Stuey writes: “I just read this brief article about color coding one’s tools.  The method described in the article is meant for wrenches, but it can probably be adapted for other tool types — any that are hard to read.”

While I found the article interesting, I have to admit that I’m a little lukewarm to the idea of a rainbow toolbox.  I keep my wrenches in an organizer, so it’s not that tough for me to find the proper size.  Of course, in a tool bag, this could be a lifesaver as you often end up rummaging around quite a bit to find what you need.

Either way, it’s an interesting read.

Color Coding Your Tools by Sheldon Brown [Harris Cyclery]

We always enjoy TOH’s photo galleries, and this one caught our eye today: it’s titled (quite pithily) “Drill Bits Are Boring” and it covers a wide variety of bits that see everyday use around the house and shop including twist bits, brad points, boring bits, spades, and more.

If you’re new to the drill game, this’ll help you catch up and understand what each type of bit looks like, what materials it’s meant for, and how to use it.

Drill Bits Are Boring [This Old House]

Our friends over at This Old House compiled a great list of ten ways to re-use a worn out garden hose.  Our favorites: slitting a piece open to serve as a cover for the teeth on a handsaw and sliding short sections over wire bucket handles to make soft grips.  Check out the link below for the rest.

10 Uses For A Garden Hose [This Old House]

Rick sent us this link to an interesting history of nails compiled by the Appalachian Blacksmiths Association.  My first experience blacksmithing was making square nails — much like some of those in the picture above — and I found this to be a great read.

If you’d like to hear more about this kind of blacksmithing, zip back and check out Tool Talk Podcast #3 where we’re joined by our friend (and artisan blacksmith) Ray Robinson.

All About Nails [Appalachian Blacksmiths Association]

Our friend Joel over at Dethroner posted a cool bit today about how to wash your car properly at those high-pressure self-serve car washes.  From the post:

“For [Joel’s friend] Mike, washing cars is therapy.  Hell, he’d wash yours if it needed it.  I asked him to explain his technique, honed as it has been through hundreds of washes.  After the jump: his system for a ‘quick wash’ — a sort of pock-me-up for a dirty ride, but something less that a full-blown clay-and-Q-tip makeover.”

First of all, I totally understand where Mike’s coming from.  Back when I had more time to myself, I used to spend a good chunk of the day washing my cars.  The apartment complex I lived in had a “free” high-pressure wash, and it was almost always abandoned in the middle of the day.  So I spent a good bit of time there getting my own therapy.

Anyway, this is a cool post and you should check it out.

Car Wash: The Pinoy Power Shower Hour [Dethroner]

When I first ran across the “solar powered hand tools by Steve Lucas” site, I didn’t picture what he created in my mind.  But the rig he built does look like it will work.  It’s a pretty interesting project idea really.  Steve describes the materials you will need to begin the project: 

You will need to have a 12 volt dc or higher system, such as a Solar Panel setup with a 12 volt battery.  You will also need at least one VersaPak Cordless Tool with charger from Black & Decker.  It must be the kind that has a charger cradle with the power pack (transformer) wired separate from the charger.  I’ve noticed that a lot of the new VersaPak Tools come with a new style charger that just plugs into the wall, we want the old style that has a cord.

He goes on to walk you through the connections needed to start benifeting from solar powered Black and Decker tools. 

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Sizod pointed us to another great post over on This Old House about how handy common stuff from your medicine cabinet can be in project work.  Not only is this a great post, we can’t possibly pass on anything with MacGyver in the title. 

Some of our favorites:

• Using dental floss to work glue into splits and cracks in woodwork
• De-burring hacksaw cuts with emory boards
• Fixing scratches in stained wood with eyeliner pencils — which even come in lots of shades and colors
• And lubing sliding drawers with beeswax balm

There are lots more; check out the article for all of ‘em and great pictures to boot.  Is anyone else here addicted to the This Old House site?

Medicine Cabinet MacGyver [This Old House]

There’s a great post over on This Old House by Norm Abrams covering the proper care of common power tools, including a great description of how to clean motor brushes.  An excerpt:

“Most small power tools have two “brushes,” solid blocks of carbon graphite that conduct electricity to the motor’s spinning armature.  Friction gradually wears these brushes away, and if they’re not replaced, the motor loses power and eventually quits.  You can tell it’s time for new brushes when you see lots of arcing — small, harmelss sparks inside the motor housing as the tool is running.”

Easily accessible brushes are a prime feature on high-end power tools as the manufacturer expects the tool to see a long and productive life.  If you’re not already familiar with this kind of maintenance, be sure and give this a read.  It’s complete with drawings explaining the whole process.

TLC for Power Tools [This Old House]

We ran across this on Boing Boing yesterday and spent way too much of the day watching the four-part videos.  As most of you are aware, owning, building, or even just experiencing a tank is high on Seans list of things-to-do-before-he-dies.  So he wants to jump on this right away.

Anyway, this is a really great watch, and all the videos are available via YouTube.  The first is embedded above, but here are links to all four:

Part 1: Intro, Body Shell, Suspension
Part 2: Tracks
Part 3: Engine, Controls, Weapons
Part 4: Transmission

I came across this story recently over on The Consumerist:

Lowes Steals Money From Old Lady’s House, Threatens to Sue Her For Slander
Subcontractors working for Lowes stole money hidden in a reader’s elderly mother’s bedroom.  When the mother complained, Lowe’s threatened to sue her for slander.

