With Harbor Freight’s micro die grinder, you can grind or sand in hard to reach places, carve something intricate, or just polish the scratches out of your iPod.  The 1/8″ collet will accept most Dremel bits for all sorts of jobs. It’s definitely worth grabbing one, even if you only use it a couple times a year to sand down the burs on your safety glasses.

The variable-speed micro grinder can spin up to 56,000 RPM, which is 20,000 RPM higher than your average Dremel. Rear exhaust keeps the air out of your work. The grinder set includes a 47″ air hose, inline oiler, brass coupler, and two collet wrenches. It all comes in a crappy nice plastic case, too.

If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a thousand times: keep your cheap-ass HF pneumatic tools oiled, and they’ll last you a long time.  Pick one up at Harbor Freight for $15.

Micro Die Grinder [Harbor Freight]

Sharpen those shears, ’cause this Harbor Freight coupon expires today. You can check out their other coupons, too, but this knockout punch kit makes the top of my list. It allows you to cut perfect holes in 10-gauge mild steel, aluminum, and fiberglass. The kit includes dies sized 1/2″, 3/4″, 1″, and 1-1/4″, and hole punches sized 7/8″, 1-3/32″, 1-11/32″, and 1-11/16″, all made from heat-treated, high-carbon steel. You’ll also get driving screws and a mold-blown plastic case to hold it all. After today, the price reverts back to $15.

Knockout Punch Kit [Harbor Freight]
Coupons [Harbor Freight]

Maybe you’ve lost the original pin wrench that came with your grinder, or maybe you’re sick of keeping up with a different wrench for each grinder you own. If so, you’re in luck — you can choose from several replacement options.

Harbor Freight sells a cheap adjustable pin wrench that may fit the bill. It adjusts to fit grinder hubs from 3/8″ to 1-1/16″. For only $4 this cheap-ass tool of the bunch could be yours.

If Harbor Freight tools make you cringe, try an almost identical model from Garrett Wade for four times the price. Don’t fear, you’re getting something for the extra dough — this wrench can accommodate a wider variety of grinders, with hubs from 3/8″ to 1-9/16″.

Amazon also sells an adjustable pin wrench that looks like a pair of dividers. For $15 this 7″ long wrench fits a much larger range of grinder hub sizes. Made of chrome vanadium steel, this wrench features 5/32″ diameter pins. Customers have complained that these pins are too large for their grinder — but that’s nothing a few minutes on the grinding wheel can’t solve.

Adjustable Pin Wrench [Harbor Freight]
Adjustable Pin Wrench [Garrett Wade]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Head on over to your local brick and mortar Harbor Freight for some seriously cheap-ass tools this week. They’re currently running their “Dollar Days” sale, which means they’re offering many items for a dollar — including ten Phillips bits, ten rolls of Teflon tape, and a handy battery terminal cleaner — and hundreds of other items at $4 or less. Fill up your shopping cart on the cheap, before the sale ends April 13.

Dollar Days Flier [Harbor Freight]
Harbor Freight [Corporate Site]

C’mon — tell me you can’t think of a fun application for this $10 old-timey “oooga” horn from Harbor Freight! Think about it: it’s a 12V horn, so you could probably swap it into your car without too much hassle — or maybe into your significant other’s car, if you’re brave enough. If your ATV has a 12V system, it’d work great for clearing drunk dunderheads at your next back-woods booze-up.

And it’s way more interesting and useful than HF’s vaunted electronic fly swatter. No, really.

12V “OOOGA” Air Horn [Harbor Freight]

What could be better then a set of vise-grips? How about two pairs of knockoff vise-grips as helping hands? This welding jig from Pittsburgh bolts to your workbench and allows you to clamp pieces in position with two 10″ locking pliers.

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Instead of disassembling an obstruction to get behind it, sometimes you can get around it with an indexable ratchet. The ratchet head on this 1/2″ drive model from Pittsburgh swivels 360° and locks into various positions allowing you access to locations otherwise impossible to reach. This might not be a tool for every day, but when you need it you’ll be glad you have it.

Pittsburgh makes the reversible ratchet from heavy-duty chrome vanadium with a polished chrome finish. The ratchet measures 12-13/16″ long, and the handle features an ergonomic rubber grip.

On special, I’ve seen this ratchet go for as low as $13.  Sure, you can buy quality indexable ratchets from respected companies like Stanley Proto and MAC — but unless you use it regularly, you might be better off with this economical version.

Indexable 1/2″ Ratchet [Harbor Freight]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

If you find yourself hanging a lot of drywall, you might look into buying this cheap-ass drywall lift. It’ll hoist and position sheets of drywall precisely where you need them, so you can hang drywall by yourself. Even though you can rent lifts for $100 or less a day, for $160 you could own your very own.

This model can lift drywall to 11 feet horizontally for ceilings and 15 feet vertically for walls. It can handle a sheet of drywall up to 4 x 16 feet and 150lbs. The three large 5″ casters make it easy to roll the lift where you need to, even when fully loaded. You can assemble and disassemble it easily without tools.

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Making fun of Harbor Freight’s non-tool items is sorta like laughing at Pat in Something About Mary — in so many ways it’s wrong, but you just can’t stop. So yet again, we feature an item that we’re surprised to find on the front page of the HF site today: a coffee mug.

