Toolbox

Tool Review: Garrett Wade Gunsmithing Screwdrivers

Tool Review: Garrett Wade Gunsmithing Screwdrivers

This is a set of three finely made flat-head screwdrivers with fancy hardwood handles and nice brass ferrules. Apart from their fine finish, the hollow-ground tips are the screwdrivers’ major selling point. Supposedly, unlike a double-wedge shaped screwdriver blade, a hollow-ground blade applies more torque to the bottom of the screw’s slot, where it’s strongest, and less at its top, where it’s weakest and most likely to get scuffed or marred. Though the appearance of screw heads is rarely important to me, there are functional reasons why it’s important to avoid damaging screws as much as practical, and I get as irritated as anyone else with screws and drivers that readily slip out of engagement. Flat-head screws are, in my experience, usually the worst offenders, and though I was a bit skeptical, I have to say these hollow-ground tips really do feel more solid.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan16
Best of 2012: Toolsday

Best of 2012: Toolsday

We started doing tool-review-Tuesdays—inevitably compounded to “Toolsdays” in short order—in early 2011, and 2012 has been the column’s first full calendar year. The reviews are written on a volunteer basis by MAKE staff and friends. Sometimes a manufacturer or retailer provides a review unit, but as often as not, the reviewer simply opens his or her toolbox, picks out a personal favorite, and serenades it. Usually the tool is of modern manufacture and is available for retail sale, but sometimes we write about old tools, eBay finds, and family heirlooms. These “tool stories” usually add a human interest element to the sometimes dry approach common in product reviews, and have been some of my personal favorite Toolsday columns from 2012.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan
Tool Review: Great Innovations Ultimate Engineering Screw Chart

Tool Review: Great Innovations Ultimate Engineering Screw Chart

The slide rule may be a quaint anachronism in this age of ubiquitous computing, but there’s still a place for the slide chart, the volvelle, the nomogram, and other hand-held “paper computers.” These are still published by a few companies, and are a handy source of on-the-spot reference data, particularly in field or workshop environments that may be inhospitable to or inconvenient for electronic devices. Slide charts containing key screw, bolt, and nut data have been around for decades, and the folks at Great Innovations identify TAD’s Universal Reference Calculator, discontinued in the mid 1990s, as inspiration for their chart.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan8
Tool Review: QU-BD Silicone Heater

Tool Review: QU-BD Silicone Heater

QU-BD (pronounced “cubed”) is a recent startup that sells parts for 3D printers. They sent us a few of their silicone heaters to review. The heaters were designed for use in a heated build platform (which is required for warp-free ABS prints) and come in three different-sized square pads of 150 × 150mm, 200 × 200mm, and a giant 300 × 300mm. They are about 3mm thick and a 100k thermistor is built into each pad for measuring their temperatures. The build quality of the heaters is quite robust. The pads are made of a flexible fiberglass-reinforced silicone…

Continue Reading Eric Chu12
Tool Review: Rio Grande Swap-Jaw Pliers

Tool Review: Rio Grande Swap-Jaw Pliers

There’s nothing especially complex about these pliers from prominent jeweler-supply house Rio Grande: one jaw features a rounded bending mandrel about 5mm in diameter and 20mm long, and the other, a cupped steel band holding a nylon forming block with a matching V-shaped groove. The cool part is that the nylon block is removable and replaceable, so if you have access to a 3D printer, you can print your own custom jaw inserts and mount them in place using small wood screws.

Continue Reading Sean Michael Ragan4