You want to quickly cut a fence post on the spot, but you don’t have a table or sawhorse close by.  You could try to balance the post on your foot, grip the pipe with one hand, and grip the saw with the other, but that seems a little risky and your cut probably won’t be all that accurate.   The Tri-Vise exists for situations just like this.

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Reader Simple Simon’s sweet photo of this industrial-looking Canadian Buffalo drill press piqued my interest and inspired me to find out more about it. The key word here is industrial, and as it turns out, though the Canadian Buffalo brand is new to me, the company is old –- very old.

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I’ve always looked at metal-milling machines like they were only half-functional.  I felt that any machine built to cut or drill metal would work just as well with wood stock rolling through it –- still do, actually.  Metal guys will give you the stink-eye about it, but still, I’m a wood guy.  I see that Grizzly designed this G9959 mill for both metal and wood;  now there’s a forehead-smacker if ever I’ve heard of one.

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Woodcraft is having a sale at all their locations this Friday and Saturday — twenty percent off all Jet and Powermatic tools and accessories.  It’s not a bad deal, especially if you’re looking at getting a big piece of gear like a full-sized wood planer, table saw, or floor-standing drill press.

So if you had your eye on a Powermatic PM2000 3HP table saw, for instance, you’d normally be out about three grand;  this weekend you can shave about $600 off that.  Unless you’re buying equipment used or off the back of a truck, you probably won’t find better deals on this big a selection anytime soon.

I’m going down to check it out, but will wind up leaving my wallet in the car just in case I’m tempted –- which has happened in the past.

Sale Sheet [Woodcraft]

There’s nothing like a bilingual ODB II scanner to get your car or truck moving in the morning. I first saw an AutoXray product when it was featured on Shadetree Mechanic in the ’90s — it was a fairly priced scanner that would work well for any consumer.  Now AutoXray offers upper-end models like the TechScan 7000.

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A while back Toolmonger reviewed a Finishline AlligatorBoard with a patriotic flag pattern. I can’t see hanging tools off a flag — it just doesn’t seem right to me — but I could work with this black and white checkerboard pattern.

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Reader Mike is in the market for a Shopsmith band saw, and he asked us how we like it.  It’s a great question, and some folks have already rung in on this one in the positive.

I might be a little biased, but I’d say if your Shopsmith was made in the last 30 years and you want a band saw, it’s a no-brainer.  The saw features a 6″ depth of cut;  the table tilts 5 degrees left and 45 degrees right;  and the blade spins from 700 to 1,050 RPM.

As others have said, you’ll have to tune it and spend a minute or two setting it up, but it’s a small price to pay as far as I’m concerned.  Retail price is in the neighborhood of $500 — but the one I just started running in the shop is on its third decade, and it doesn’t have a single issue.

Shopsmith 11″ Band Saw [Shopsmith]

To follow up on the aforementioned sad state of affairs:  I have the home shop up and running again.  It’s not perfect yet and there’s still a ways to go, but I did manage to make room for two big pieces of gear — Chuck’s big Delta planer and my father’s ShopSmith have both come to live with me.

It’s a super-sweet turn of events, but I quickly found out I know precisely zip about setting up the eight tools the ShopSmith’s got going for it — so I’ve been poring over manuals to learn how to calibrate this hunk of wood-mangling hotness.  Also, I need to drop a 240 plug in the shop for the planer.

Speaking of the planer, here’s a handy tip for you folks setting up your own home shop:  Suggesting to your other half that you’ll just run an extension into the laundry room and unplug the dryer when you need it — not a good plan.  Who knew?

We sometimes see rigs like this Powerfoil in movies — through some twist of cinematic fate, they tend to disconnect from their moorings and go spinning out of control into the nearest bad guy. In real life, according to the Big Ass Fans website, these wicked-cool-looking fans with their 16’ – 24’ spans move air effectively and non-lethally.

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When someone says, “Let’s take the car for a spin,” you might not want to hop into the passenger seat so fast. The Roller Hoop auto body rotisserie allows professional and DIY restorers to more easily work on the underside of a stripped body.

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If you need to get under your car using a ramp that’s portable and easy to set up and that you can partially disassemble once the vehicle’s on it, Race Ramps makes a product that might fit the bill.  It seems like an awfully specialized target market, but if you need it, here’s a Portable Pit-Stop Ramp.

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A few months ago my truck’s clutch slave cylinder busted, and my shop space is on an incline so there was no way to push the truck in there, except with the tractor, which scraped the paint and made some small dents in the bumper — no biggie since the truck’s almost 20 years old with over 210,000 miles on it. Pulling it over 100 feet with a come-along would’ve taken too long, but the Warn PullzAll winch could’ve saved my day.

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If you desperately need a CNC router, or you’ve just got too much money, check out the Routermate. The photos on the web page fooled me at first, and I thought this was just a tool for carving letters into wood. But the videos on the site give a better idea of the machine’s power — it can drill and mill aluminum tubing and thick sheets of aluminum and wood.

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One of my sons picked up an ‘88 Bronco, leading me to wonder why a kid who lives in the city and never even touches the transfer case lever needs a four-by-four. Anyway, he managed to run out of antifreeze, and over the summer he just kept topping off the radiator with water, and as you can guess, the water pump started leaking — so it ends up in ole Paul’s shop for a “quick” water-pump swap.

I should’ve had him take it to the shop because over half the water-pump bolts snapped, probably due to a combination of the water and the engine getting too hot. As I was pulling the grill and radiator so I could work in there, an easy-out broke off, and that was after a day of spraying PB on it. So I dropped $20 on a couple of carbide burrs at the Fastenal shop and got the job done.  Now I see Garrett Wade sells a fifteen-piece set of burrs for quite a bit less than I spent.

Just like all carbide-based tools, these burrs’ll cut through about anything. The bits come with an 1/8” shank.  The common shapes and sizes are included in the set, and they average out to about $4 per bit. The entire set sells for $60 at Garrett Wade.

Grinding Burrs [Garrett Wade]

Recently I was shopping for a drill press, and I probably could’ve gotten away with a benchtop model if it was just for woodworking, but I also do metal fabrication so I wanted a stationary model that stands on the floor. I wound up going with this Ridgid drill press.

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Did you ever have a problem with your cooling system that just left you stumped?  Craftsman makes this Cooling System Pressure Tester to help you along.  You replace the radiator cap with the tool, and it brings the cooling system up to operating pressure so you can safely check for leaks with the engine off.  You can also monitor the pressure over time and monitor for pressure drops.

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Steel City continues to flood us with granite tools, this time in the form of their 40615G jointer, a 317-lb beast that combines the traditional steel bed with a granite fence.  Its 68”-long bed will make jointing those long boards easy work.

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