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.

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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.

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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°.

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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.

Flat Bob [Veritas]
Flat Bob [Lee Valley Tools]

Measuring miters got you on edge? This miter hook from Veritas can take the pain out of accurately measuring mitered trim. It hooks onto the miter and provides a reference point exactly even with the miter on either the inside or outside corners.

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Most woodworking workbenches make some provision for bench dogs — and if they don’t, a few minutes with a 3/4″ drill bit can fix that oversight.  You can use the holes not only for bench dogs, but also for hold-downs and other specialized clamps, such as this very well thought-out and elegant clamp from Veritas.

You can clamp materials as thick as 3-3/4″ with this brass, steel, and anodized aluminum clamp. A brass knob on the top of the clamp post controls the simple wedging mechanism, which makes inserting and removing the clamp quick and easy.

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Do you ever feel like your carpenter’s square isn’t the precision instrument it could be? It won’t work well on materials with profiled edges, and sometimes you feel like you need three hands to use it. The Veritas square fence can solve these problems. You can attach it to either leg of your carpenter’s square, and now, because the square is resting on the workpiece, it doesn’t need to be supported.

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In a world where power tools dominate most shops, hand tools can still help us out. For instance, a cornering tool, beautiful in its simplicity, does the same job as a router round-over bit, but it does it with no setup, sawdust, or noise.  A cornering tool can actually cut a cleaner radius, without the machining marks you get with a spinning router bit. (more…)

Setting up a table saw for basic cuts is a challenge for many DIYers, and setting up the cuts required to form a pentagon or hexagon can be downright impossible — unless you happen to have this layout guide from Veritas. It looks like a hexagon deformed from a bad fall, but each corner represents the angle required to form a particular shape, either four, five, six, eight, or even twelve-sided.

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A circular saw plus a saw guide makes a great poor-man’s table saw, but a guide that won’t handle a full sheet of plywood is like a hot dog that’s too short for the bun – frustrating.  Thankfully, Veritas has you covered with a two-piece guide that’ll span up to 100″.

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Once you own a set of beam compasses, you’ll find that you’ll can finally clean up your shop — because you’ll no longer need your massive collection of soda cans, coffee cups, and scrap cardboard to draw straight circles.

These beam compass heads clamp onto just about any material between 5/8″ and 3/4″ thick — but most commonly a stick of spare wood — in order to act just like the compass you used in grade school. 

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I’ve often heard it said that classic cars have “timeless lines.”  Well, Veritas Chair Devils definitely have the classic hand tool lines down.  They both look the part and serve their purpose of smoothing out round spokes or chair legs with some style.  It’s almost a shame to use this sort of thing in the shop because they look good enough to mount on display. 

The shaped scraper blade rounds the work piece and removes marks.  ‘Devils come in three interior-rounded sizes: the 1/2″ diameter for spindles, the 7/8″ diameter for rungs and the 1-1/4″ diameter for legs and posts, as well as canoe paddle shafts. Their machined-steel bodies are fitted with some awesome looking African rosewood handles shaped in a classic tapered design.

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You know how some TV commercials have all that fast talking at the end, usually wrapping up with the phrase “some assembly required?”  This is one of those types of tools.  But the up side is that you get to build a tool and it’s a pretty slick tool at that.  The Veritas Twin-Screw vise claims to clamp just about anything anywhere in the vise with the jaws remaining parallel.  Woot!

The trick: A chain drive connects the two screws to ensure parallelism and to eliminate the “racking” common in other vises.  As a result, it can be operated using either handle as well.  There’s also a spring-loaded lock pin to let you disengage the chain for controlled “jaw skewing” if you need to operate out-of-square.

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Bench grinders are a great multi-purpose tool in the shop, but with weak or flimsy tool rests (which in many cases aren’t adjustable) can spoil the fun.  The Veritas tool rest mounts to your bench in front of the grinder and provides a sturdy support that you can fold out of the way for freehand grinding. 

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After constant abuse in the shop your tools can get a bit dull around the edges.  Having your tools sharpened professionally can get pretty expensive, so why not consider sharpening them yourself?   Thankfully for all of you out there with a bit of time and a light wallet (like us) there are tools like the MK II from Veritas Tools. 

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