I know it’s evil to talk about Xmas this early, but this Amaze-N-Marbles game reminds me of when I was a kid.  By arranging the series of wooden tracks and chutes correctly, my brother and I could make the marble travel quite a distance down these little guides.  This stuff was pure awesomeness, both simple and fun — and it actually required thinking and imagination, which I find sadly lacking in children’s toys today.

Sadly, Mom was constantly having to confiscate our old set.  Brothers being brothers, we took the first chance available after a failed run to beat each other with the blocks and sling the marbles at each other.  That would end our marble-running for a few weeks at a time.

This set costs around $25 for an entire bag of them.  Of course, the tricky craftsmen could make their own sets for less, if they were willing to spend the time.

Amaze-N-Marbles [Duluth]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Sanding into corners or convex curves with a quarter-sheet palm sander can be challenging, but with their EZ Sand Pro, Wizard Industries hopes to make that task a bit easier.  This lightweight foam block includes three nested profiles which allow you to sand many curved shapes and angles. (more…)

I noticed this stud remover from Craftsman because it’s a different design than I usually see, the ones that look like they belong in a tap and die set.  This one runs $25, which is comparable to the other design, so I’m curious as to how they stack up.

Have you used both designs?  Is one better than the other?  Let us know in comments.

Stud Remover [Sears]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

With a clamping edge guide, making straight cuts with your circular saw has never been easier, but most clamping edge guides only let you make right-angle cuts.  The large rubber clamping pads on the Bora Clamp N Cut edge guide swivel 22.5° in either direction, letting you clamp it at an angle across the workpiece.

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Span any distance from inches to yards with the Lightning Clamp.  It’s like a pipe clamp that uses threaded rod instead of pipe, but it offers several advantages.  It’s lighter; the threaded rod gives you mechanical advantage to apply high pressures; and the large faceplates spread the clamping pressure over a greater area.

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As usual, Toolmonger readers like gareth.ky are ahead of me.  We see here the start of his oversized gate construction which, judging from the rest of the pictures, turned out great.

It’s the little things, like a double-door gate that you build yourself, that add function and value to a home. These projects add up over the years, resulting in a sweet home with additions that would’ve cost a bunch if you’d bought them outright at the start.

Toolmonger Photo Pool [Flickr]

We don’t experience the blood-freezing temperatures here in the South that they do further north, but it does get cold enough that we start looking for heating options in the shop during the winter.  Talk of halogen heaters starts making the rounds as soon as the first frost hits — but are they effective in the shop?

You can bag a cheap electric halogen heater for less than a C-note, and they come in a dizzying array of sizes and shapes. The concept of no-flame heating seems appropriate for the shop, but how well do these things work?  How much area do they cover?   Will the person standing five feet from the unit be sweating while the guy on the other side of the garage is experiencing a modern Ice Age?

In short, are these good units to place in the shop, or is this technology only suited for the small heaters you find under old people’s desks?  Let us know in comments.

Airworks Garage Heater [Northern Tool and Equipment]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

You’ve got your rectangular scraper, your curved scraper, and your gooseneck scraper.  Back up.  What’s a gooseneck scraper?  Well, you could say it looks a little like a French curve, and it serves a similar purpose.   It’s composed of many different-radius curves, so you can try to match a section of the scraper to a curve on the molding, bowl, or other curved piece you’re finishing.

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If you want to see what efficient shop layout looks like in practice, check out this tour of Anatole Burkin’s 20′x20′ shop.  The sweet eight-minute video shows how the Fine Woodworking publisher turned a two-car garage into a four-season shop.

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A woodworker’s going to feel disappointed when he sees checking or warping in a beautiful piece of furniture after he’s already finished it, but imagine seeing those flaws in an entire hardwood floor.  Flooring guys don’t have time to look at moisture readings on every piece of wood — they have ten more houses to do — so Delmhorst designed this contractor-grade moisture meter to tell you more than just how much moisture there is where you stick the pins.

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We’ve seen self-centering bits around for awhile, but we wonder if it’s worth buying yet another set of drill bits.  Manufacturers and retailers claim the bits ensure accurate hinge and hardware installation.

Made by Insty-Bit for Rockler to fit the hex-drive Insty-Drive system, this particular three-piece set allows you to drill holes for #4, #6, and #8 screws.  The drill guide sits in the hardware’s screw-hole countersinks and aligns the bit for perfectly centered holes.

Insty-Bit makes these bits in the USA using precision-ground, high-speed steel.  Rockler and Amazon are currently discounting this three-piece to $13.  A heavy-duty nylon pouch to store the bits is included.

So, is it really that hard to drill a centered hole, or are self-centering bits the difference between fine furniture and something that looks like it was built in your garage?  Let us know in the comments.

Self-Centering Bits [Insty-Bit]
Self-Centering Bits [Rockler]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Add a spring to a hand tool and you’ve changed it drastically.  Take for instance, scissors:  You wouldn’t want to cut fabric or thread all day with even the best pair of scissors, because with every snip you have to reopen the scissors — literally a pain.  But a pair of spring-loaded thread nippers open themselves, so you just have to squeeze.

Since spring-loaded tools came on the scene way back when, manufacturers have stuck with the small-and-springy combo, mostly because it works.  Whether it’s nippers or spring-loaded pliers, we can see why the spring is a selling point.

Thread Nippers [Wiss]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Impatient with the setup time required by drywall jacks or lifts, John V Santiago invented Free Hands drywall supports as a cheap and easy solution for wrestling sheets of drywall solo.  Free Hands also allow you to adjust and align sheets of drywall before securing them, all by yourself.

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Amazon is selling Calculated Industries’ 4020 Measure Master Pro measurement conversion calculator for only $22. The calculator converts between feet, inches, decimal inches, yards, meters, centimeters, and millimeters, including fractions.  It does areas and volumes as well as circle calculations.

Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Grip-on designed the Door Wizard for the maintenance and installation of doors.  Like a smaller version of the heavy-equipment lift bags, the Door Wizard’s bag raises or lowers the door, while two door-grip pliers keep the door aligned with the hinges.

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Art comes in many forms, and we’re not so stuck up we can’t appreciate it either.  Take this photo of a show a few years ago at the Cleveland Institute of Art — Beth Whalley’s Drill Cozy caught our eye for some reason.

Sure, “Drill Cozy” probably won’t arrive at the Louvre anytime soon, but it gives us a chuckle and puts power tools in front of art folks, and that’s got to be worth something.  A belated hats-off to Beth for her fine use of imagination.

Cleveland Institute of Art [Website]

This combo toolbox reminds us of those little Russian Matryoshka dolls — you know, the ones that have a dozen dolls nestled inside each other.  You can just keep taking this thing apart, and you find more compartments.  Best of all, it provides the three things you need for taking care of projects around the house:  tools, power, and reach.

If you’ve got this toolbox, you never have to go back for a stepstool, tools, or an extension cord — that’s a lot of time-saving.  By keeping you from standing on the sofa, it could also save your relationship with the significant other.

If you take it to the jobsite you might be laughed out of business, but at home it’s a winner.  Lasko must be keeping this a secret, though — Amazon and Google Products seem to think it doesn’t exist, and there’s no pricing on Lasko’s website.

Power Toolbox [Lasko]