Judging solely from what I can gather from the serial number on the headstock, my father’s Shopsmith — now pulling duty in my shop — was built in August of 1984. Almost exactly twenty-five years later it’s still going strong.

I mentioned a while back that my dad’s Shopsmith Mark V came to live with me on super-extended loan from the old man. Read: he’ll have to pry it out from under me to get it back. I left it be for a little while and started to read manuals and figure out what everything did.

(more…)

It’s amazing how flimsy the best builder’s work can become under the right circumstances. The video above contains some examples of components you’d think of as extremely rigid, like the carbon fiber bodywork of a MotoGP race bike, turning into a floppy mess at speed. Components are designed to be just as strong as necessary with very low safety margins, and some of the flexion you can see in these clips is enough to make one nervous about the engineer’s grasp of mathematics.

(more…)

If you ask me, the worst part of a project isn’t the sanding or the finishing — it’s getting the dust off the project so it doesn’t ruin the finish. Forget about tack cloths, brushes, or compressed air; the Baker Model M4i Board DeDuster can remove the dust from 700 feet of boards per minute. At that rate, I probably only need to run it for a few minutes every year!

Typically used after resawing applications, the machine measures 108″ long by 36″ wide and adjusts from 38″ to 48″ in height. Independently powered by 2HP motors, the three nylon brushes remove dust from all four sides of each board the conveyor belt brings. A 6″ dust port optimally moving 1300CFM of air removes the dust, and you’ll also need 220V or 440V three-phase power in your shop to run the machine.

(more…)

Or it’s just cooling. In any case, I saw this on Fast Company — “…Doesn’t Suck, It Blows” –, and couldn’t decide whether to go with the “Cool” title, the “Hot Or Not,” or the “Tool Pr0n” title. Dyson’s new Air Multiplier™ is probably not the fan you want to have out in the garage, but the technology involved is kinda neat. It is, as you may have noticed from the picture, blade-less, and based on phenomena the Dyson engineers noticed when developing their Airblade hand dryer — which is also interesting in that it uses a single thin sheet of air, moving at up to 400 mph, to blast the water off your hands. In the Air Multiplier™, this sheet of air, generated by a “mixer flow impeller” in the base, creates negative pressure as it exits the rim, and draws in more air from behind the fan. The result is a claimed 15× amplification in air, and none of that annoying “unpleasant buffeting” from fan blades.

The 10″ fan is $300, and the 12″ is $330. So while it won’t hurt if you stick your hand in it, it will cost you an arm and a leg.

Dyson [Manufacturer's Site]

I dunno; it’s just something about seeing monster versions of standard kitchen tools that I find fascinating. Every so often, while channel surfing, I catch some show with people either using or making commercial or industrial sized things like mixers, and I think how neat it would be to have one of them. I don’t know what the heck I would do with it — except maybe make enough pizza dough for a year — but the idea still appeals. Part of it is that they somehow take me back to my early youth and watching Industry On Parade on Sundays.

This post was triggered by seeing a reference to the KitchenAid time line, and its note about the early (1908!) development of the stand mixer including being listed as “regular equipment” on all U.S. Navy ships by 1917.

Admit it — isn’t there a little voice in your head telling you how cool it would be to have a 140-quart floor mixer in the kitchen — or even the garage — to mix up a big batch of something?

Industry On Parade Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Hobart [Manufacturer's Site]

Want to record a video of that new shop or construction project, but your assistant took the day off? Well, slap this “wearable” HD camera on your workshop goggles — or helmet, if you’re really careful out there — and shoot away. While designed for the outdoor sports market, the ContourHD1080p has uses in other hands-free applications. Its Dual Laser Alignment will make sure you’ve got the shot lined up. Weighing in at a mere 4.3 oz, the 1.3″ W × 2.1″ H × 3.7″ L camera offers two frame rates (30 fps and 60 fps), four resolutions (1080p, 960p, 720p, and WVGA), an internal microphone, one-button recording, and a rechargeable battery for up to three hours of video. It comes with a 2GB microSD card (and can take up to a 16GB card); depending on the frame rate and resolution, record time is 15-60 minutes per GB. One can be yours for $330.

VholdR [Manufacturer's Site]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Besides shop uses like examining sharpened edges and getting a closer look at that splinter in your finger (TM 7/03/09 post), I think small handheld microscopes are just plain cool. The Celestron 44306 is a Handheld Digital and Optical Microscope, with adjustable brightness LED illumination, a 20X eyepiece for optical viewing (4X to 8X on the LOW setting; 50X on the HIGH setting) and a USB 2.0mp digital camera for snapshots and video on your computer (20X to 40X on the LOW setting; 200X on the HIGH setting). It’s 2″ × 1.25″ × 3.5″, weighs 2 oz, and includes a USB cable and ArcSoft Photo software. The user has to supply two AAA batteries for the LED.

There are lots of fun things to look at with the microscope, like fountain pen writing on an index card, a cat whisker — it fell off, honest — , coins, wood grain, random garage bugs…

(more…)

Not that I’m gonna trade in my trusty old pickup anytime soon, but it’s nice to know there are interesting alternatives. The Bloodhound SuperSonic Car, or SSC — it’s the one on the left above, in case you were wondering — is designed to do better than 1,000 mph (faster than a speeding bullet: specifically, a .357 that plods along at 971 mph). Its jet engine will take it up to 350 mph, and then its hybrid rocket engine will ignite to crank it up to 1,000 mph or more. Cost estimate is $15M.

