By Joel Moskowitz - Oct 17 New

Tools & Craft #111: Making Stuff, and Other Human Impulses

How do you get students to the point at which they can produce something?

Several months ago a gentleman who runs a local maker space invited me to teach some hand tool classes at the space. I was happy to have the discussion, but we got hung up by a central question: How do you get students to the point at which they can

By Rain Noe - Oct 15

Festool's Affordable Drill Dust Collection Nozzle

It uses the vacuum to both hold itself in place and extract all of the dust

Drilling into sheetrock or concrete produces a lot of fine dust. Most of us drilling a single hole to add an anchor will clean up with a dustbuster and call it a day. But for a professional tradesperson drilling dozens or hundreds of holes in a client's space, the dust

By Rain Noe - Oct 11

Man Hacks a Bandsaw to Rip 4x8 Sheets in Half!

24" width capacity through some crazy blade shenanigans

Most of you who use bandsaws know you can always increase the height capacity by adding a riser block. But a fellow named Ron Sutton over at the Homemade Tools forum wanted more width. "I've converted a 14 inch bandsaw to 28 inches," Sutton writes, "so that I can

By Joel Moskowitz - Oct 10

Tools & Craft #110: Old-School Prototyping and Pattern Making

Here's how we used to develop power tools, among other things

My first job was in Black & Decker's industrial division, specifically the "Advanced Concepts Group." Our job was to design new tools that represented new directions for the company. This was in 1980. Black & Decker's first cutoff saw and first big plumber's drill came out of that group while

By Rain Noe - Oct 09

How It's Made: The Leatherman Wave

Multitool manufacturing

Though first released in the '90s, Leatherman's useful Wave multitool is still their bestseller. In this look inside their Oregon factory, we get to see how each of the components is individually manufactured, and the nifty little jigs and fixtures that are used to assemble them into the end product.

By Rain Noe - Oct 08

Hitachi Power Tools is Changing Their Name to Metabo—But Metabo's Tools Will Still Be Different

Explaining a confusing bit of power tool news

North Americans, the next time you pass the power tool aisle of your local Lowes, you may notice something surprising: Tools in familiar Hitachi green or silver will no longer say "Hitachi," but "Metabo"—complete with the latter brand's accurate font. (After "Metabo," you'll notice a small block that says "HPT.")

By Rain Noe - Oct 08

Pro Tip: How to Easily Transfer a Measurement from Inside a Wall to the Outside

A master carpenter shows you how to do it with music wire

Whether you're remodeling your home or performing client work in their space, there may come a time when you need to place something on one side of a wall, yet must feed or cut it from the other side of the wall. (Think of wiring that you'd like to precisely

By Rain Noe - Oct 04

A Smart Design for Sturdy, Breakdown, Space-Saving Sawhorses

Maximum utility, minimal storage space required

Industrial Design 101: From a UX perspective, you want useful things to be around when you need them, and to disappear when you don't need them. Occasional-use items that are bulky ought be designed to fold up or break down. The plastic folding sawhorses in my shop are among the

By Joel Moskowitz - Oct 03

Tools & Craft #109: Testing a Knockoff Tool vs. the Real Deal

It's important to understand the role that manufacturing plays in tool quality and price

What should tools cost? When does a cheap price represent a bargain -- and when is it only a fool's bargain? The price of metal is pretty much the same around the world. So except for labor intensive products such as clothing, the main price advantage many Asian imports have

By Rain Noe - Oct 02

Smarter Than a Panel Lift: This Ceiling Board Hanger Invention

Uses way less materials, seems easier to use

If you've got an unfinished ceiling like this, you need some way to safely raise panels up into position so that you can screw them in place. Earlier this year Frank Howarth created a DIY panel lift to help him do just that. If you don't want to go the

By Rain Noe - Oct 02

Festool's Bluetooth System for Automatic Dust Collection--With Cordless Tools

You can also now trigger the vac from a convenient button on the business end of the hose

Festool pioneered automated dust collection with power tools. Hook your tracksaw up to the vac, pull the trigger on the saw and the vacuum automatically kicks on. The gap in this system has always been with cordless tools. When drilling a series of holes into powdery sheetrock or creating