[…]

Yet another story about home-improvement warehouse subcontractors behaving criminally.  This industry needs to be reigned in.

Ouch.  I feel for the woman who was victimized, but what really pisses me off about this is the fact that it calls into question the honesty of thousands of hard-working contractors around the country.  All it takes is one set of dicks to do soemthing like this to make the public forget all the honest work that goes down.

I remember reading recently about a group of contractors that found a wad of cash in the attic of an elderly couple — some “stash” for a rainy day long forgotten — which they promptly returned.  (I tried to find a link, but couldn’t quickly.  If any of your remember this and know where to find it, post the link in comments please.)  Or how ’bout the guys working in the post-Katrina south pulling bodies out of attics?  That’s not the kind of work you think of when you think “roofing contractor,” but hey, they’re doing it.

I’ve run into many really incredible people via Toolmonger — honest, knowledgable, and hard-working people who I’d guess all take this kind of event very personally.  It reflects on us all.

Why do people do this?

Original Article [The Consumerist]

Ok, fair notice: I saw this on Gizmodo this morning.  As you’ll see in the video, the table’s legs are attached to a cam to allow them to rotate a little bit and “walk” to help you move the table — yet stay firm when the table’s sitting in place.

Actually, this looks like a great idea, and something that wouldn’t be that difficult to build yourself.  Hmm…

Lakeland, Florida’s Ledger ran an article today about T.J. Baker — a man who’s converting his own “50-year-old tract home into a bona fide King Arthur-style castle.”  My favorite part from the article:

“He built his version of a parapet, or fortress wall.  To the roof, he added crenulations — the technical name for notches like those found in a king’s crown.  Eventually, he hopes to add a second story with a Romeo-and-Juliet inspired balcony.  He also wants to turn his garage doors into drawbridges and build a moat around the house.”

Some neighbors object, but Baker — an architect by trade — seems to have done his code homework, and there’s no homeowner’s association in his neighborhood.  Best of all, the local kids love it!

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This article in The Detroit News this morning helped explain to me a bit of why some U.S.-based tool businesses are angrier than others when it comes to Chinese outsourcing.  I always thought it was the inexpensive labor, but tool and die manufacturers are particularly peeved about China’s currency manipulation.  From the article: 

That manipulation is among the factors ravaging tool and die businesses — one in three automotive tooling shops in Michigan has gone under in the past decade. The toolmakers charge the Chinese are allowed to vastly undercut their prices, forcing many American shops to go out of business.  […]

The Chinese fix the value of their currency, the yuan, a system that lets them offer lower prices for their goods here and makes U.S. goods in China more expensive.

As you can imagine, this his the tool and die folks especially hard since they sell to China as well.  Not only can Chinese companies produce tooling at lower cost than U.S. equivalents, Chinese companies must pay extra for tooling made in the U.S. – effectively cutting U.S. tooling manufacturers off from the largest growing market in the world.

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In a school district where everyone’s focused on test scores and taxes, Pantagraph.com’s reporting that the purchase of a simple wood lathe with $160 in grant money was all it took to turn students on to the value of woodworking skills.  From the article:

The so-called “midi-lathe” has templates and small pieces of pre-purchased wood that are worked to produce high-end pens and pencils.

As board members watched the process, Larson told how he hopes the class can grow into more than a woodworking exercise for students.

‘What it’s enabled us to do is to introduce applications that are for the real world,’ said Larson. ‘We can also use this as an opportunity for a small business, where we can show how a corporation works; mass production and so forth.’

Neat stuff.  An uncle of mine used to do the same thing — making a decent buck off of it, turning pre-cut blanks and gold-plated pen hardware into quite saleable pens.  The set pictured above came from him years ago.

What’s really cool about this is that it all started with a small grant to the local school.  Be sure and remember that when you get the brand new tool you always wanted and need to get rid of the old one.

Woodworking Exercise Making Something Out of Nothing [Pantagraph.com]

The guys over at Den Guru put out a post a while back on how to build your own XGA-quality projector for $300 — a fair chunk of change less than that $5,000 50+” plasma you’ve been oogling at the store and definitely a better way to watch the game than your tired old 32″ tube.

Plus you get to answer the DIYer’s favorite question: “Where’d you get that?”

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According to Advertising Age, the AutoWrench was one of the most sought-after tools this Christmas, largely because of Black & Decker and Home Depot’s heavy TV and print advertising.  According to Ad Age:

“Black & Decker declined to disclose sales figures, but the wrench sold out quickly at Home Depot’s 2,127 stores.  ‘We sold everything we bought by Christmas,’ said Billy Bastek, a hardware merchant for Home Depot.  (Sales are ‘loco,’ a Spanish-speaking sales associate in a New Jersey store told a consumer unable to find the wrench at two Home Depots on Dec. 23.)

The article also mentions finding one of the wrenches for a buy-in-now price of $57.99 on eBay two days after christmas.

Besides the fact that we’ve had a bit of fun with the AutoWrench — and the inventor, who’s a very nice guy, by the way, reads and comments from time to time here — this article’s worth checking out because it gives you a glimpse behind the “magic curtain” at how tool companies promote their tools.

How Black & Decker’s Wrench Stole Christmas — And Other Hot Products [Ad Age]

Living in the West, it’s easy to forget that we’re not the only ones using power tools; they’re a necessity for construction and daily labor throught the developed world.  An article I ran across today on the ITP Business site about Black & Decker’s “ambitions growth plans for its operations in the Middle East, Africa, and the Indian subcontinent” really drove that home.

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