toolkit

How-To:  Upgun your power drill battery pack

How-To: Upgun your power drill battery pack

Instructables user BrianH replaced the nickel-cadmium (NiCd) factory cells in his cordless drill with nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) cells. He reports much longer useful lifetime for the drill between charges after the upgrade.

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Beautifully obsessive tool chest

Beautifully obsessive tool chest

The piano maker who assembled this incredible toolkit died in 1925. His name was H.O. Studley. A poster is available through Fine Woodworking magazine. I resisted all kinds of “Studley chest” puns in titling this article. I hope you appreciate it.

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Handmade hacksaw frame

Handmade hacksaw frame

Flickr user Streetwalker credits this elegant handmade tool to Mr. Norberto Arriagada, a Chilean plumber.

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World’s most beautiful vise

World’s most beautiful vise

Only a handful of these “pilot wheel” engraver’s vises were custom made by the late John Madole. The wheel is turned to tighten or loosen the massive ball joint, allowing the user to set the precision jaws at any convenient angle. Information is scanty, but there’s a couple more pics here at Lindsay Airgravers.

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Atwood handmade tools:  “small precious things”

Atwood handmade tools: “small precious things”

Reader Billy Baque recently pointed me at the blog of knife- and tool-maker Peter Atwood, who seems to be living the Maker dream: Every week or so he makes up a run of one or two dozen of his carefully-designed pocket tools, posts them for sale on eBay, and announces it on his blog. They […]

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Unfortunately-named yet awesome retro tool

Unfortunately-named yet awesome retro tool

I love old-style manually-operated tools. They frequently feature in my survivalist fantasies: the zombies come, the power grid collapses, and I’m the only one left who can still build killdozers because all my tools are manually-operated. Then one day Alyson Hannigan runs screaming into my compound, in terrible distress and in dire need of my […]

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