Ridgid MagSwitch Switchable On/Off Magnetic Square
Ridgid is now selling a magnetic square, good for metal working, welding, things like that. It looks like you can switch it on and off and that three sides are magnetic with a breakaway force of 155 lbs. If we had one, we'd probably fall on it pretending we were Alec Guinness from Bridge on River Kwai.
"What have I done?"
Possibly at At Home Depot but we're not 100% sure.
Gator Ultra Power Sandpaper with Black Zirconium - Review
Ali Industries, makers of the Gator brand of sanding products (which we've covered here), recently sent us a few sample packs of their new Black Zirconium sanding discs so that we could check them out. The timing was fantastic, because just a day or two after they arrived, we were tasked with sanding what felt like 3-1/2 miles of shelving. Not only could we use the opportunity to review the product, but because we were testing out something, 8 hours of sanding made the leap from 'water-boarding bad" to barely tolerable.
At our disposal were three packs of discs (12 discs per pack, 50-grit, 80-grit, and 120-grit). We stuck to the 80, but dipped from time to time into the other two. We also used a few 80-grit discs from another manufacturer (Porter-Cable) to see how they compared.
Gator claims that the BZ discs last three times longer than regular discs. While we're not sure on the 3x number, they certainly to last much longer. It seemed that every eight or so shelves (they were big shelves, each one was about 7' long), we were replacing a Gator disc, while the PC discs only lasted maybe three shelves. Along with holding their grit, the Gator discs impressed us because they took much longer to fray at the edges.
Gator also talks about how good their pads are at not clogging up. Again, we got a chance to test this out on some Bond-O, the scourge of the sandpaper world. As they did with general sanding, the Gators lasted much longer than the other brand.
The Gator discs are available in a variety of grits (50, 80, 120, and 220) and are sold in packs of 4 (under $5), 12 (under $12), and 40 (under $20). Amazon sells Norton discs in packs of 10 for about $9, so the Gators are a little more expensive, but when you think about the amount of extra work you'll get out of each one, they make sense.
Skil 18-Volt 4-Piece Combo Kit for $99 **UPDATED WITH CORRECTION
CORRECTION: The members of our fact-checking division were off at a bar getting loaded when this article was posted, so there is a slight correction to be made. Well, actually more than slight. In fact, what Skil is offering for $99 are the four tools and a charger and one battery. For some reason, we thought that the kit was tools only, no battery or charger. In this new light, the already good deal is truly fantastic. It's now a full-on kit for a hundred bucks. Honestly, you can't beat that.
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Lowes is offering a nice deal on a Skil 4-piece cordless kit. The rock bottom $99 price is for the tools only (no battery and charger), so you'll have to get those separately. But still, with the additional purchase, you're only going to be at a whisker under $150.
We've never used these tools, but we have experience with a similar 18-volt Skil kit (our review here) and we liked it quite a bit. This would be a nice set for someone looking to get started in the DIY world; decent tools that aren't going to break the bank.
About three months back we were tasked with hanging a 360 lb acoustical door and there wasn't a single aspect about the project that could be deemed as 'easy.' Slinging around an immense, heavy slab in a finished space was terrifying. It wasn't an experience that we're interested in repeating.
Which is why our ears pricked up a bit at the DoorJak 50 Installation Cart. It's essentially a specialized dolly that has the ability to raise and lower the load. This means that instead of four people spending five hours hanging the door, it would be more like one person spending three hours hanging the door. In that context, the $675+ price tag is more than reasonable (a larger model goes for nearly $3000).
For more information and purchase details go to DoorJak
If this is way out of your league, but you're still interested in some mechanical advantage with your door hanging, see our review of the EZY Hang Door Lifter.
Even though we're obsessed with the iRobot Roomba (our review here), we haven't yet gotten to the point where we're taking years off our lives using the funky vacuum to recreate a long-dead piece of our childhood.
Seems like these guys (who, for some reason, reek of MIT) have made a real life version of Pac-Man with the Roomba. It reminds us of an updated nerd version of those full-sized chess games that you see at Renaissance festivals (we're just guessing on this, we've never been to a Renaissance festival...really...no, really...well...ok...there's actually one we go to every year...and it's awesome).
But back to the Pac-Man dudes. They've put up a website explaining how they did what they did and it's really pretty cool if you're into that sort of thing.
Earlier in the week we were doing the spider crawl up in the floorless attic, trying to spread some insulation around and also trying to keep our feet and knees on the joists, hoping and praying that we wouldn't slip and put a foot through the plaster and lath ceiling of Tool Snob Jr's bedroom.
Then, a day later we saw in the latest issue of JLC, something called the Ceiling Saver. What it is is a folding platform that sits over 2' oc joist bays. It looks like it gives you plenty of room to sit on as well as magnetic areas to keep tools and screws in one place. It can support 250 lbs so you fattys and linebackers are out of luck.
