It always brings a big smile to our face when we see a group of kids learning about tools and what to do with them. Reader tmib seattle posted up a few pics of a local scout troop getting down on blacksmithing and forge work.

We love seeing this because it’s essential that youngsters learn early both how cool and how handy working in the shop can be — whether it’s metal work like this or plastic hobby-crafting. We have to pass the crafting spirit along to the next generation, or they’ll start to lose something very indefinable — until it’s gone.

It’s a little soapboxish and corny, but if you teach love of the shop — and the projects and tools in it — to young kids, they’ll carry it the rest of their lives.

Toolmonger Photo Pool [Flickr]

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.

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If you want to make full use of your drill press or milling machine table, Palmgren makes a kit with just about everything you’d ever need, including a steel storage rack to neatly organize all the pieces.

Here’s the complete list of what’s included:

• Four 9⁄16″ T-slot nuts
• Four 5⁄8″ T-slot nuts
• Six flange nuts
• Four coupling nuts
• Six step block pairs
• Six step clamps
• 24 studs — four each 3″, 4″, 5″, 6″, 7″, and 8″ lengths
• Two 1-3⁄4″ wide U-clamp sets — each U-clamp set contains a 5″ stud, a flange nut, a ball joint, a U-clamp, and a 9⁄16″ T-slot nut
• Steel storage rack

At $140, this kit isn’t cheap, and it weighs 28 lbs, so shipping will definitely cost you — but you’ll never be lacking for ways to hold down your work.  Sears sells what appears to be the identical kit, rebranded as Craftsman, for $100.

Clamping Kit [Palmgren]
Clamping Kit [Grainger]
Clamping Kit [Sears]
Via Amazon(B0007ZFK0S) [What’s This?]

Sharpen those shears, ’cause this Harbor Freight coupon expires today. You can check out their other coupons, too, but this knockout punch kit makes the top of my list. It allows you to cut perfect holes in 10-gauge mild steel, aluminum, and fiberglass. The kit includes dies sized 1/2″, 3/4″, 1″, and 1-1/4″, and hole punches sized 7/8″, 1-3/32″, 1-11/32″, and 1-11/16″, all made from heat-treated, high-carbon steel. You’ll also get driving screws and a mold-blown plastic case to hold it all. After today, the price reverts back to $15.

Knockout Punch Kit [Harbor Freight]
Coupons [Harbor Freight]

To drill angled holes, you can tilt your drill press table, but sometimes it’s easier and more precise to use a cradle-style angle vise instead. The head of this particular vise from Palmgren locks at preset stops every 15° from 0° to 90°, simply by inserting an alignment pin.  Set any other angle by removing the alignment pin and hand-tightening the locking mechanism.

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If you ever need to bend a piece of metal, to make a clamp, for instance, you can achieve a somewhat-functional bend with a vise and pliers — but it takes too long and looks like crap. A better solution, the Veritas metal bender slips over most bench vise jaws to create bends between 180° and 90°.

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If your tin snips start feeling a little heavy, check out a pair of Wiss lightweight aluminum snips. They’ll make straight or curved cuts in light metal, flash, vinyl siding, or rubber. The 3-1/2″ rust-resistant blades will handle materials as tough as 23-gauge, low-carbon steel.

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Often our best tools come to us for free. This chisel was such a case — judging from its crusty condition, it lay abandoned for a long time before it was found under a porch.

Its new caretaker decided to claw it out of the dirt and clean it up a bit to see what he actually had. With the mantra “There are very few really hopeless cases,” reader ghb624 cleaned the old chisel up and prepped it for action. He didn’t remove all its character — though he certainly could have — but chose to clean off just enough of the dirt and grime so he could use it.

A great story, a newfound tool, and a bit of cash saved — this strikes us as a win all the way around.

Toolmonger Photo Pool [Flickr]

Who wouldn’t want a five-ton hydraulic bench vise in their shop? With Posi Lock’s model PHV859A hydraulic vise, you can clamp anything that fits into its 8″ jaws hands-free. It also pulls double duty as a hydraulic press capable of forming steel.

