Veritas adds versatility to your precision steel rule with their ruler stop. They designed the stop to be positioned and removed quickly and easily. Slide this little stop over your ruler and tighten its brass set screw to create a reference point for repeatable measurements.
To ensure 90 degree corners and plumb walls, a contractor runs string lines between batter boards when laying out foundations, pools, or landscaping. Rousseau claims their reusable batter boards reduce labor costs by making setup faster and easier. You could also see long-term savings by using their batter boards instead of expensive wooden ones.
Sometimes a pencil isn’t the marking tool of choice — when you need long-lasting, weatherproof markings on wood, concrete, ceramics, metal, or just about any other surface, grab yourself a lumber crayon. These crayons also mark oily, slick, and wet surfaces.
An optical center punch can introduce a whole new level of accuracy to your projects. With the On Mark optical center punch, you can punch within .002″ of your mark, so your final hole position will be about as accurate as it gets.
These beautifully crafted Japanese Sumitsubo carpenter’s lines are similar to the familiar chalk line, only they use ink grains dissolved in water instead of chalk. The ink leaves a much finer line.
Taking measurements down can be a task unto itself — it requires you to keep track of your tape measure, paper, and pencil. That might be a lot for some Toolmongers, so finally the tool market has delivered an aid for you. The WristWriter can hold your tape measure, paper, and pencil, all on one weighed-down wrist.
Although plumb bobs have been in use for thousands of years, Lee Valley thinks they can make this old standard a little better with their patented Veritas Flat Bob. Is it any better, or are they blowing smoke up your ass to try to get you to part with some more of your hard-earned money? Read on, and decide for yourself.
When you first look at the flat bob, it doesn’t look like most plumb bobs. Lee Valley manufactures the 3-3/4″ plummet from precision-molded nylon and adds a brass weight, tip, and string holder. They designed the flat weight to slide against a wall instead of rolling like a normal plummet, so it stabilizes quickly. The marking slot in the plummet serves two purposes: it’s directly in line with the string, so your lines are dead-on plumb; and the cord windlass snaps into the slot for storage.
The flat bob comes with a protective tip cover, 8′ of braided nylon cord wrapped around the windlass, and the 70g plummet. If you inhaled the smoke, you’ll be happy to find out it only runs $19 at Lee Valley.
You’ve heard the expression “measure twice, cut once.” Ages ago, woodworkers found transferring all their project’s important measurements to a story stick helped them avoid measurement errors. When it came time to mark project pieces, they just placed the story stick next to the piece and transferred the mark. Today, Woodpeckers makes a device that improves upon the story stick in several ways.
Unlike just any old piece of wood from your shop, the 36″ story stick’s aluminum track runs straight as a rail. On one side they engrave a scale with 1/32” increments in both directions, so you can use it either left-to-right or right-to-left. On the other side they engrave a centering scale. Four steel tabs slide along the track and lock into place with the turn of a knob, with both a pencil slot and a V-notch in each tab to make transferring measurements dead-on accurate.
If you only occasionally use dowel joinery and don’t want to purchase and store yet another jig, dowel centers will give you accurate results for a fraction of the cost. They’re designed to be inserted into dowel holes to transfer the center of the hole to the mating piece.
Made from nickel-plated steel, this set from General Tools comes with two dowel centers for each of the following hole sizes: 1/4”, 5/16”, 3/8”, and 1/2”. For $5 to $6 a set, they’ll do the job until you decide you really do need that dowelling jig.
Dowel Centers [General Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
If you’ve ever had to lay a curve over and over again, you probably made a template from whatever you had around — a piece of cardboard, a piece of paper, maybe a moldable French curve. Woodcraft recently added a flexible template to their inventory. It’s cool because you can mimic a curve up to 37″ long. Even cooler: You can lock it to keep that curve no matter how many times you transfer it.
The locking template sells for $40, and Woodcraft appears to be the only place offering it.
Curve Template [Woodcraft]
When you create something you’re proud of, you want people to know — you want to leave your mark. For instance, you can show your pride in your work by marking it with your personal brand. Rockler sells custom branding irons for between $50 and $90.
Rockler offers their “HANDCRAFTED BY” branding irons in either torch-heated or 110V electrically-heated. You can add one or two additional custom lines of text — all CAPITAL letters — after the “HANDCRAFTED BY” text.
The torch-heated branding irons run slightly cheaper, at $50 for one custom line or $80 for two lines. The electrically heated irons sell for $65 and $90. If you’re looking to buy a custom branding iron, plan ahead, because the delivery time is about three to four weeks.
Branding Iron [Rockler]
With a label maker, you can organize your workspace and projects a whole lot easier — knowing what goes where prevents headaches long before they happen. DYMO ruggedized its Rhino 1000 labeler for use in an industrial environment. Its rubberized and chemical-resistant outside makes it tougher than your average office label maker. It also offers extra features specifically for the shop.
Do you ever feel like your carpenter’s square isn’t the precision instrument it could be? It won’t work well on materials with profiled edges, and sometimes you feel like you need three hands to use it. The Veritas square fence can solve these problems. You can attach it to either leg of your carpenter’s square, and now, because the square is resting on the workpiece, it doesn’t need to be supported.
If you’re like me — always losing your pencil in the midst of a project — this deal won’t help you stop losing them, but it will make it easier and more cost-efficient to reach for a new pencil. Contractor Tools is offering this 72-pack of Keson industrial-grade, carpenter-grade pencils for $33, about 45 cents a pencil.
The pencils measure 5/8″ by 7″ with a hard #3 lead. Since they’re flat, they won’t roll away — and they’ll fit behind your ear.
Keson [Corporate Site]
Keson 72-Pack [Contractor Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
To cut a hole in drywall for an electrical box, you measure X, then measure Y, transfer those to the drywall, and cut out as needed with a saw or rotary cutter. It’s simple in theory — but in practice there’s a lot of room for error, especially if you’re a DIYer for whom this isn’t your regular job. The Blind Mark Electrical Cutout Tool system, with its two-part magnetic template, takes out the guesswork and helps you avoid costly mistakes.
A transfer punch fits snugly in an existing hole and precisely transfers the center of the hole to another surface when you strike it. You could just use a pencil to mark the hole; but then the holes don’t always align perfectly, which can be a huge PITA. When your holes absolutely, positively have to line up, grab a transfer punch set.
Because they’re designed to precisely fit in the hole, these punches are straight along the entire length, not tapered like most punches. This set from Grizzly includes 28 4-7/8″ long punches for hole sizes ranging from 3/32″ to 1/2″ by increments of 1/64.” The punches are slightly undersized so as not to bind in the holes.
You can get the Grizzly set or one like it for about $11 at many tool shops.
Transfer Punch Set [Grizzly]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
Want to try the new Irwin Straight Line chalks you’ve seen us write about? Visit the link below to get free samples of Irwin’s Dust-Off Marking Chalk or their Permanent Staining Marking Chalk. (Just don’t let your kid get at it.)
There’s no expiration date, but if you read the fine print the offer is only available while supplies last. Who knows how much chalk Irwin set aside for sampling, so if you want a free sample better fill out their form now.
Free Chalk [Manfacturer]
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