Veritas adds versatility to your precision steel rule with their ruler stop. They designed the stop to be positioned and removed quickly and easily. Slide this little stop over your ruler and tighten its brass set screw to create a reference point for repeatable measurements.
Cortec corrosion inhibitors sold at Lee Valley will protect your rust-prone tools for up to two years. Instead of coating your tools with sticky, greasy, or oily substances, just throw one of these anti-corrosion emitters into any enclosed box, cabinet, or drawer where you store your tools.
Spring arrived a few weeks ago, so if you haven’t already, it’s time to pull the hoses out of storage. If you’d stored ‘em in this fingered hose holder, you’d be watering tangle-free now instead of trying to unravel a kinked mess. Mount the holder next to the hose bib, and your hoses’ll always be ready to go.
Removing a stripped screw or a drywall screw that missed the stud can be a trial — you try to back the screw out with a screwdriver, you almost get it, but it slips back into the hole again. Sometimes you can grab the deviant screw with your fingers or a set of pliers, but Lee Valley sells a tool designed especially for removing stripped screws.
Blind or “sliver” nailing is an old technique of hiding nail heads in finish carpentry. You raise a thin sliver of wood, leaving it attached; drive a nail, and set it in the depression left behind; and glue the sliver back into place — no filler needed. Lee Valley designed a modern tool to help make this antique practice a bit easier.
Made of stainless steel and brass, the specialized plane clamps a 1/4″ high-carbon steel chisel at a 15° angle. The gouge-shaped edges of the hardwood-handled chisel minimize tear-out and leave a clean shaving. To change the thickness of the shaving, just adjust how far the chisel protrudes from the sole of the plane.
Along with the non-marring plane and the chisel, the Veritas Invisible Nailing kit includes a small container of fish glue. For only $28, this kit’ll help you lend an air of professionalism to your woodworking projects .
Note: Check out page 432 of Woodworking for Beginners: A Manual for Amateurs By Charles Gardner Wheeler at Google Books for a 100-year-old description of “sliver” nailing. While you’re at it, take a look at some of the other great woodworking techniques from 1907 that this great, public-domain book describes.
Invisible Nailing Kit [Veritas]
Invisible Nailing Kit [Lee Valley]
If you ever need to bend a piece of metal, to make a clamp, for instance, you can achieve a somewhat-functional bend with a vise and pliers — but it takes too long and looks like crap. A better solution, the Veritas metal bender slips over most bench vise jaws to create bends between 180° and 90°.
Although plumb bobs have been in use for thousands of years, Lee Valley thinks they can make this old standard a little better with their patented Veritas Flat Bob. Is it any better, or are they blowing smoke up your ass to try to get you to part with some more of your hard-earned money? Read on, and decide for yourself.
When you first look at the flat bob, it doesn’t look like most plumb bobs. Lee Valley manufactures the 3-3/4″ plummet from precision-molded nylon and adds a brass weight, tip, and string holder. They designed the flat weight to slide against a wall instead of rolling like a normal plummet, so it stabilizes quickly. The marking slot in the plummet serves two purposes: it’s directly in line with the string, so your lines are dead-on plumb; and the cord windlass snaps into the slot for storage.
The flat bob comes with a protective tip cover, 8′ of braided nylon cord wrapped around the windlass, and the 70g plummet. If you inhaled the smoke, you’ll be happy to find out it only runs $19 at Lee Valley.
Your Yankee screwdriver sits in the drawer collecting dust. You’d use it more, but it’s missing most of the special bits. Buying a new one is expensive, and so is buying the bits — if you can actually find someplace that sells them separately. There’s another option: head on over to Lee Valley Tools and spend $6 to make your Yankee screwdriver more versatile than ever with a hex adapter.
Although at first look this tool might seem like a Rube Goldberg design, on closer inspection you appreciate the ingenuity of its designer. I can’t attest to how well it actually works, but it definitely looks cool.
Strike the top of this 8″ tool like you would a chisel to get the narrow 5/32″ jaws underneath the nail head. When you attach your hammer to either the top or side of the puller and lever against the fulcrum, the spring loaded jaws close to grip the nail.
Add this nail puller to your collection of eccentric tools for $15.
Forged Nail Puller [Lee Valley]
This wire bending jig helps you bend wire neatly and accurately to make everything from custom pegboard tool holders to more creative projects like jewelry. Most importantly, it spares you the messy results and frustration of trying to bend wire just with pliers or your hands.
With this cast aluminum jig, you can bend up to 1/4″ mild steel wire. Just fit the wire into the grooves for simple angular bends, or insert the steel pegs to shape the wire in more complex shapes and curves. With two screw holes you can mount the jig to a bench, so you can apply more force to your bends. It’s one of those things you buy for one reason and keep finding uses for — at about $10, I can’t think of a reason not to get one.
Wire Bending Jig [Lee Valley]
Street Price [Google Products]
When somebody says gimlet, I think of a good stiff drink — which is what you’ll need after your power drill accidentally reams out the screw hole in that heirloom project. When you just need to get a screw started – especially a short screw – a power drill can be too much tool for the job. Instead, try a traditional auger gimlet, such as one of these sold by Lee Valley.
Work gloves generally come in a small selection of sizes for men, with a few women’s sizes thrown in for good measure. To my continued shame, I sometimes find myself wearing pink or pastel-colored women’s gloves because the men’s gloves don’t fit my hands very well. No more! Lee Valley now sells an affordable line of Work Gloves in sizes children to extra large, all in the same neutral green.
‘Tis the season for cheap plastic crap. The gimmicky products that surface around holiday time never cease to amaze us. But some of them have a bit of charm — like this drill-powered pencil sharpener.
It works like any other handheld pencil sharpener, but on its backside it sports a 1/4″ shaft that connects to any 3/8” or 1/2” drill. Once connected you have a 2700 RPM (more or less, depending on drill speed) handheld pencil sharpener. We wonder how many seconds it takes to go from pencil to dust pile.
Street pricing starts at $6.
Drill Powered Pencil Sharpener [Lee Valley]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
The Tape Tip a little plastic end that slips on the and of your tape measure to eliminate creative body contortions when measuring at an angle over long distances.
RGuimont sent us a link to these diamond-tipped screwdriver bits. The diamond coating “roughs up” the surface of the bit helping it to hold tightly to the fastener — and helping you avoid slipping off the fastener and tearing up a prepared surface beneath.
Michael writes: “I got my April Lee Valley catalog and noticed this ’special buy.’ It’s a little bigger than the Bucket Boss (12″ in diameter and 15″ tall vs. the Boss’s 10″ and 14″) and a little cheaper, but it has less pockets. One interesting thing about this one is that you don’t need to buy a separate bucket.”
“FYI, I have a Bucket Boss that I keep my vintage wrenches in. I bought it to use on job sites, but ended up preferring to use tool bags mainly because stuff was always falling out of the outside pockets. So, of course, I’m tempted by this one, because it’s different.”
“Yeah, I’m a tool junkie.”
Michael writes: “I was reminded today – twice actually – what a great tool these are. I bought my first pair a few years ago from a brick-and-mortar camping store that was going out of business. I recently found them again at Lee Valley and bought several more. They make great gifts for woodworkers. One of the neat features is the small clip that that comes with them., which allows you to keep the tweezers on a key chain. I’ve easily removed slivers I couldn’t even see with these. It’s a simple product that does what it’s supposed to do and still made in the USA.”
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