Having experienced a “doh!” moment this weekend with some mapp gas, copper pipe, and, um, flammable materials, I found this flame shield blanket for $18.44 from Plumbing Surplus. Now I won’t burn down the house next weekend when I give the project another try. The blanket measures 18″ x 20″ and protects joists and studs from burn damage, flames, and sparks.
Flame Shield Blanket [Plumbing Surplus]
Phillip wrote to let us know that RIDGID’s running a contest on their site offering one lucky winner a free SeeSnake — their new borescope — in exchange for their personal information and a short essay explaining how you’d use the ’snake.
The unit itself looks pretty sweet. It features a waterproof camera head and cable. The camera head is shaped like a gun with a 2.5″ color LCD on the back to show you what’s going on at the other end. It runs on four AA batteries and comes with a 3′ flexible camera cable, complete with adjustable LED lighting.
We’re sure you’re familiar with RIDGID’s power tools by now, but did you know they also make a few hand tools? We were specifically impressed with their aluminum pipe wrenches — great for working on pipes over your head where it hurts to hold the wrench up.
Phillip writes: “If you’ve ever broken a PVC pipe, you know what a pain it is to repair the damage. The Come Unglued tool can reverse the welding effect of the PVC cement by delivering a precisely controlled amount of head heat to undo the glue. This is awesome.”
The big upshot here, of course, is that you can save the fitting, which is likely already cemented into a pipe system.
Phillip writes: “RIDGID’s plastic basin wrench is a life-saver during the installation of a kitchen faucet or sprayer.”
As you can imagine, this device fits around a pipe to grab difficult-to-turn-in-tight-places plastic mounting nuts on facuets and such.
I feel stupid. I’ve fought with these before, and as much as I’ve talked to RIDGID over the last month, I still didn’t know about these. At $20 street, I’ll damn well have one before I install my next faucet.
Plastic Nut Basin Wrench [RIDGID]
Street Pricing [Froogle]
Tjdunlap submitted this tool he found via Workbench Magazine. He writes: “The Antex Pipemaster is designed to complement the torch in the tool kit of the plumbing contractor or home improvement enthusiast. As an alternative to the torch, the pipemaster elements heat the heads to a temperature that allows solder to be applied to copper pipe joints.”
The inventor of this little gizmo submitted it — the FlexiSnake: a miniature, disposable drain snake. The idea is that while it’s not a rotary tool like the ones we’ve covered in the last few days, it’s so much smaller and cheaper that you could use it before things get totally out of control.
It’s mainly designed to clear the hair clogs that commonly occur in bathrooms, and to that end it features a flat pad that’s small enough to slip down the drain, but spikey enough to grab hair.
Maybe I just haven’t cut enough tubing, but I’ve never really been in that much of a hurry. If you are, however, you might be interested in this: a tool advertised as “the world’s fastest tubing cutter.”
It looks like a pair of pliers with about a half-dozen different holes and cutters on/in it. The hole farthest to the left is the actual “cutter,” which appears to be pretty much like the two-wheel kind we’ve always used, but with four cutters — two on each set of the pliers’ “jaws.” The maker claims the additional cutting wheels allow it to cut in just 90 degrees of rotation.
While we’re waiting for the first functioning light saber to hit the commercial market — or would that sell better at Target? oh well, we’re not marketers — we’ll just have to be satisfied with the glut of other laser-driven products flooding shelves. What product isn’t better with a laser? Or two?
One such laser-driven goody we stumbled across today is the Type HL–100 Hole Laser from Stabila. The HL–100’s geared to make electricians, plumbers and HVAC technicians’ lives a bit easier by simplifying the process of drilling holes in a row.
Purchasing pre-cut/pre-threaded pipe can get to be a bit costly. There is also no room for error or extra fittings that may occur in a piping project. The answer to resolve this issue is to thread your own.
Cutting a pipe can be done by any number of tools around the shop, but threading it requires a pipe threader.
The process is simple; secure the pipe, fit the die heads to the handle, then fit the die head to the pipe end and slowly twist. A simple kit like this one can be found for around $40 and features 1/4, 3/8, 1/2, 3/4 and 1″ pipe threading die heads.
Sample Selection/Street Pricing [Froogle]
Here’s a great idea we came across when doing some plumbing work this weekend and thought we’d share: cast aluminum pipe wrenches. They’re 40% lighter than the cast iron wrenches you’ve used forever, which is great when you’re weilding one above your head.
The one we saw was the Vise-Grip (read: Irwin) model, which comes in 10″ to 48″ sizes and starts around $30. However, numerous companies make them. That’s about twice as expensive as an old iron model, but then again we’re only talking about $15 or so (in common sizes). It’s worth a look.
Vise-Grip Cast Aluminum Pipe Wrenches [Irwin]
Aluminum Pipe Wrenches [Froogle]
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