Friday, November 20, 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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5 comments:
The Easy Driver is an intersting looking tool. What interestst me most is the unconventional grip that it sports. The device appears to be operated by a spherical grip, which makes me wonder just how easy it is to use. I've always been quite happy with the shape of normal screw drivers, and even odder devices like snowboard tools which do the same thing as this device seem to keep that shape. Maybe the ball grip makes it harder to over tighten, but to me it just looks like it might make it harder to use the tool.
I often thing that Dewalt does not quite know what to do with some of their products. Their new heat gun is a good example of this given that, as the article pointed out, it manages to be too expensive for truly casual purchase, and probably is not high enough quality to be bought by someone who would actually want to repair the tool. Given my experience with heat guns, when the device brakes they are generally cheap enough to just chuck and replace, rather then go through the process of fixing them. Yet another Dewalt product that seems to try and target a price range that it really shouldn't.
I'm a fan of the new Dewalt heat gun. The notion of a battery operated heat gun doesn't fly with me, and this Dewalt plugin seems like like a good match between price and quality, much like the rest of Dewalts line up. I've been toying with the idea of purchasing a heat gun for myself given the amount of heat shrinking I often do. However, given that's the only thing I use the tool for, I can't really justify an expensive one like this Dewalt. Any other options people want to suggest?
The Easy Driver is one of the first tools that I ever recall seeing in my dad's workshop. I recall having absolutely no idea what it did or what I would use it for. Because of this, it always sat in its plastic case on the shelf. However, after seeing this article, I think I will be more apt to reach for it. Its an intriguing concept but I wonder about the feasibility of its use. In my mind a simple 4 in 1 screwdriver does the same thing, without the ratcheting action, yet this tool has all 4 bits in it, and in this case, it looks like the bits are separate.
I really liked the article on car troubleshooting. This kind of problem-solving process is quite useful, and I think it's very useful for the majority of folks in my generation who never had a shop class or got to fix their own cars or listened to Car Talk at breakfast on saturday. I think there must be a book that's good at walking through this sort of process, but I've yet to find it. So for now, short explanations like this are the best I've found. The idea of systematic, but intelligent troubleshooting is important in working on all sorts of things.
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