Replace the pad on the spindle of any of Bessey’s cast iron, Omega, or all-steel screw clamps with their clamping force indicator and you can tell instantly if you’ve applied the correct amount of pressure. As you increase the clamping force, the red disk starts to disappear inside the indicator; when it disappears completely and you only see green you’re using the right clamping force.

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How do you drive a screw that’s all threads and no head, like a dowel screw? A few places sell drivers especially made for driving these screws, so put away your Vice-grips and chuck a dowel screw driver into your drill instead.

We found three different retailers selling these drivers. Westfire Manufacturing has 1/4″ and 5/16″ drivers for $38. McFeely’s has what looks to be the same drivers, but also has a 3/16″ version for $24. Stair Supplies’ C-905 driver is only $8, but according to their sales rep, it only drives their C905-2 dowel screws. Still, it might be worth it for the price.

Dowel Screw Driver [McFeely's]
Dowel Screw Driver [Westfire Manufacturing]
Dowel Screw Driver [Stair Supplies]

Are you sure you want to carry that sharp and dirty painter’s 5-in-1 tool or putty knife in your pocket?  With FastCap’s new folding pocket putty and combo putty knives you don’t have to worry. Both tools use the same folding handle as the rest of their pocket tools to protect the blade and keep your pants clean and free of holes.

The pocket tools feature a thin, flexible blade made from heavy-duty stainless steel that can get behind molding without damage or spread fillers. The combo putty knife also allows you to scrape, dig, and clean rollers like any painter’s 5-in-1 tool.

Either pocket tool will run you $10, plus Amazon will ship the tools for free if you purchase over $25 — you’ll just have to throw some extra tools on the order.

Pocket Putty Knife [FastCap]
Pocket Painter’s Tool [FastCap]
Putty Knife Via Amazon [What’s This?]
Painter’s Tool Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Use TapeNIX temporary pulls anytime you haven’t put pulls on the cabinet or drawers, but still need to easily open and close them. Presumably they are so named because Anthony LaFemina created them to replace the blue tape he saw being used as temporary pulls.

Made in the USA, TapeNIX pulls slide over cabinets and drawer faces up to 3/4″ thick. Simply slide them off once you’ve installed the permanent pulls.

A bag of 10 TapeNIX pulls shipped from McFeely’s will run you $12, but you get a better price break at 100 pcs. — $33 shipped.

TapeNix [FastCap]
Tapenix [FastCap eStore]
TapeNix [McFeely's]

Add Category Tool Type: Hardware

To borrow a phrase from Dirty Harry, “Do I feel lucky?” While a caulk gun can’t do as much damage as a .44 Magnum, you might think so after hearing a homeowner scream as you leave gobs of caulk on the new carpet. With the FastCap Caulked N’ Ready holster you’ll always have your caulk gun at the ready and won’t depend on luck to contain the mess.

Made in the USA from high-impact plastic, the Caulked N’ Ready measures 17″ long and has an inside diameter of 2-3/8″. When you slide the caulk gun into the holster a spike enters the tube tip, plugging it closed. A reservoir around the spike holds the excess caulk that inevitably seeps out of the tip, keeping it off hard-to-clean surfaces.

Cutouts in the top of the holster capture the caulk gun trigger so the gun won’t spin around, and a 6″ adjustable wire clip allows you to hang the holder from your pants, belt, five-gallon bucket, workbench, ladder, or wherever else you decide to dangle it.

Right now the only place we can find the Caulked N’ Ready holster online is McFeely’s for $12.

Caulked N’ Ready [FastCap]
Caulked N’ Ready [McFeely's]

When a storm is about to hit, the last thing you want to do is waste time screwing plywood over your windows.  PLYLOX window clips let you quickly cover windows with plywood without installing any hardware or modifying your window casings.

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Incra’s miter sliders provide rigid and stable T-slot runners for your router table, table saw, or band saw jigs.  Incra designed them for use with their Build-It System panels, but they can also give your custom jigs precise-fitting runners with minimum play.

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Believe it or not, sometimes duct tape isn’t the right tape for the job.  You can’t see through it and it doesn’t always stick well to cardboard, so for things like shipping and packing you need packing tape.  The trouble is that you can’t just rip packing tape — until now.

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Looks like Festool has pulled an April Fools Day joke on their customers. They were planning to introduce the EHL 65E one-handed planer on April 1st, but according to the latest SysNotes they’re delaying the introduction for some unknown reason — possibly because they realized April Fools Day might not be the best day to introduce a product.

To optimize the EHL 65E for one-handed use, Festool gives it an ergonomic handle, makes it well-balanced, and keeps the weight down to 5.3lbs.  The 2-9/16″ wide spiral-head cutter can shear up to 5/32″ of material at a time.  A large knob on the front allows you to adjust depth in 1/256″ increments.  Finally, this wouldn’t be a Festool tool without high-efficiency dust extraction.  You can attach the dust port to either the left or right side of the planer.

Of course Festool manufactures the planer in Germany.  It’ll retail for $390 whenever they decide to release it.

EHL 65E [Festool]
SysNotes [Festool]
EHL 65E [McFeely's]
EHL 65E [AceTool]

Hold-downs can be very helpful in the shop, but did you ever stop to think what would happen if your router bit or table saw blade — or any other cutting tool designed for soft materials like wood — came into contact with a metal hold-down?  At best you’d have a damaged hold-down, at the worst flying shrapnel.

If the last paragraph got your imagination working, these composite hold-downs from DE-STA-CO are starting to look pretty good.  The lightweight glass-reinforced nylon can produce a holding force of 200lbs, but it won’t damage your tool.  The arm opens 100° to make placing and removing parts easy, and you can adjust the nylon spindle about 1/8″ vertically and 1-1/2″ along the lever arm.  The hold-down comes with a slip-on neoprene cap.

You’ll pay about $10 for one of these composite hold-downs, which is in the ballpark of a similar metal version.

Composite Hold-Down [DE-STA-CO]
Composite Hold-Down [McFeely's]

Stop thinking with your stomach — we’re not talking about the candy bar, but the abrasive product from FastCap that lets you break or relieve the sharp edges of sheet goods, hardwoods, or softwoods with just one pass.

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Inevitably there’s times in your shop that you need a few screws of a certain type, but in order to get them you have to buy a 1lb box — and you always wondered why the old man kept glass jars full of miscellaneous screws. Get a head start on a lifetime of collecting things in glass jars with McFeely’s 5 or 10lb boxes of assorted screws.

McFeely’s is liquidating tons of mixed fasteners left over from their packaging operation, and rather than throwing them out they’re putting them in boxes and shipping them to your doorstep.  There’s no guarantee that you’ll get any specific mix, but all of the leftovers are their top-quality screws, such as stainless screws, concrete screws, and plated screws of all varieties — some of which sell for more than $20/lb.

Get the 5lb box for $13 or the 10lb box for $25.  You pay around $8 shipping for the first box, and each additional box adds a few bucks.  Limited quantities are available — they’re only selling what’s on hand, not creating batches of mixed screws on purpose.

5lbs Mixed Screws [McFeely's]
10lbs Mixed Screws [McFeely's]

When we posted the EasyCoper a while ago, we were disappointed they didn’t make a similar tool for base or other flat molding.  Now that’s changed — recently EasyCoper introduced the BaseCoper, their new jig for coping flat moldings with a hand-held jigsaw.

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