Posi Lock casts its hydraulic vise from steel — the finished product has a tensile strength of 52,600 PSI. The vise derives it’s power from an air-over-hydraulic 10,000 PSI foot pump. The foot pump sports a 10,000 PSI gauge, an air control valve, and a foot switch to control the vise jaw. A 10′ hydraulic hose connects the foot pump to the vise head.

The vise’s jaws open to a maximum width of eight inches, and a spring returns the jaws to the open position when hydraulic power’s removed. The vise comes with replaceable magnetic jaw plates.

The PHV859A retails anywhere from $900 to $1,000 — a sweet, if expensive, addition to any Toolmonger’s shop.

Hydraulic Bench Vise [Posi Lock]
Hydraulic Bench Vise [Granger]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon(B000B45AXM) [What’s This?]

Just when you thought your multi-talented angle grinder couldn’t get any “multi-talented-er”, along comes the Grizzly Industrial angle grinder stand. This cool grinder accessory effectively turns your 4-1/2″ angle grinder into a mini metal-cutting chopsaw.

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When you hear die grinder, you probably think of a small tool that you operate one-handed — and with most die grinders you’d be right. But the Dynabrade 8″ extension grinder could grind that perception right out of your head. The 8″ extension grinder grinds metal like your average die grinder, but the handle has grown eight inches. It gives the tool a greater reach, but more importantly it gives you more leverage, because the standard one-handed tool has become a two-handed grinding machine.

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Whether you’re an aircraft mechanic, auto mechanic, welder, or DIYer, you’ll eventually need to grind or sand some metal. But what happens when your angle grinder doesn’t offer the finesse you need for a small, intricate job? What happens when you need to get into a hard-to-reach area? Here’s a solution that takes advantage of a tool you already have — 3M’s Roloc drill-mounted grinding/sanding/finishing system.

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If you need to drill a hole in steel, you’re going to want a drill press. The power, the stability, and the accuracy will allow you to bore your way through small or narrow pieces of stock. But what do you do when you need precise holes in a large piece of plate steel that you can’t take to the drill press? You need to take the press to the steel. Milwaukee’s magnetic drill press lets you do just that.

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What could be better then a set of vise-grips? How about two pairs of knockoff vise-grips as helping hands? This welding jig from Pittsburgh bolts to your workbench and allows you to clamp pieces in position with two 10″ locking pliers.

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Professional metal shops with copious amounts of space allow you to keep job-specific tools on hand. Dedicated tube benders and press brakes are great, if you’ve got the cash and space — but what are small shops and dedicated hobbyists to do? The Universal Fabricator, a metal fabrication multi-tool, combines a powered pipe/tube bender with a hydraulic-press-brake-type plate bender.

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What do you do with an old copier? You scavenge metal rods from it and turn ‘em into sweet drawing pencils, of course! The ones pictured above were made by one Bradley Lewis for a co-worker. Check out his site (link below) for numerous photos of the process.

By the way, we stumbled across this on our friend Mister Jalopy’s new site project Dinosaurs and Robots. As usual, he brings an entertaining mix of art, DIY, and the unusual. Give it a look if you get a chance, and don’t forget to weigh in on his mystery tools!

Drawing Pencils From Steel Copier Rods [NonEntity Artwork] [via]

Pure oxygen is awesome stuff — combine it with with a fuel source, and it can produce a brilliant flame capable of burning through nearly anything. The traditional fuel source for Oxy-Metal cutting has been compressed acetylene; but now Petrogen offers a cutting system that uses regular gasoline.

Their gasoline cutting torch outperforms its acetylene cousin in several ways, and especially in fuel cost savings. Two and a half gallons of regular pump gas can do the work of approximately 250 cubic feet of acetylene, offering greater portability as well as significant savings — even with increasing gas prices.

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