It would be nice in our situation because the attic hatch is only about 18" x18", so getting any substantial amount of plywood up there is out of the question.
We just got word that Sears online is having a one day only sale of Auto-Hammers. They're taking $10 off the price, bringing it down to $89, but they're only marking down 500 units so when they're gone, they're gone.
The sale goes live at Midnight (Tuesday evening) and lasts all day Wednesday or until the 500 are sold.
We reviewed the Auto-Hammer here and also wrote about it for Popular Mechanics here.
Our Bosch miter saw took a spill off the back of the truck the other week and the impact busted the handle up pretty nicely. Usually for this sort of thing we go to toolpartsdirect, but we had just read at CopTool (the blog arm of the tool retailer Ohio Power Tool), that OPT also sells tool parts. We thought we'd give them a shot and contacted them with the part numbers, made the order, and in no time, they were on their way to our place. The service was extremely fast and within hours of our original inquiry, we were contacted with pricing and shipping info. As it turns out, toolpartsdirect doesn't even carry the parts we needed.
Once the parts arrived, the repair took about a half an hour. We got lucky that the only damaged parts were the plastic casing and that nothing too complicated needed replacing. Our advice if you do anything like this is to take pictures and draw diagrams as you disassemble the broken parts. No matter how good you think your memory is, you're going to forget where some screw goes or which direction a spring sits or some little detail that's essential.
It looks like Ohio Power Tool only has parts for the brands that they sell, so you DeWalt owners might have to go somewhere else, but if you're in the Bosch, Milwaukee, or Makita camp, we suggest bookmarking this page.
For a complete list of brands that OPT sells parts for, and ordering information, go here.
New Products from the Stanley/Black & Decker Merger
Harry Sawyers from Popular Mechanics has come up with a list of tools we might see as a result of the Stanley/Black & Decker merger. Of the new items, our favorite is the Dead Mouse, a combination of the B & D Mouse Sander and a Stanley dead-blow hammer. Harry has this to say about the stunning potential of the new tool:
The Mouse sander, a Black & Decker detail sander that has had numerous generations of design improvements, has nearly reached perfection. At this point, the clothing-iron-shaped tool could only be criticized for perhaps taking too long to sand a surface smooth. The solution: Combine it with one of Stanley's dead-blow hammers, creating a toolbox essential called the Dead Mouse.
Dead-blow hammers or mallets contain a soft, shot-filled head which absorbs impact as it strikes delicate surfaces. When incorporated into the Dead Mouse, these features could create a sander that operates by simply slamming into the workpiece repeatedly, quickly sanding material with each blow while minimizing impact on the user's arm. The most recent version of the Mouse contained a "Zone Touch" light that turned red when an operator pressed the tool too hard into the sanding surface. This feature would need revision in the Dead Mouse--the light must be reversed to display a warning when the tool isn't hitting the surface hard enough.
Check out the other new tools (the Fu-Buster, the Ready-Plane, the AlligatorVibe AntiLopper, and the AutoFat Tape Measure) over at Popular Mechanics.
Now that we've moved to a drafty old house, we have the dream of getting our hands on one of those thermal imaging tools in order to have the nauseating experience of actually watching all the heat escape from our windows, floorboards, and walls. Unfortunately, even the most basic models are in the $1,500 range. But, interestingly enough, we saw that Black & Decker has another tool in their Energy Saver line called the Thermal Leak Detector (read our thoughts on their Power Monitor here)
Obviously B&D's $50 tool is going to be pretty rudimentary when compared to the ultra-pimped out professional models that come with tv screens, but still the smaller tool might be a good option for someone interested in doing some investigating into their house. In a way, the Thermal Leak Detector is just a laser thermometer that knows enough to give you an over/under. To operate it, you set a base temperature and then, as you shine the light around the room, it lets you know when there is a deviation from that temp. So when you're taking a reading from your wall (70 degrees) the light is one color and as you move it over your window casing (20 below zero), it changes to another color. You can also set the number of deviation from one to five to ten degrees, so the light doesn't change at every slight temperature change.
Like we said the Thermal Leak Detector is about $50 and it available in select stores.
Craftsman Blower Attachment for the String Trimmer - Review
We've got this great Toro electric leaf blower and before we bought it we did all the right research and truly agonized over the purchase. We finally decided on the make and model we wanted and went to the local HD to pick it up. At our last house, it was a charm. With the yard hugging the house so closely we could get most everything with a 50' extension cord and when necessary, break out the dreaded 100' (*shudder*). Now, at the new place, everything is different. Our front yard is practically an orchard and threading between the trees with the cord (attached to the lone exterior outlet on the wrong side of the house), while do-able, is impractical and tedious. Thankfully, the folks at Craftsman were nice enough to let us test out their blower attachments for the string trimmer. Could this little guy deliver adequate power to get the job done?
