Toolbox

Workshop panorama

Workshop panorama

I love this panoramic series of photos of Matthew Good‘s workshop. He describes the contents: Ohm’s Law Medicine Man balsa wood glider (half finished) Make:Electronics book, Maker’s Notebook Woolly Mammoth clone guitar pedal, nearly done 2.5 gallon fishtank, testing out temperature logging via LM34 and Arduino There are no less than five computers on/around my […]

Toolbox: Take a seat!

Toolbox: Take a seat!

In the Make: Online Toolbox, we focus mainly on tools that fly under the radar of more conventional tool coverage: in-depth tool-making projects, strange or specialty tools unique to a trade or craft that can be useful elsewhere, tools and techniques you may not know about, but once you do, and incorporate them into your […]

Easy-thread sewing needle

Easy-thread sewing needle

You know, as long as human beings have been squinting and poking at the tiny eyes of sewing needles, it’s pretty amazing that it’s taken so long for some clever inventor to address the problem. These spiral eye sewing needles are available direct from their inventor, Pam Turner of Minnesota. I’ve never used one, but the user feedback I hear echoing through the tubes is uniformly positive.

What do YOU call these things?

What do YOU call these things?

I use this tool all the time, but rarely have I ever heard any two people refer to it by the same name. “Wire cutters” is what I called them growing up, but since then I have heard “diagonal cutters,” “diagonal pliers,” “diags,” “side cutters,” “side cutting pliers,” “snips,” “snippers,” “dog-nips,” the easily-misinterpreted “strippers,” and the downright offensive “nips” and “dikes” (which apparently upsets Dutch people for some reason). So I’m starting a collection. Have I missed anything? What do you call them?

Firefly Workshop

Firefly Workshop

While I love a good, messy workshop, I appreciate a clean one if only to get tips on organizing my own space. Craig and Cindy Smith’s shop, which they call the Firefly Workshop, offers some neat tricks. Also, what’s up with the astromech dome and Wall-E eyes? I am not a ‘green freak’, but I […]