That’s not to say that we’re not fans of coffee mugs — or more seriously of the life-giving elixir within. It’s just that when I think about buying beverage containers, I think, say, Target. Or maybe the grocery store. For those of you with newly-purchased class, maybe Crate and Barrel or Williams-Sonoma pops into your mind.

BS aside, we present for your consideration one 14 oz. stainless steel travel mug. Certainly from China and probably not coated in anything that’ll kill you (any faster than coffee), this 5″ high, PVC-lined cup with non-slip rubber base can be yours for the princely sum of $2. Maybe the Chinese tool manufacturers make the ‘Freightster take a few of these (and a few four-piece decorative frog sets) for every good cheap-but-decent toolbox they deliver.

Oh yeah, and they have an English wheel on sale for $249 again. Be sure to watch that shipping cost.

Travel Mug [Harbor Freight]

Sure, it’s not the quality of a Bosch. But hey — for $10 you can own your own heat gun. This cheapie from Harbor Freight works great for shrinking tubing or removing glued-on emblems from vehicles. (Just take your time and don’t melt the paint.)

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Instructables user Vestus took one look at the high price of commercially-available router lifts and decided he could build his own a lot cheaper. Bustin’ out his shrewd Dealmongering skills he snagged an already-inexpensive Harbor Freight plunge router on sale for $40 and a router base plate on Amazon for another $40. After scrounging around the local hardware stores for a few other components, he assembled his router lift — complete with 1-3/4 HP router — for under $100.

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In the most recent email from Harbor Freight, they offer a coupon for $2 off stainless steel cable ties. Since I’m a big fan of cable ties, the stainless steel version really piqued my interest. I tie a lot of my outdoor garden projects together with cable ties, but I have noticed that over a few years they can become brittle. I’m wondering if the stainless steel version fairs any better.

These are Storehouse brand, so I wouldn’t expect the best performance, but I’m wondering in general has anybody used stainless steel cable ties? If so, for what purpose did you use ‘em? Let us know in comments.

Stainless Steel Cable Ties [Harbor Freight]

Everyone wants that curb-and-gutter finished look for their driveways, but most of us are afraid to ask what it’d cost. Here’s a possibility of doing it on the cheap: you could buy Harbor Freight’s Curb Machine. The Curb Machine includes three different curb molds – flat mower style, curb style, and slant style. This 42″ x 19″ by 34″ machine runs on standard 115V power, so get out your extension cords if you have a long driveway.

Apparently, this same machine is sold nationally for $2,995, but since we’re talking Harbor Freight the price is a slightly lower $600. If you are the intrepid do-it-yourselfer, how can you pass up this deal?

Curb Machine [Harbor Freight]

We asked for demolition pics a while back, and TM reader and photo pool member kayacabana provided us with some. Here you can see him in the midst of tearing up flooring.

Yes, he’s not wearing the proper clothing and safety gear for the job. Yes, he’s going to catch hell in comments for it. But you have to give him props for a) getting his ass out to do the work even when it was “hot as hell in Tucson,” and b) for getting the job done with “a HF air scraper with an underpowered PC compressor.” He says the low-buck gear “worked well and made a hell of a mess.”

Nice.

By the way, Toolmonger’s photo pool is quickly approaching the 1,000 photo mark. If you haven’t taken the time to browse through ‘em — and share your own — now’s as good a time as any. There really aren’t any rules there. Just post anything a Toolmonger would enjoy seeing: unboxing pics of your new tool, photos of your latest project, or a quick pic of a funky unidentified tool you saw at the flea market. We’re game. We’re Toolmongers!

Toolmonger’s Photo Pool [Flickr]

Looking for a cheap-ass hex key set? Harbor Freight currently offers this 10-piece color-coded metric T-handled set for just $6. Standard $7 shipping kills the deal online, but you can always pick this up in-store (like I did). The set includes the following sizes: 2, 2.5, 3, 4, 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6, 8, and 10 mm — all organized in a slotted stand. 

37862-4VGA Hex Set [Harbor Freight]
Store Locations [Harbor Freight]

Are you still bending metal using the old fashioned clamp and mallet method? You need a break – a metal bending brake that is! Brake-bending metal is superior to manual bending methods for two main reasons: you’ll end up with a cleaner and straighter bend, and you can skip the tiresome pounding session entirely.

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Harbor Freight is holding a three-day “red tag sale” today through this weekend, offering some even crazier deals/steals than normal.  Some of my favorites include:

One-Inch Impact Wrench: Maximum torque of 1400 ft. lbs.  three speeds forward, three speeds reverse. Lightweight, durable cast aluminum housing. $90.

12-Ton Hydraulic Pipe Bender: Bends six different diameter pipes from 1/2 to two inches. Bending bars can be adjusted to distances of 8-1/2, 11-1/4, 12, 16-3/4, 19-1/2 and 22-1/4 inches. Includes a 2-inch diameter 12 ton jack. $60.

Auto-Darkening Welding Mask: Lens darkens instantly for arc, MIG or TIG welding. 1/20,000 second switching speed. Variable shade control from #9 to #13. High/low sensitivity adjustment. UV/IR protection. Uses solar power with lithium battery reserve. $60.

To get these prices, print out and clip the coupons or pick up the flyer in-store.

Red Tag Sale Coupons [Harbor freight]
Store Locations [Harbor Freight]