been a stapling fool the past few years, stapling everything from small animal fencing and shooting targets to home repair projects, using my standard array of manual staplers from major manufacturers. The problem is, as I get older, pulling the stapler trigger or handle gets rough on the old hands — so I’m taking a look at the Arrow CT50K battery-operated stapler.

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I don’t know how woodworkers do it. A good quality clamp will run you $30 to $60 per clamp — yet most committed woodworkers have a wall of 20 to 50+ clamps. That money would buy me the cabinet saw I’ve been looking at, and I feel lucky to own the half-dozen bar clamps that I do have. This R&R Stackable Clamp System at my local Woodworks caught my eye, and it looks like a good deal — but unfortunately it’s still out of my budget.

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Another cool idea from FastCap, the Blind Nail System allows you to hold stuff together without any visible fasteners.  They could replace a small clamp, holding small parts while the glue sets — all kinds of applications with molding and casework come to mind as well. Whatever you do with ‘em, you’re saving yourself work in the future by not having to fill nail holes or plug screw holes.

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I thought Velcro — or more generically, hook-and-loop fasteners — only came in adhesive-backed styles, but then I ran into these Velcro rolls at work, where we use ‘em for cable management.  The hooks are on one side of the roll and the loops are on the other.  I may be the last Toolmonger to come across these little round gems, but I thought I’d pass ‘em along just in case.

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If you’re looking for a new idea in fasteners, the UFO Ballistic NailScrew might be the newest show in town — you drive ‘em in with a nail gun, and if you ever want to remove ‘em, you can just unscrew ‘em.  Just to let you know:  My grandfather had this idea first.  Many times I and other family members witnessed him screwing a screw about halfway in and then beating it the rest of the way in with a hammer;  we should’ve contacted the patent people years ago.

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Simple hardware like the right-sized knobs can be difficult to find when you need them, and you can pay a whole lot more that you’d think proper once you do.  Snap-Lock knobs are a cheap and versatile solution.  They allow you to assemble your own custom knobs using the nut or bolt of your choice so you don’t have to keep a dozen different sizes on hand.

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If you’re tired of changing the bit between drilling the pilot hole and driving the fastener, you can avoid all that bit-swapping with the Jack Rabbit Deluxe Set.  I’ve wanted to check this out ever since I saw Norm using it on the New Yankee Workshop.  Sure, you could just use an extra drill or two, but some of us are limited on space and don’t like the clutter.

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This past summer I was hanging poultry wire for some poultry stables, and if I’d had the ThumbSaver I could’ve saved my thumb some pain and lowered my stress level by about 200 percent.  This is one of those products you look at and say, “I could’ve made that.”

A small groove with a magnet in it holds the fastener so you can hammer away, while keeping your thumb out of harm’s way. FW Tools currently packages a standard and a mini size ThumbSaver together for about $20.

ThumbSaver [FW Tools]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

If you want to stop machine noise from leaving your shop or prevent noise from entering your media room or bedroom, these simple and relatively inexpensive Isomax clips will help attenuate unwanted sounds, without taking up a lot of space.

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With this Craftsman Master Rethreader Set you can easily recondition those dirty, gummed, nicked, and just-plain-nasty old fasteners. The rethreader works slowly down the threads and cleans them, and it’ll also help correct those crossed threads, but it won’t cut new threads — you’ll need a regular cutting tap and die set for that.

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You might have some luck getting a corroded fastener unstuck by heating it, but you probably want to avoid soaking the fastener with penetrating oil or lubricant before applying a flame to it.  With Freeze & Release, you can do the same thing with cold — get a fastener cold fast enough and the bolt and nut should contract at different rates, hopefully freeing the fastener — plus there’s no problem using penetrating oil to speed the job.

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Inevitably there’s times in your shop that you need a few screws of a certain type, but in order to get them you have to buy a 1lb box — and you always wondered why the old man kept glass jars full of miscellaneous screws. Get a head start on a lifetime of collecting things in glass jars with McFeely’s 5 or 10lb boxes of assorted screws.

McFeely’s is liquidating tons of mixed fasteners left over from their packaging operation, and rather than throwing them out they’re putting them in boxes and shipping them to your doorstep.  There’s no guarantee that you’ll get any specific mix, but all of the leftovers are their top-quality screws, such as stainless screws, concrete screws, and plated screws of all varieties — some of which sell for more than $20/lb.

Get the 5lb box for $13 or the 10lb box for $25.  You pay around $8 shipping for the first box, and each additional box adds a few bucks.  Limited quantities are available — they’re only selling what’s on hand, not creating batches of mixed screws on purpose.

5lbs Mixed Screws [McFeely's]
10lbs Mixed Screws [McFeely's]

Starborn Industries, makers of the Smart-Bit, also put out some fasteners with innovative features — the most photogenic are their DeckFast epoxy-coated screws.

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Incorrect torque on a small screw may not lead to a life-ending event on the highway, but on precision machines and carefully calibrated devices, small screws require careful handling.  If you don’t care to keep up with the digital age, an “old-fashioned” torque driver will do — but if you’re interested in the tools of the new millennium, check out this digital torque driver.

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Electronic Goldmine is selling this 8-piece miniature Torx driver set for $3 — it’s handy for taking apart all sorts of items with tiny Torx screws.

Mini 8-in-1 Precision Torx Driver Set [Electronic Goldmine]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

LOX screws are so strip-proof, you’d practically have to take a drill bit to ‘em to ruin ‘em.  The same goes for spline bolts — good luck stripping them — plus many spline wrenches are “backwards compatible” with hex, twelve-point, female Torx, and square-heads, and they’re more effective at turning 50% rounded fasteners.  Now the Wright Spline takes another step.

According to the Wright website, “Most wrenching problems occur in removing fasteners, because the removal torque is frequently twice or more the installation torque,” so they took that into account when designing the Wright Splines.  Go figure;  a tool manufacturer looks at when we all have the most trouble — removing bolts — and figures out how to handle it.

Here’s the problem with loving the technology so much:  It looks like technology has gotten ahead of industry, because I can’t find them for sale anywhere.  As if I really need them…

Wright Spline [Wright Tool]

Sometimes you can’t move a job to a place with proper light and heat for human beings to work in. Spaceflights, ship repair in the North Atlantic in winter, and underwater construction all require special tools and special outfits. Though the Gorilla Tool isn’t specific to any of them, it could come in handy — especially if you or your assistant haven’t got a good eye for bolt and nut sizes.

The Gorilla tool combines bolt-sizing and thread-sizing in a tight package with a pre-drilled lanyard hole.  Gorilla makes it of stainless steel so it won’t rust, and the large tension wheels seem designed for easy use — maybe easy enough for gloved hands.  The quality looks good, but it runs $45 for either the American or metric version.

Most of us will have the luxury of not needing a tool like this — going back to the toolbox isn’t likely to freeze off our delicate bits or run us out of air.  But if you really needed to be sure the first time…

Gorilla Tool [Corporate Site]