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?”
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.
Archeologists on a dig in Northwest Alabama have found tools and pottery judged to be over 6,000 years old. Hunter Johnson, an adjunct professor of anthropology at Northwest-Shoals Community College, described the 300-acre property where the dig is taking place (which belongs, incidentally, to Alabama state representative Johnny Mack Morrow) as “the Wal-Mart of 6,000 years ago” where people of the time had everything they needed — and all the tools to make it happen.
No wonder I feel a thousands-year-old connection every time I pick up my hammer.
Dig In [TimesDaily.com]
In this article today, Jane Martin of the Columbus Dispatch offers some good advice about caring for your garden tools over the winter. From the article:
Soil and plant sap left on tools hold moisture that can cause rust on metal parts. Start by rinsing tools with water and using a wire brush or coarse steel wool to remove soil. To remove rust, use steel wool on small tools, and medium-grit sandpaper on larger flat surfaces such as spades, shovels and hoes.
Use a whetstone to sharpen pruning shears, doing your best to follow the original factory edge. Spades, shovels and hoes can be sharpened with a metal file or grinding wheel, also following the original edge. Then coat metal surfaces with lightweight oil. Wooden tool handles should be cleaned with a brush and sandpaper, then coated with boiled linseed oil.
There’s a lot more good advice there. Check it out; it’s a good read.
To Avoid Rust, Tools Need Some TLC During Winter Lull [The Columbus Dispatch]
Apparently appliances and power tools aren’t the only hot theft item this year. The Greenwich Time reports that as the price of copper rises, so do the number of construction site thefts of “copper wire, pipes, gutters, and other fixtures.” From the article:
While thefts of equipment from construction sites have been an ongoing problem, the theft of copper has been on the rise because of the metal’s rising value, Neighborhood Resource Officer Pierangelo Corticelli said.
As always, watch your gear when you’re on site. And if you’re building a new house, you might want to stow that copper in the locked garage along with the appliances.
Metal Yen Gets Heavy Job-Site Copper on Theves’ Hit Parade [Greenwich Time]
I came across this story today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today describing how a Racine metal fabricator offered up space in his shop for the local trade school to offer an eight-week, 320-hour welding certificate course. Why’s this cool? (Thanks for asking.) Three reasons: 1) The fabricator was hurting for local welding talent, but after the course he had all he needed, 2) the program’s giving a bunch of people who might otherwise end up flipping burgers for just above minimum wage an opportunity to learn (and earn from) a skilled trade, and 3) a number of the school’s students are female, helping to despell the unpleasently-common myth that tools are only for men.
Speaking of women welders, does anyone else remember that uber-cool lady that did all the welding on Discovery’s Big? I seem to remember that she taught at a community college. I wonder what she’s up to?
Anyway, I get a real charge from this kind of article — and it makes me wish that I knew more about welding. I can hook things together, but I certainly wouldn’t claim to be a “welder.”
Welding Boot Camp: A Faster Solution to Filling Job Openings [JSOnline.com]
In what has to be the most phoned-in report of this type I’ve seen in recent times (check the link — it’s seven whole sentences, each a paragraph), John Matarese of Cincinnati’s ABC affiliate cites a recent Consumer Reports test that placed the Dual Drill near the bottom and named the Craftsman 19.2V the “best buy.’
You may remember that after comparing specs on 100+ drills back when we first started Toolmonger, we came to the same conclusion — though admittedly we qualified our purchase of the Craftsman with a budget factor; there are much better drill/drivers on the market — just not in the $100 range.
Best Cordless Drill [WCPO.com]
Related:
According to this column by Twin-Falls Idaho Times-News columnist Steve Crump, the vast majority of tools are simply toys. He cites a “back-to-basics, simplify-your-life nonprofit organization” (his words) that polled “home improvement experts” about the tools actually needed to maintain a typical 2,000 sq. ft. home on a quarter-acre lot.
“Technically, anything more in your significant other’s toolbox [he's talking to women, apparently, whom he feels don't need tools at all] has to be classified as purely recreational,” he writes. Read on past the jump to see the tools he and his “nonprofit organizations’ home improvement experts” feel you need.
You can ask Sean — I’ve been talking about building one of these for about a year now: a robot spider large enough to ride. There are lots of little kits out there for quadropods and hexapods, but I want one big enough to be scary — like this one that I came across on MAKE today.
Our friend Phillip Torrone over at MAKE posted this link yesterday to bit on Instructables describing a method of using your DC-powered welder to “zap away shorted crystal dendrites” in order to renew old NiCd batteries.
One of my roommates from college days used to do the same thing with a large capacitor, but used to also issue the same warning to me that Phillip issued on MAKE: “This is one of those that you shouldn’t do unless you know what you’re doing, k?”
Revive Nicad Batteries by Zapping with a Welder [Instructables] [via]
A group has organized on the web to assist and encourage others to build their own “fabrication machines” — otherwise known as “3D printers.” The group hopes to bring the same popular homebrew attention that helped create the microcomputer industry in the ’60s and ’70s to the subject.
And it looks like they’re succeeding. The device pictured above is one of theirs, and the site indicates that a high school student from Kentucky is using the information on the site to construct a machine to build objects made of chocolate.
Fab[at]Home [Wiki, main page] [via]
Apparently a UK mother pulled her son from a playgroup when she discovered that the pre-school allowed the 2-year-old to practice woodwork skills with real tools. “The nails were real, about an inch long, and the hammer was a real metal one,” she said.
Our opinion: It really depends on the supervision. One on one with your own son or daughter? Sure. One adult for every ten children in a pre-school — maybe not so much. Then again, we actually did woodwork in my pre-school and I turned out o… Wait.
Hammer Fury of Playgroup Mum [DailyRecord.co.uk]
Remember how we trashed the Dual Drill way back in May? Looks like Consumer Reports just got around to doing the same. From Channel 9 Syracuse’s coverage:
“The Mansfield Dual-Drill finished near the bottom. The ads for the Dual-Drill tout the ability to alternate between drilling and driving. But in reality it’s rare that you’ll have to switch back and forth between the two. Plus it got the lowest rating in run time.”
Ouch! Maybe the short versions should be, “a poorly made solution to a non-existant problem.”
Cordless Drills/Consumer Reports [NewsChannel9 Syracuse]
The Dual Drill [TVGoods.com]
Remember back with the Bond movies were all about the cheese? I love the new “realistic” Bond, but I’ll never forget lusting after that Lotus submarine, the laser watch — and Jaws’ teeth.
Apparently back in October of 1937, PopSci covered an enterprising man in California who made his own set of stainless steel false teeth. Wow. That’s some serious DIY.
Makes Own False Teeth of Stainless Steel [via Modern Mechanix]
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