There’s no getting around the fact that splitting wood is a chore. Swinging an axe or maul will leave you aching in the morning, and if you do it in the living room someone’s going to get hurt. Quality Craft makes the chore a little easier with their small and reasonably lightweight foot-operated log splitter — it’ll split small amounts of firewood for camping or just a night by the fire.
When stacking oversize materials against the cab of your truck, it might be a good idea to protect the roof from scratches and dents. Wouldn’t you rather spend $30 for the Cab Pad than pay a lot more to fix the dents in your truck’s roof or touch up the paint job?
The flexible rubber Cab Pad conforms to the roof, and non-slip suction cups on the underside hold it in position without marring your truck’s finish. Besides protecting the cab, the side wings also help to keep the load in place under weather conditions ranging from Minnesota winter to Arizona summer.
When you can’t get a straight shot at a screw, sometimes there’s enough play between the bit and the screw head to drive it, but you’ll probably damage the head. If you’re lucky, maybe you can wrangle a stubby screwdriver into the space — or you can drive the screw with a swivel tip screwdriver.
This swivel tip screwdriver from Pratt-Read can drive screws at angles from 0 to 45 degrees. The driver accepts any common 1/4″ hex shank bits, and the handle stores the six included bits.
Other companies make similar products which may or may not be a better deal, but you can pick up one of Pratt-Read’s swivel tip screwdrivers online for about $13. You might not need it everyday, but it’ll be worth 10 times its weight in screws when you do.
Swivel Tip Screwdriver [Pratt-Read]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon
If you’re a licensed arborist, please look away — but if you’re an occasional gardener who maybe has some branches to lop off, then check out this $4 saw at Northern Tools. The saw’s constructed from a painted steel frame and comes with the blade and a blade guard.
36″ Bow Saw [Northern Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
LoggerHead Tools, makers of the Bionic Wrench and the Bionic Grip, now offers the ImmIX multi-tool with Bionic Wrench technology. The ImmIX 10X combines a Bionic Wrench with two retractable, stainless steel blades, a bit driver, and ten bits — slotted, Phillips, Torx, and Robertson — in a rubber carrier/grip. Replace the knife blades with ten more bits in a second rubber carrier, and you have the ImmIX 20X.
If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to bruise your backside (or worse) after falling on a patch of ice, you know how important it is to keep walkways and stairs clear of the slippery stuff. Ice Buster’s walk-behind salt spreader provides a good mid-range solution for de-icing, with mittenfuls of kitty litter being at the low end and multi-thousand dollar hoppers attached to your truck bed at the high end.
Fan in your computer whining because the tiny bearing needs oil? Nothing does the job as well as a micro oiler. Owned one of those cheap leaky plastic pen oilers — the one where you squeeze and too much oil squirts out? Empire’s precision oiler allows precise oil delivery, one drop at a time.
Making mortises by hand takes patience and a lot of practice, and dedicated mortising machines cost hundreds (or thousands) of dollars and take up valuable shop real estate. Luckily, there is a middle ground: if you already own a drill press you can buy an attachment to convert it into a mortising machine. Northern Industrial Tools will sell you a kit with everything you need to get started making mortises on your drill press for $40.
Winter is on its way, and if you’re planning on cutting your own wood, this this $250 log splitter from Northern Tool could help. It features a 1,500 watt 2 HP motor that delivers 5-tons of wood-splitting power. The manufacturer claims it can split logs up to 16″ in length. Two wheels under the rear provide easy maneuverability. And it comes with a 12-month warranty, too. (Shipping to most places runs about $65.)
Log Splitter [Northern Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Product]
When you need a shop press, nothing else will do the job — and a cheap one’s far better than none. In that vein, check out this 6-ton hydraulic press from Northern Industrial Tools for just $49. It’s pretty much a 6-ton bottle jack on a frame and measures 15-1/2″ x 13″ x 29-9/16″.
6-Ton Press [Northern Industrial]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Here’s a deal from the Northern Tools lighting section: a 500-watt halogen worklight for just $6. Features include tempered glass, a safety-wire grill, a 3′ extension cord, a spare bulb, and, well, light. Hey, what do you expect? It’s $6.
500 Watt Portable Halogen Worklight [Northern Tools]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Roscoe writes: “There are lots of expensive heavy-duty hose reels out there, and a few cheapies now on the scene, but this model from Northern splits the difference nicely. They’ve been on sale for a few weeks and we just hung two in our shop. So far we love them, and the price couldn’t be better for how well-built they are.”
That ATV’s good for more than hunting trips and scopin’ babes a Kid Rock concert — it can also help clear the driveway. The pictured version comes from Northern Tool & Equipment, who claims it’s a universal-mount kit.
Roscoe writes: “This is the only valve that I’ve found which allows you to spray soap concentrate at high pressure through any pressure washer with any wand or tip. It turns an affordable pressure washer from the home center into a machine that feels like the wand at the car wash. Every pressure washer manufacturer should include this with their unit.”
Everyone’s done it at one time or another: just “drilling a quick hole” by sticking something on the drill press and holding it there by hand. And just as it has weith many others (including us), eventually it’ll bite you in the, um, hand.
All sorts of clamps are available to fit the standard slots in your drill press, but we’re partial to the drill press vise; They’re easier to use, and some of them — like this one from Northern — offer the additional advantage of two-dimensional adjustable travel.
One of the signs of a quality ratchet (at least according to my Father) is a small “sweep” – how much you have to turn it to engage the next “cog.” A reader tipped us off to Northern Tool’s gearless ratchets this morning, and though Northern doesn’t say much about them on their website, this caught our eye: they offer a “less than 3 degree sweep.” Compare that to GearWrench’s 5 degree sweep or common ratchet’s 12 degrees.
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