So how is it? Honestly, it's pretty nice. It blows at a peak speed of about 150 mph so it's not the full-throated blowing madness of our electric blower which operates at around 230 mph, but it does work and it's certainly better than raking (which occurs at about 2 mph). The length of the attachment places the blower unit at just the right height, making it easy to get the air under the leaves and the convenience of not having an entirely separate tool for the task is a real space saver in the garage. We should also note that there are gas and electric blowers that operate in the 150-200mph range, so don't think that the Craftsman is a step down from the other methods.
Removing the trimmer head and attaching the blower is a really easy process, just turn the tightening knob and press a little button and the trimmer is off. Installing the blower is as easy as sliding it on the shaft and clicking the button into place.
For speed's sake, the leaves we can reach with the electric, we'll probably still do that way, but the ones way out at the horizon line can be easily done with the trimmer attachment. So all said and done, we see this little guy benefiting both our situation as well as someone who has a pretty small yard with maybe only a couple trees and limited storage space. It's likely that you already have a string trimmer, but do you also have the space for a full-sized leaf blower?
The attachment fits any high quality trimmer. If you've never noticed before, string trimmers are essentially a hand-held PTO with the trimmer being just one of the attachments. In fact, Craftsman also has an Edger that we're reviewing as well. The blower attachment costs about $70 so it's definitely less than a regular blower, it also takes up a fraction of the space.
Last week, ToolGuyd had a nice find with the new Ryobi 12-Volt Auto Hammer. By the numbers, the tool is nearly identical to the Craftsman version: 3,600 hits per minute, magnetic head, both under 2lbs. Also, like the Craftsman, the Ryobi comes with only one battery and a canvas carrying case).
We tested out the Craftsman and had some success with it, even though it's not going to replace your traditional hammer. Our Tool Snob review is here, and we also wrote about it for Popular Mechanics, even going to far as to smash our thumb with it.
Oh yeah, one difference between the tools is that the Ryobi is $89, making it $10 cheaper than the Craftsman.
Well, this is interesting. Stanley Tools has just agreed to acquire (or gobble, if you prefer) Black & Decker, which includes DeWalt and Porter-Cable. The new mega company would have an estimated worth of 8.4 billion dollars. Fax Max is now Massive Max.
We checked out an article at WSJ and it looks like the deal isn't set in stone yet and some feel there might be anti-trust issues to deal with:
The deal does raise issues about limiting competition, said David Balto, former policy director at the Federal Trade Commission under President Bill Clinton. "There are very straightforward antitrust concerns," Balto said. "These are clearly the two major American handtool makers and they compete quite directly on a wide variety of products."
The merger "would hit every handyman in the wallet," said Balto, who isn't connected with the deal.
That last part is awesome!
But we shouldn't jump to any conclusions yet. It'll take some time for the dust to settle on this one, so at this point we can only sit back and watch.
Moving into a new house made for a busy October for us. But still with all the chaos, we managed to review a number of new tools. Of the four that we looked at, we're going to give the Tool of the Month to the Craftsman Multi-Tool. Like we said in our review, it really blew the doors off our expectations with a few nice innovations. That said, the CH Compressor, the Delta Blades, and the DeWalt Distance Measurer are all nice tools as well.
October also saw the debut of MyFixItUpLife, a new DIY radio show that's on every Saturday and is available for download here.
Stay tuned in November for reviews of the new Dremel 4000, some interesting new DAP products, a number of leaf blowing products, and more.
Like we've mentioned earlier, we've just moved into a 1915 farmhouse. It's a wonderful, saggy, uneven structure with more character than Clint Eastwood's face. The house has good bones and most of the work associated with the man who built it and first lived in it is very nice. There have been other owners though who have been tinkerers and their work is...well...interesting. Interesting enough that we're going to start a new series, "Crazy Details In Our New House."
This first installment is of the creative plumbing that occurs as the waste line leaves the house. It's a beauty. The two small lines coming in from the top are a sink and a tub (why bother with two traps when you can just use one?). Unfortunately, the photo doesn't represent the whole effect. You're missing the strange patch further down on the waste line which has a slight leak, and there's no way to tell from the photo, but the plumbing system isn't vented, so every time we flush a toilet, there's a fantastic 'GLUG...GLUG...GLUG." Actually, now that we think about it, the corroded and abandoned cast-iron pipe that's stuffed with newspaper sort of acts as a semi-functional vent. Maybe that's why the glugging isn't as loud on the first floor.
Did we mention that we love this house? We really do.
Ridgid MagSwitch Switchable On/Off Magnetic Square
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DeWalt DW030P Distance Measurer - Review
