After the work day is done *wink* you can head straight for the fishing hole, if you’re carrying the Packer fishing rod. It weighs eight ounces and measures less than 22 inches long, so you can make room for it even in a crowded toolbox. Check out this guy holding one — it’s really small.

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If the zombies attack and civilization ends, this Survival Radio will still serve as a flashlight. And while civilization still exists, this tool can help you return to it if you ever get lost. Say you’re hunting javelinas in South Texas, and you get separated from your buddies. Your cell phone isn’t getting any reception, and you run down the battery trying. The Survival Radio can save the day! Crank it up, and charge your phone and listen to the radio while you walk. Maybe you’ll only pick up Tejano stations, but when you finally get reception on your phone, the battery’ll be charged!

It also features a thermometer, to tell you just how hot it really is in South Texas, and a siren to scare away the javelinas.

Survival Radio With Phone Charger [Valor]
Valor [Corporate Site]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

I’m the last guy who wants to get in a fight, but I’ve had the same idea I’m sure a lot of you have while hefting a meaty Maglite: if worse comes to worse, I could give a bad guy a good thwack with this thing. Rothco has expanded on that notion with their side handle system. It turns any C or D Maglite into a police style tonfa club, for defense or just showing off your mad flashlight-twirling skills.

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Whether you’re navigating the urban jungle or you just want to hop the neighbor’s fence to crash his patio party, the Tactical Fence Climber will get you to the other side a little faster. ZAK Tool designed it especially for police and fire departments — the tool creates sturdy scaling rungs on both sides of a chain link fence, for rapid traversal.

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A chisel is a useful hand tool or bench tool, but you don’t want to carry it around in your pocket.  You risk cutting your pocket and yourself, unless you can keep track of the plastic caps that sometimes come with them. FastCap has come up with a solution in their new Pocket Chisel.

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The online community at EDC Forums focuses on the everyday carry lifestyle/obsession, which is basically an interest in items that you always have on you: knives, tools, keys, packs, etc. A small portion of the members take the interest further by customizing tools for specific individual needs, which is pretty cool — one of the coolest is the Keyman mod.

The mod consists of a stripped-down Leatherman with filed-down keys substituted for the tools. EDC Forum member shadeone created the compact, jingle-free, key-carrying solution shown above. You can check out more picks of this and other mods via the links below.

Shadeone’s Post [EDC Forums]
EDC Forums [Official Site]

These beautifully crafted Japanese Sumitsubo carpenter’s lines are similar to the familiar chalk line, only they use ink grains dissolved in water instead of chalk. The ink leaves a much finer line.

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Taking measurements down can be a task unto itself — it requires you to keep track of your tape measure, paper, and pencil. That might be a lot for some Toolmongers, so finally the tool market has delivered an aid for you. The WristWriter can hold your tape measure, paper, and pencil, all on one weighed-down wrist.

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Spring has sprung, for better or for worse, and with spring comes tedious weeding. Gardeners go into battle armed with herbicides and pronged implements, or they engage in hand-to-weed combat. But why should you literally stoop so low as to pull them up, when you can burn them out of existence? With the Weed Dragon you can implement a scorched earth policy against unwanted plants.

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Starrett combines two tools that you’d think were incompatible: a hammer and a magnifying glass. They say they integrate a magnifying lens into their No. 815 toolmakers’ hammer so you don’t have to look away from your work to find either tool.

Starrett hardens both the flat and ball-peen heads, and they chromium-plate the entire hammer for protection and an attractive finish.  A rubber mounting protects the lens from the impact of hammering.  The steel hammer weighs 133 grams, and Starrett will personalize it with a message, if you’re giving it as a gift.

Street pricing starts around $50.

Toolmakers’ Hammer [Starrett]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

This weekend I watched part of DIY’s Project Treehouse, which covered the construction of a treehouse from start to finish. During the show, they used a piece of hardware that caught my interest: the Garnier Limb (GL). Michael Garnier operates a treehouse bed and breakfast in Oregon, and he designed the Garnier Limb — a piece of hardware that can be threaded into a tree — to be a mounting point in the construction of tree structures.

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I’ll admit that most of what I know about chimney sweeping I learned from Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. Dick wielded a series of flexible rods and brushes, the basic tools of the chimneysweep’s trade. Though these basic tools are still in use today, they can’t always handle modern fireplaces, with their smaller chimneys and sharper bends. Tools like the Viper GFX exist to deal with these modern chimneys.

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Time is money in every trade. If the trade requires setting up scaffolding, you waste time and money every time you have to get down, move the scaffold six feet, and then remount. The Crawler can potentially save hundreds of hours every year by allowing you to move the scaffolding without getting down.

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It doesn’t get much simpler than magnets on a string, but that’s essentially what HandyMagnets are — a series of nine plastic-encapsulated rare-earth magnets. They’ll keep a map stuck to the hood of your car while you figure out where you are, or they’ll attach your tools to any ferrous object in your shop. This Australian product doesn’t seem to have made it to U.S. shores yet, but I look forward to when it does.

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Are you tired of lifting and pouring five-gallon pails all day? Morse’s Model 83 Pail Handler might be the answer to your aching back. This 125-pound machine can lift a five-gallon pail that weighs up to 150 lbs. We’re not exactly sure what material weighs 30 lbs per gallon, but maybe you need to move a pail of iron filings.

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Kneeling will really take a toll on you, especially if you have to do it all day. Normal knee pads, though they can do a lot to ease the discomfort, don’t help you get around on the ground. But Knee Blades protect your knees and keep you moving.

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Driving around the countryside, you see a lot of fencing hung on T-posts — they’re economical posts for wire fences. Well, don’t you wish there was an easy way to get over ‘em? Lobo Products grants that wish, with the T-Post Stepper.

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