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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Pop rivets, blind rivets — whatever you want to call ‘em, they’re a great way to fasten all sorts of sheet materials together. The RiveDrill drill accessory uses the rotary action of your drill motor to set rivets. Their website claims that with the RiveDrill you can set 14 rivets in a minute, which they reckon is twice as fast as someone using a hand-powered riveter, and without the hand cramps!
When you’re coping a piece of round tubing to make a strong welded joint, you usually need a pretty expensive, dedicated tube-notching rig — or the willingness to eyeball it and hope for the best. Hal at MetalGeek.com offers the world a nice compromise: the Tube Coping Calculator. Just plug in a few details about the tubing that needs to be fitted, and the program generates a handy pdf template that shows you where to cut.
Toolmonger reader Russell Jones posted this great metalworking project on his blog. When the cheap-o plastic case of his USB key broke, he didn’t buy a new drive — he milled himself a new case out of aluminum. He ended up with a great industrial looking tech gadget that any Toolmonger would be proud of.
Microlux, maker of miniature tools, has come out with a filing machine. It won’t help with your taxes, but it’ll take the tedium out of filing metal, resin, plastic, or wood.
Though filing machines are usually heavy dudes, Microlux has made one for the serious hobbyist. The tool works like an inverted jigsaw, but with a file instead of a blade. The machine cuts only on the pull stroke and only on stock up to 3/8″ thick. Just clamp it to the edge of your bench and begin filing.
One of my favorite tools, the angle grinder oozes testosterone, with its metal-grinding noise and showers of sparks. This Makita 18V cordless LXT lithium-ion grinder offers the same macho experience, except it’s smaller at 12″ in length, lightweight at 5.4 lbs., and portable with its 18V lithium-ion power-pack.
The included Makita Optimum Charger charges the battery in 45 minutes — it also communicates with the battery to optimize the charge and increase the battery’s life by 280%. The battery powers the grinder to 10,000 RPM. The grinder features a built-in overload protector and a sliding power switch with lock-on.
Makita protects the tool with a three year warranty and covers the battery with a one year warranty. All2ools is selling the grinder for $310.
BGA452 Angle Grinder [Makita]
Makita BGA452 [All2ools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
You may notice that my Hobart welding gloves, pictured above, look like they’ve been through hell. That’s because that’s exactly where I put them (instead of my bare hands) damn near every time I use ‘em. I’ve burned ‘em, ground ‘em, scuffed ‘em, and otherwise treated ‘em like crap for a year now, and they’re still just as protective and comfy as the second week I wore ‘em. Read on past the jump to find out why they’re one of our favorite tools of 2007.
Our shop? Totally full of sawdust/metal chips/mess. We like the idea of a shop that’s full of tools you actually use. Toolmonger’s own Nick Carter sent in this fine example of his work space a few days ago. Though it’s not clean and shiny — there are enough metal shavings lying around to make you itch for a week — Nick obviously loves to work in his shop. You can’t ask for more than that.
We dig the bins and storage spaces under the lathe. This shop sees a lot of projects get completed — a solid reminder that it’s not what the shop looks like but what you can build in it that counts.
Toolmonger’s Photo Pool [Flickr]
If you do any kind of machining or part-making, you need to check your accuracy on an absolutely flat surface, like this 24″x24″ black granite surface plate from Grizzly. For only $110 you get a grade B, non-magnetic, abrasive-resistant, corrosion- and warp-resistant, easy to clean surface with a +/- tolerance of .00015 inches. The plate weighs 234 lbs, so you’ll pay around $100 for shipping — but even for $210 it’s a sweet deal.
24″ x 24″ Granite Plate [Grizzly]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
If you need to cut a hole in the middle of a sheet of metal duct, Malco’s CDR duct ripper will get you started. Designed especially for puncturing and ripping ductwork, this tool looks somewhat like a standard blade screwdriver, but the similarities end there.
Malco grinds the tip of this hardened, corrosion-resistant blade to a perfect angle for puncturing sheet metal. A hanging hole penetrates the cushioned grip for easy storage. If you don’t want to ruin a perfectly good screwdriver, you can pick it up for about $12.
Duct Ripper [Malco]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Engine turning (also known as damascening, jeweling, krayling, or swirling) has long been associated with fine metalworking. Whatever you call it, it’s a great way to add some bling to your project. The process consists of using a spinning abrasive cylinder to make dazzling 3-D looking patterns on polished metal. You can see examples of the technique on everything from antique handmade pocket watches to retro hotrod parts. If you want to try it yourself, Eastwood offers 1″ and 1/2″ kits that can be used with any drill press.
It might be too late to do any good, but we’d still like to help out our friend Joe Brown over at Wired who asked us to pass on this question. He writes:
“My father claims to be a woodworker, but rarely ever builds anything. (He’s actually quite skilled, but he says he’s waiting for retirement, when he’ll actually have the time to work on projects. **cough cough bulls#!$ cough**). So every year I get him a woodworking-oriented Christmas present with the goal of inspiring him to get in his (awesome) shop. I’ve bought him tools, a subscription to Fine Woodworking, and last year I designed and built him a workbench. (We actually built it together, which was a ton of fun.) But this year I am out of ideas. Can you, or your readers, think of a really cool gift — tool, book, ANYTHING — that will motivate him to get his ass in the shop?”
Let us (and Joe) know in comments.
(Thanks, karen.fromthelbc, for the great cc-licensed photo!)
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