On the other hand, both speed and money wise, there’s the Wheego Whip, which kinda looks like a Smart Car, but — IMHO — has a much better name. For $19,000 — ouch! but at least the payments will be lower than on $15M — you’ll get an all-electric, street-legal LSV (Low Speed Vehicle) that can be charged from a standard household electrical outlet and go 35-40 miles on a single charge (the 2010 model is expected to increase the range to 100 miles).

Bloodhound SSC [Manufacturer's Site]
Wheego Whip [Manufacturer's Site]

We’ve covered faucet lights that change color with water temperature before, but what’s even cooler about Sylvania’s ECOlight is that it provides both temperature indication and shower illumination without batteries or electrical wiring — water pressure provides the power for this self-contained unit.

The ECOlight has an LED that glows blue when the water is cold and red when the water gets warmer.  It uses Sylvania’s high power golden dragon LED to provide light so you don’t need to turn on any extra lights on when you’re showering. There’s an on/off switch if you don’t want to use the light.

(more…)

Replacing the head and top-end gaskets, transmission cooler lines, and radiator on my 1990 Olds took about forty hours. In that same time frame, the Patron Highcraft endurance racing team stuffed their ARX-02a prototype, collected the bits after three full midair revolutions and a hell of a hard landing, assessed the damage, and rebuilt the car from scratch. The actual rebuild took just over 20 hours, and the team took an impressive time-lapse video of the process.

(more…)

Not many people are going to need a stainless steel pipe polisher, but the tool just looks really cool.  You can use Fein’s RS 12-70 to grind pipe welds, sand pipes to a satin finish, or polish pipes to a mirror finish and anywhere in between.

The variable-speed sander can drive the belt to speeds up to 22 m/s.  The belts rides on what I’m assuming are spring-loaded arms that allow the belt to flex around the pipe so you can surface all 360° of the pipe in only two passes.

(more…)

OK, so it may not strictly be a tool — although it is done using a computer, which is a tool we use for reading TM — but it is a lot of fun. The site offers other options including building, gas station, and highway signs. You can also do computer error messages:

Atom Smasher [Manufacturer's Site]

The city that gave America its first book-lending library also offers something I’d never heard of until today: a tool library. The West Philly Tool Library is a co-op where community members can borrow tools for home improvement and other projects they might not otherwise be able to do.

(more…)

Some lucky souls have the remarkable gift of immediately and completely grasping the functions of an assembly, but for most of us, it takes a while. The differential is a great example of this — an everyday device with simple parts, but their operating principles can be a little hard to understand, even before you start throwing limited-slip devices, lockers, and electronics into the mix.

Fortunately, there’s this neat, old-fashioned, Chevrolet-produced explanation of the bare-bones automotive differential. It looks like it was made in the fifties or so, and even if your understanding of this little piece of the grand automotive puzzle is complete, it’s still a cool video. There are some neat little historic tidbits mixed in, and (weirdly) some synchronized motorcycling at the beginning (skip to around 1:50 if that doesn’t catch your interest). All in all, this is a nifty little throwback with an educational twist, and well worth ten minutes.

How a differential gear works [YouTube]

This may be the most impressive woodworking feat I’ve ever seen. The photo above was made in the mid-1800s by a Mason named Henry O. Studley, a piano maker and carpenter. Materials include mahogany, rosewood, walnut, ebony, and mother-of-pearl, so finely crafted that each tool clicks snugly into place and remains when the wall-mounted box is vertical, even though there are no built-in locks. Two layers on one side and three on the other are enough to store around three hundred tools in 39″ x 20″ x 9″.

It takes a Toolmonger with a heart of stone to avoid falling in love with this remarkable chest. An expert craftsman with a lifetime’s experience in a demanding trade made this practical and fantastically beautiful box from scraps, and was probably the kind to use it every day. If this were your work, imagine the little twinge of satisfaction every time you reached for a tool. Mr. Studley’s work is a practical, gorgeous display of his incredible skill, and he’d undoubtedly be proud to see his work on display at its current home in the Smithsonian.

The H.O. Studley tool chest [Fine Woodworking]
Henry O. Studley [Wikipedia]

Speaking of mechanical pencils, the Uni Kuru Toga has a nifty little clutch mechanism that rotates the lead a small amount each time it touches the writing surface. This rotation promotes uniform wearing of the pencil lead, and prevents getting the dreaded slanted lead surface, or chisel point, that can either break or give you increasingly wide lines. The rotating pencil lead maintains a sharper point with correspondingly narrower line widths. If you’re scribing a line against a straight or curved edge, you’re not likely to be lifting the pencil and retouching the surface, so the rotation advantages won’t apply in this case (unless, of course, you make a dashed line). In typical writing applications, however, it works very well, and it’s neat to watch the rotation mechanism in action when you touch the paper.

The Uni Kuru Toga is available for $7 (both 0.3mm and 0.5mm).

Street Pricing [Google Products]

The Japan Woodworker claims this knife is of the traditional style used by Japanese hunters to cut meat in the field. While we can’t find any evidence to back up that claim, it still is one mean-looking knife for only having a 4″ blade.

The deceptively crude-looking knife is actually forged by master blacksmith Kazuyuki Tanaka. He folds  high carbon blue steel with sixteen layers of Damascus pattern soft steel to create a knife that is tough yet holds a sharp edge. To finish off the knife, the handle is simply wrapped with nylon cord.

The knife measures 9″ in length overall, and retails for about $100. It ships razor-sharp with a blade cover and instructions for care.

Hunting Knife [Japan Woodworker]