Tool Tuesday - Wire Brush

This is a tool that perhaps shows my predilection for rusty projects! The wire brush is an excellent tool for loosening and removing rust or loose surfaces. It's a tool that gets a lot of use on my collection of scruffy vehicles but also has been used to remove flaky masonry paint and more. It's not a refined tool and I tend to go for the budget end if possible as they are almost by definition destined to be abused. 

Tool Tuesday - Bahco Hacksaw

The dedicated reader might have noticed that Tool Tuesday has been quieter of late. I decided that I would move from every Tuesday to a more relaxed every now and again approach, hopefully equating to around one Tool Tuesday a month. The idea being then I also do more blogging on personal projects.... well never say never!

Anyway today's Tool Tuesday is this excellent Bahco hacksaw. Whilst a great step up from a no brand cheap hacksaw, this Bahco sits firmly in the middle ground and is available for around £12-16. It's a very nice frame and handle, comfortable in hand and the blade tension bolt and handle are excellent. The black moulding on the far end works well for a guiding hand and some pressure application and as such it returns very accurate cuts. What really makes this hacksaw shine though in my humble opinion are the Bahco Sandflex Bi metal blades. I've yet to break one and they seem to last a very long time. Mine is due a new blade but I can't remember the last time I opened my spare blade pack to replace one which tells me all I need to know. 

Tool Tuesday - Record Ball Peen Hammer

I mostly associate Record with excellent engineering vices but it's fair to say they have had their branding on a lot of tools over the years. I've had this Record branded ball peen hammer since my mid teens (late 1980's) and it's an excellent bit of kit. Sadly the model number is obscured/worn but reading around a lot of this era Record hammers are actually rebadged "Marples" hammers that are very well regarded. The castings on the head are nicely made and the hickory handle is still the original, despite a fair amount of use and abuse. It's at the lighter end of ball peens but is perfect for small engineering work, stamping and centre punching etc. If you ever see one second hand I'd say grab it for a quality little tool. 

Tool Tuesday - Telescopic Bore Gauges

 

Today's Tool Tuesday is a particular favourite set of tools as they often are my first port of call when beginning to design or build a rocket! I often need accurate measurements of internal tube diameters and the Telescopic Bore Gauges are an excellent approach. 

Each gauge covers a range of internal diameters and features 2 sprung probe sections that can be pushed back into the centre body of the gauge somewhat. In the handle mechanism there is a spring pushed bar which when you tighten a knurled nut at the back of the handle will lock the 2 probes in their current position. To get an accurate result you push the probes into the desired internal bore and hold the gauge at a slight angle and lock the probes to finger tight. You then pull the probes so that they span flat across the bore to bring it to it's final measured size.  You then remove the bore gauge and use an accurate device to measure across the jaws of the probes, a well calibrated micrometer is best but often a vernier caliper across the probes is sufficiently accurate for most needs.  

Tool Tuesday - Stud Clamps

I've written about stud clamps before, both here and in Hackspace magazine, but, due to their usefullness, they need a Tool Tuesday post of there own. 

The stud clamp allows you to work on bolts or threaded items whilst holding them securely without damaging the thread. Or they can be used to aid removal of threaded studs from assemblies. Essentially they are a piece of material with holes drilled and tapped to receive bolts or threaded bar of the corresponding thread type. They are then carefully cut, either by hacksaw or a slitting saw in a mill and this creates the clamp. Thread your target material in and pinch the clamp shut in a vice or using some other type of clamp, mole grips or a G clamp for example, and your work is held super securely for you to work on. 

Tool Tuesday - Budget EMT Shears

I've become a big fan of cheap EMT shear type scissors. They are widely available and there are super affordable versions if you steer away from the more "tacticool" versions. As a pair of beater scissors they are great and will cut a wide variety of materials. I often use them to trim the edges of cured fibreglass layups etc and they really are tough. Just make sure you don't take them from a first aid kit you may rely on! 

Tool Tuesday - RS Pro Flat Nose Pliers

It's pretty fair to say I love all types of pliers as tools. I have a few sets of more expensive pliers but the majority of my collection are pretty cheap and cheerful. One type that I use a lot are flat nose pliers, a sort of thin nosed pliers where the jaws bend away from the grip. The RS Pro flat nose pliers are a reasonable set of smaller ones for not too much money. They are small enough to often be used as a slightly more forceful set of tweezers and I often use them to place small nuts and fasteners where my fingers are too big to fit. I I had one small gripe it's that they aren't particularly precise in closing and the jaws don't align perfectly as you would find in higher quality tools. However they are great for many tasks and are perfect for one of my favourite little hacks, if you place a rubber band around the handles you can use them as a small low pressure clamp holder that's capable of holding the work slightly off the bench. Super handy for soldering, clamping small glued items or I've even used this to create temporary test stands for tiny motors. 

Tool Tuesday - The Digital Multi Meter

 

The Digital Multi Meter or DMM is never far away from my hand and gets a lot of use. I was recently reminded of how it also can make some aspects of electronics more accessible. DMM come in fantastic variety of  flavours and models and are available from around £5 through tow hundreds of pounds. They have heaps of uses and capabilities, measuring voltages, current, resistance, checking capacitors, and much more. I tend to use two functions of mine massively, checking DC voltage level is a popular task and also checking continuity ( a mode where if there is a connection between the probes it will beep) is so useful to check if something is connected. 

