Saturday, November 14, 2009
The Week In Tools: Toolmonger Top 5
Toolmonger: "It’s been a busy week here at Toolmonger. If you’ve been spending time in the shop — you should! — and you haven’t had a chance to keep up with Toolmonger this week, we suggest you start with these posts, which our readers helped to select"
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6 comments:
It occasionally seems like the theater industry has a bit of an addiction to multi-tools, and well, it seems like Cole-Bar may have just invented the latest one that will soon become a tool box mandatory. The Cole-Bar Hammer appears to be one of those tools that will allow you to remove some of the heavier items from your tool bag that you just do not use as much. While the article says it can function as a crow bar and a framing square, I think it still has a long way to go before I start ripping platforms or squaring corners with it, but who knows. The fact that it can do both those jobs quickly and well enough to not require me to go back to my tool box is what interests me about it.
2 great tools in this weeks post...the ratchet and the multi-purpose hammer. Starting with the ratchet, it seems pretty normal to those we find as standard in the shop today, but the selling point is it can be reapaired right away, assuming you have the tools and parts. It takes a lot of beating to a ratchet to get it to a non-working state, but once you do, it would be nice to repair it right away, especially if its 10PM with every hardware store closed. The other cool tool is the hammer combo tool. It seems like it has a lot of functions, but I wonder if it will be enough for a day to day solution, or more of a item you carry if you get into a pinch. Maybe once some pricing information comes out I will look into getting one for my tool bag.
The Cole-Bar hammer looks like one of those tools that reminds me of the Little Giant folding ladders - it can do a bunch of things fairly well, but none of them really well. My biggest gripe with the ladder was always that whatever I was doing seemed to over-stress the locking hinges to the point that they stopped working after a short time. Unless the hammer is made of pure unobtainium (and probably priced accordingly) I'd expect that the hinge in the middle will suffer the same fate - it'll probably work when the tools is used as a hammer, but unfold the handle to use as a long pry bad and I'd expect the handle to promptly fold up again under the stress.
That light is the thing that interests me most. I'm a firm believer that nearly all work can be sped up if the work environment is improved, and a huge part of that is light. Imagine how much faster under-platform assembly could go if it was well lit, or how much more quickly we could rig things in the dark corners of catwalks. This looks like it has a good amount of power for a reasonable price, and is positionable without requiring extra hands. I like to work at tables with task lamps, and in shops with distributed lighting, why not bring that convenience to location work? This definitely sounds easier than the floodlights and spring clamps I used to drag across my yard to work on the truck at night.
The Cole-Bar hammer is definitely one of the more innovative tools I've seen on the roundup recently. Acting as an adjustable square, hammer or crowbar pretty much covers all of your precision and extreme lack thereof. The interchangablen ratchet head also seems useful, as long as there's somewhere within the tool that it can be stored, or at least temporarily secured.
I also really enjoy seeing LEDs coming into mass production; I'm not exactly into the green movement, but if you can better quality light with less harmful material that will certainly last longer, I can't argue its advantages.
The Cole-Bar Hammer sounds awesome because you can get more tools for the price of one. The MIght Light also sounds good because it is a hands free work-light with magnet. The hammer is actually something new and interesting that has been thought up. That is unless I have just not heard of it before because I am not one for the tools and heavy machinery. The other things mentioned in toolmonger are just boring. I have been disappointed with what they are coming up with lately but this week is better than some.
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