By Rain Noe - Sep 28

Crucible Tool's Beautiful, Useful and Sold-Out Lump Hammer Will be Back on Sale Today

If you want one, get online at 12pm EST

One thing every furniture maker needs is a wooden mallet, and there are plenty on the market to choose from. But Crucible Tool, the hand tool company started by John Hoffman, Raney Nelson and Christopher Schwarz, decided to produce a steel-headed mallet based on an old British design. You'd think

By Rain Noe - Sep 26

Seeing a Traditional Furniture Maker's Wooden Ellipse Jig in Action is Highly Satisfying

The wooden ellipse jigs used by furniture makers are some of the niftier contraptions you'll see in a traditional shop. "I made this for an upcoming project which [involves] ovals," writes Harry T. Morris, a young craftsman who hails from Wales. "I know this can be done many other easier

By Rain Noe - Sep 25

This Tool Lets You Cut the Edges of FoamCore at Precise Angles for Precision Modelmaking

The Perfect Cut should be a big hit with ID and architecture students

You can get great results building models in FoamCore, as Eric Strebel illustrated in a couple of tutorials. If that or corrugated cardboard is your material of choice, and if you're super-anal about your models, you could take them to the next level if you had some means of cutting

By Rain Noe - Sep 25

To Promote DIY Metric Rulers in the 18th Century, Paris Placed Meter-Long Marble Blocks on Public Buildings

It's like if graffiti was useful

The French Revolution got rid of old things that didn't make sense, like monarchs and backward-ass provincial measuring systems. It's when the metric system was invented. Previously, units of measurement were derived by recording the distance from the king's nose to the tip of his thumb, but after Louis XVI's

By Rain Noe - Sep 24

Inside a High-End Handmade Carpet Production Workshop

Cooperative craftsmanship amidst all sorts of cool spinny wooden things

We often think of craftspeople as lone artisans toiling in solitude, so it's neat to see an ages-old craft that requires the cooperation of multiple craftspeople working side by side and collaborating on the same workpiece. Here we get a rare look inside a high-end handmade carpet producing facility in

By Joel Moskowitz - Sep 19

Tools & Craft #107: In Furniture Design, What's Old is New Again

Here's why you should tell people that your modern designs were inspired by great design from two centuries ago

This summer I'd gone to the Museum of the City of New York, to see the absolutely fabulous Stanley Kubrick exhibit. At the same time I stopped in at a small exhibit of the design work of the architect Rosario Candela. Candela's name is still dropped in New York real

By Rain Noe - Sep 18

The CD Trick for Drilling Perfectly Perpendicular Holes

Why has no manufacturer solved this problem yet?

It's amazing that no power tool manufacturer has designed a drill that makes it easy to create holes perfectly perpendicular to the surface of the workpiece. As Jimmy DiResta once suggested, the top and perhaps one side surface of hand drills ought be made perfectly flat, so folks could run

By Rain Noe - Sep 13

Jimmy DiResta Shop Tips: How to Accelerate Hot Glue Hardening, a Garbage Can UX Hack, a Quick Way to Organize Tape & More

Tips & tricks from behind-the-scenes at the "Making It" show

Jimmy DiResta is Shop Master on Amy Poehler and Nick Offerman's "Making It" competition show, and here he shows you why: The longtime shop veteran offers up a long list of his signature shop tips to make everyday tasks easier. Included are a trick for accelerating the hardening process for

By Joel Moskowitz - Sep 12

Tools & Craft #106: Which Glue is Better - Epoxy, Yellow Wood Glue, or Liquid Hide Glue?

We test all three

Glue is the most common fastener used in woodworking and it seems that selecting the right glue for the job is typically done by using whatever bottle of glue you have hanging around and without really figuring out which glue is best. Certain characteristics of glue such as open time

By Joel Moskowitz - Sep 05

Tools & Craft #105: The Proper Grip for Hand Tools

Here's a pointer: Point

Sometimes at tool shows, people pick up one or more of our Gramercy saws and suggest that the handles were too small. While I am sure there are people for which our handles are too small, a lot of times the problem is the grip the person was using on