Many DMM will check resistance but with some you need to know the order of magnitude you expect the resistance to be. These are selected using the rotary switch. Some DMM are "auto ranging" and as such will switch the units detected to the correct one for the measurement. So when checking a resistor that is 10,000 ohms it will detect and switch to give the value in kilo ohms. I ran a soldering workshop recently and I always give a short example of using the colour codes on a resistor to decode its value. However one of the participants was red green colourblind and would struggle to decode the band colours. Not a problem with an auto ranging DMM! The list of features on a basic multimeter is impressive but the list of all possible features in endless. Whilst for regular mains work I would want to spend more on a quality known brand, it's fair to say that for low voltage work electronics hobby stuff really good auto ranging DMM can be found for less than £20. A useful addition to any bench.

Tool Tuesday - The Breaker Bar

 

This week I've been swapping some wheels around on my old VW Caddy Mk2, well actually on two Caddy's, my one on the road, and my off road spares donor vehicle! It's common for tyre companies or garages to fit wheels using a compressed air impact driver and as such wheel nuts can be pretty heavily over torqued and difficult to undo. The answer is the humble but incredibly useful breaker bar. A breaker bar is a long oversize bar with a socket fitting at one end so it can receive a socket wrench. They are usually none ratcheting as socket wrench ratchets aren't often capable of very high torque. My breaker bar has a 1/2" socket wrench fitting and it lives in my van with a 17mm socket on it at all times as that is the size of my wheel nuts. I also carry a 19mm and a 21mm socket with it in case I can offer help to anyone changing a wheel as these are the other two common wheel nut sizes.

They work very well and definitely make life easier than trying to use the shorter lower quality tools that are often bundled with a a small spider jack in many vehicles. 

Tool Tuesday - Archimedes Drill

The archimedes drill is a very useful tool for making small holes in a variety of materials. At the chuck end they have a floating collar you hold to steady the device and use your other hand to plunge the handle causing the archimedes screw to turn. As such you can moderate not only the speed, but also the downforce. This results in a sensitive drill thats really handy when accuracy and good finish are important. I use mine often to pick up small marks/punching when a centre drill would be too large. I've also used it for PCB drilling when hand etching boards as it gives cleaner results than a dremel type tool. 

Tool Tuesday - Wera Kraftform Precision Hex Drivers

I have to say I am a Wera tool fan and my fanship mostly centres around the Wera Tool Check Plus which I blogged about a while ago. I still find the combination of the tool check and the Xiaomi/Wiha precision driver set covers most of my needs. However often I need longer tools to access fasteners in recessed pockets often when working on robots or drone projects. The Wera Kraftform Precision range are very nice tools and you can buy them in various curated sets, or, if you are like me, I buy them individually so I have the common sizes I need. Pictured above are my most used ones, the 1.5-2.5mm Hex drivers which are in pretty much daily use. The rotating caps move very smoothly and the tool tips are well made and durable with these showing very little wear after a fair bit of use. 

Tool Tuesday - The Flexible Pick Up Tool

I can't say that this is a tool I use every day, but it's a super handy tool when needed. Squeezing the sprung plunger/handle arrangement and a small set of four spring steel jaws expand out of the other end. This allows you to grab, retrieve or otherwise manipulate small objects. Looking online most are advertising this with an image of it stuck down a sink plug hole, I can't say I've ever done that! However, I can say it has retrieved a lot of dropped parts/nuts/bolts from engine bays or quite often objects that have rolled down the back of a work surface. If you have any sort of hobby which involves fitting systems into tight tubes, as I do with rocketry, this is an excellent and useful tool. In rocketry you quite often have to thread a cord through a eye bolt placed inside the bottom of a 50cm long tube and this tool can really earn it's keep.  

They are a very affordable tool also, in fact mine still has the hardware shop price sticker on it of 99p, that's some years ago though, but a casual search online shows them as available for not masses more. Finally, they also are a fun tool that begs to be used by almost everyone who handles one, my children certainly have both played with it previously setting marble transferring challenges etc! They are quite sharp though, and certainly need to be handled with a little care and don't dream of grabbing someone else with them as they are surprisingly grippy/pinchy!

 

Tool Tuesday - The Swann Morton Unitool

I need to reinvigorate my blogging rate and I've decided to start this weekly blog I'm calling #ToolTuesday. It's heavily inspired by my great friend @biglesp who for a long time has run the excellent #TuesdayTooling series over at his blog. Les focuses on software and microcontrollers on his Tuesday Tooling posts exploring tools and toolchains to get you up and running doing cool things across a variety of platforms. I've chatted with Les over the years that I should do a similar series but which looks at hardware tools useful in all kinds of making and tinkering and so here it is!

This first post is an odd starting point as I bought a stack of these Swann Morton Unitool multiblade craft knives recently as they are being withdrawn as a product. It's a shame as they are an excellent little tool. The three blades are larger than many of my smaller craft knives/scalpels and are excellent for all kinds of jobs. The very flat edged "D" blade is superb for cutting flat sheet items like balsa or cardboard and I use the angled "A" blade as a de-burring tool a lot as it can centre into small holes really well. The middle blade "B" is slightly odd in my opinion but as such falls into the "blade that gets used for heavy beater work" so I've abused that blade for all forms of carving and even wire stripping etc. 

The blades pivot and are retained with two thumb screws and they stay in place very well, which also leads to another reason I love the design, you can lock the blades away and close the device and the holes in the blades combined with the thumbscrews make it really secure. I've never had a blade come loose or open in my pocket. 

Finally, I love the look, when I was young and building plastic model kits the orange plastic handled single blade craft knives from Swann Morton where the only widely available choice and the Unitools styling reminds me of many happy hours tinkering! Hope you've enjoyed this first post, see you next week!