As the snow starts to melt, you notice that the snowplow driver took some liberty guessing where the road ended and your yard began.  Don’t be too hard on him — it’s pretty tough to tell at 2 in the morning.  Next time give him a break and mark your driveway or curb with a lighted solar driveway marker from SunForce.

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Imagine installing a battery-operated smoke detector that communicates with other detectors around the house so they all go off at the same time — just like hard-wired smoke alarms.  Now give them a voice telling you where the smoke is located and you’ve got First Alert’s ONELINK Talking Wireless Alarm.

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The Wedge Alarm provides a quick way to make yourself feel more secure either at home or on the road. Don’t have a bathroom lock?  Place the wedge behind the door and warn anyone trying to enter that the john is occupied.  Worried about the maids walking in on you even when the “Do Not Disturb” sign is out?  Make them rethink that decision.

The Wedge Alarm emits a piercing 110dB alarm for five seconds when it’s tripped.  The hook-and-loop adhesive pad keeps the wedge in place on carpets, hard floors, windows, or wherever you decide to place it. It’s powered by an included 12V battery.

Pricing for the Wedge Alarm ranges widely, from $4 to $16.

The Wedge Alarm [Reliance Controls]
Street Pricing [Google]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

Have you been burned by the power going out in the middle of the night and screwing up your alarm clock?  Yeah, most alarm clocks have a battery backup, but in my experience it’s always dead when you need it.  Plug the PowerOUT! from Reliance Controls into a spare outlet and when the power fails you’ll know it by the 86dB alarm and bright safety light.

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Do you stay awake at night while you’re on vacation wondering if your pipes are freezing or if your freezer full of beef is still frozen?  If you had the FreezeAlarm from Control Products you might sleep more soundly.

Connect the Deluxe FreezeAlarm to your home phone line and it can call up to three telephone numbers and give a voice warning if the temperature is too high or low, if the power has failed, or if its own backup power is failing.  If you’re curious you can always call the FreezeAlarm and it’ll tell you the state of those three things.

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Wildfires leave destruction in their wake, but you can protect all your hard work with a little insurance — Barricade fire gel.  You mix the gel with water from your garden hose, then spray it on your house and even your lawn to create an encapsulated wet blanket that’ll block fire for up to 24 hours.

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Knee pads can be a pain in the butt to wear, but if the task at hand lets you remain relatively stationary you could try this knee cushion from Birkenstock instead.  Of course, when you hear Birkenstock, you may think shoes, but surprisingly they also make this cushion to save your weary knees.

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In response to our recent router post, reader Eli posted another great example of powerful tools wreaking havoc in shop class, and he points us to an excellent article containing safety tips for burgeoning woodworkers.

My shop teacher (Mr. Green, had all his fingers) showed us the effects of table-saw kickback by removing a safety poster from the cinder block wall ten feet behind the saw. The poster was covering a one-foot-diameter hole made by a piece of hard maple. I immediately developed a habit of standing to the side of the blade when cutting.

Below is as good a place as any to start for routers. Pay particular att’n to rule#9, as that’s how you’ll screw up most of your work. The best bit/most useful bit for someone new to routing is probably a simple roundover bit. Also make sure there’s nothing in the path of the router after it leaves the work. It helps to have someone who’s used one intelligently help you set it up and take first passes.

I wonder if the “on the ball” type of instructor would’ve put the poster and router near the hole in the wall to make a point without having to actually go through with it. That definitely sounds like something a shop teacher would do.

Don’t Fear The Router [Do It Yourself]

Hearing protection isn’t just for adults — kids also need to protect their hearing when working in loud environments.  So if you spend quality time with your kids in the shop, buy ‘em a pair of hearing protectors like these from AO Safety that are sized for youth and small adults.

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Your job is to log that forest the environmental protesters may or may not have sabotaged last week.  Are you going to cut it by hand because it’s too dangerous to use a chainsaw?  Heck no!  You break out your RENS P-4000 Metal Detector.

RENZ designed this self-calibrating, fully automated metal detector especially for logging.  It doesn’t require any manual adjustments, so there’s little or no training needed to operate it.  Just make sure there’s no metal nearby, then pass over the entire surface of the log or tree with overlapping sweeps to ensure you’ve scanned the whole thing.

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The Dustie dust-control shroud from Dustless Technologies adds dust collection to one of your messier tools — the angle grinder.  It captures up to 99% of the airborne particles created by grinding, including concrete, stone, masonry, fiberglass, and any other materials you don’t want reaching your lungs.

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Seju, the company that brought you the Safe Drive personal alcohol detector and the Kiss Me bad-breath detector, also sells the EZ Gas Check portable gas detector. It detects propane gas at levels as low as 1/10 of the Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) and natural gas at 1/5 of the LEL.

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You may not be required to wear a hard hat at work — but if you come home from work regularly with bumps and bruises on your noggin from low-hanging pipes and other rigging, you’re probably a good candidate for a bump cap.

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Say goodbye to tire-spike strips that blow out your tires. Federal Signal’s Stinger spike system employs hollow spikes to deflate the tires in a regulated manner, gradually slowing the vehicle instead of causing Hollywood-style crashes.

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It seems like you can’t walk into a mechanic’s shop without seeing at least one tech wearing nitrile gloves — and maybe even a few of the old-timers. There was a time when these guys regularly used cleaners and solvents that would melt the skin off your fingers. However the long-term effects of chemical exposure coupled with the short-term problem of filthy, nasty hands have convinced them to slip some of these on. How about you?

The various companies that make these gloves seem to be marketing directly to mechanics: sending out free samples, making them in basic black rather than the purples and blues they used to come in — not to mention giving them names like “The Shadow.”

In addition to their obvious resistance to oils and solvents, some of these gloves feature textured surfaces that provide a better grip in slippery situations. And since they’re not made of latex rubber, you don’t have to worry about allergic reactions.

So what do you think? Are these an indispensable part of your work routine, or do you just love the feel of the grime under your fingernails? Tell us in the comments.

Street Pricing [Google Products]

Back when I had a gig as an environmental engineer — *cough* janitor,  I was a kid and there’s no way I deserved some high-falutin’ title — I dealt with a lot of full trash cans that weighed more than I did, and I would’ve loved to have such a stylin’ way to take out the trash as this hydraulic trash dumper.  Heck, I wouldn’t mind having one today; I weigh more now, but I also know more about back pain and OSHA.

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Working from heights is bad enough, but working on open trusses must be scary. Craig Bronkhorst of Long View Enterprises felt he was no longer safe setting trusses, so he created the Ridge Runner. Intended for construction workers, framers, truss installers, and anyone who has to work on open trusses, the Ridge Runner sells for just shy of a grand — but even with the high price tag he claims it’s cost-effective and will save time.

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