By Rain Noe - Aug 31

Safety Hoist: A Ladder That Carries the Heavy Stuff for You

Carrying heavy materials up a ladder is asking for trouble. Each year about 500,000 people fall off of one, and OSHA statistics show that workers die every week from ladder-related injuries. And "the estimated annual cost of ladder injuries in the U.S. is $24 billion," the CDC reports. So the

By Joel Moskowitz - Aug 29

Tools & Craft #104: My Bench Chisel History

I was organizing some stuff in the shop the other day and I came across one of my old sets of chisels. As a tool collector, I have lots of tools that I have never used. The the four sets of bench chisels detailed here are different. They reflect different

By Rain Noe - Aug 24

Using Transparent Blocks of Acrylic to See Which Penetrating Oil Works Best

Hint: It ain't the WD-40 product

What superpower would you like to have? The stock answers are flight or invisibility, but I'd have to go with X-ray vision. When fixing a machine or implement, having the ability to see what's going on inside would be priceless. This here is the next best thing to having X-ray

By Rain Noe - Aug 23

Reference: The Simple Trick for Determining the Correct Size Spade for Your Body

If you want to save your back, don't treat shovel buying like it's one-size-fits-all

When buying most tools, whether power tools or hand tools, it's generally one-size-fits-all. If you have smaller or larger mitts, you simply have to make do with whatever handle size the manufacturer came up with. But there are certain items where you do have some choice, and where your

By Rain Noe - Aug 23

Flotspotting: Industrial Designer Michael David Young's Brilliant Nail-Dispensing Hammer

Ohio-based industrial designer Michael David Young had a crazy idea: What if a framing hammer could actually dispense nails, teeing them up for you to hammer them in? Driven by the concept, Young spent six long years seeing if he could get it to work. And guess what? He

By Rain Noe - Aug 20

How to Make Your Own Mini Miter Saw, Jigsaw, Drill and More

The Easy HomeMade Projects channel provides do-able examples of DIY power tools

Here's one of those channels that makes you thankful YouTube exists. The anonymous craftsman behind Easy HomeMade Projects shows you how to DIY all manner of unlikely objects, the most impressive of which are in the small power tool space. Wanna see something crazy? Check out his small-scale DIY miter

By Rain Noe - Aug 20

Here's How They Mill Handrails That Are Already Curved

Alternate title: "Crazy German router attachments"

I'd always assumed that curved wooden handrails were first milled, then steam-bent into shape. Turns out that's not always the case. German power tool manufacturer Scheer has modified their HM 17 router to work on square stock that's already been steam bent: The SCHEER handrail-router FG 308 ist used for

By Joel Moskowitz - Aug 15

Tools & Craft #103: How Drawbore Pins Work

Since we introduced Ray Iles's draw borepins last fall, we've gotten a ton of questions about why real ones such as these work better than concentric tapered pins - that is, pins that are sometimes misconstrued as drawbore pins but really are just tapered drift pins. Drift pins are just

By Rain Noe - Aug 13

The Mehlville: A Super Designey Dual-Compartment Carabiner

The James Brand is a Portland, Oregon-based group of designers who create modern, minimalist knives and tools. They also make this dual-compartment carabiner called the Mehlville that caught my eye. It's machined from a single piece of aluminum and uses stainless steel for the hardware. Look at the amount of

By Rain Noe - Aug 09

Gerber's FlatIron: A Cleaver-Style Folding Knife

When pointless things are useful

The pointed tip of a pocketknife is great for poking, probing, prying and slicing. But if you're using the knife for other things, like chopping or carving, the point can be a nuisance at best and a liability at worst. Hence Gerber has designed the FlatIron, a folding knife with

By Rain Noe - Jul 31

The Magic Creeper: A Mechanic's Creeper With No Wheels

Smart design, great use of materials

Unless you've got a hydraulic lift, a mechanic's creeper is an indispensable tool for getting underneath a vehicle. But you've got to be on a smooth surface to use one, and ensure there aren't any air lines, extension cords or tools in your path. Plus there's a height issue with

By Rain Noe - Jul 30

The Everyday Blade: A Tiny Flip-Out Knife That Takes Standard X-Acto Blades

Everyday Carry remains a hot product category, and aspiring design entrepreneurs among you should note that multitools and knives are what will enable you to get your foot in the door. The latest offering in the latter category is the Everyday Blade, a diminutive gizmo that takes standard No. 11