Pelican Parts Forums - Tool you most recently used?

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Tool you most recently used?

Several for me yesterday. Assembling a fancy bird feeder for Cindy. 1/4" drive ratchet, 10mm socket, and a #2 Phillips screwdriver. Oh, all made in USA for Sears.

So, guess I'd have to say that my favorite tool is the one in my hand performing as intended.

1" Buck Brothers chisel, to clean up a hinge mortise.

Just got home from spraying two coats of 2K sealer on a used bumper for a 2000 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Plenty of earlier work prepping.

Tiny DeWalt gravity feed touch up gun from Lowes I got as a package ( two guns) buy through friends that work the end cap presentations / planograms over night.

It's barely adequate but actually did a decent job because of the outside air temp.....and cleaning it. :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1741997867.jpg

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1741998115.jpg

Woolfbox air duster. Love this thing. Use every day from dusting electronics and car interior to blowing dirt out of RC cars. Zero regrets.

https://wolfbox.com/products/compressed-air-duster-mf100

Use my MIP hex and nut driver set every day and am addicted to 4V drill/screw drivers I use almost daily

This 1/4" drive craftsman set gets used the most. The driver has a square in the back so the ratchet goes in. Super handy. I use a s-k ratchet though. The craftsman ratchets are horrible. The sockets are only standard but I keep an 8 and 10 with it and a swivel and that covers everything i need. Im working on a golf cart today. I also have a new favorite hammer. I never use a ball peen it turns out I just never had one I liked. I found an old estwing with leather handle that I had to put a bunch of new leather on. I really like the feel of it and has a perfect weight so now I find im grabbing it the most.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1741999994.jpg

Air compressor, 8mm allen and some Knipex cobras.

A picture frame guillotine.

I used to be a picture framer in a past life. I don't actually want a job, but keep getting offered work as a framer.

I did some picture framing in college. I loved the precision of the guillotine. Making perfect 45's is sooo satisfying. A while back I found a model 400 Stanley framing vise at a yard sale. That was a good day.

Allen key tightening the hand guards on my dirt bike. About 25 mins ago.

A cheap ass socket wrench kit on some jalousies.

Quote:

Originally Posted by herr_oberst (Post 12428931)

model 400 Stanley framing vise

Ha, a nice bit of equipment. I've got my mom's one somewhere in the attic. She was an art school kid and did her own framing.

I have a plan (disclaimer: I have plans but often do nothing about them) I'm going to get old rustic 100 year old farm fence batons and make a clean edge on one side, router a grove in them. And make VERY rustic looking picture frames for farm/lake/mountain pictures. I'll see how it goes.

iPhone.

I am traveling as I write ( on my iPhone!) and that thing is an amazing tool.

Utility knife, making a cardboard template for around the base of a toilet. I am not going to remove the toilet to place the new flooring.http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1742040552.jpg

This is the stuff I got for less than $ .50 /Sq. Ft. .I've got about 20% of the area done.
Today I rest. My legs and back have so decreed.:rolleyes:
And yes, there are three different patterns in the pic. A bamboo , a teak and an oak. The wife likes it, I am just the handyman. :D
Now yesterday I was rocking the following: table saw, band saw, compound mitre saw, block plane, tri-square, hammer, pry bar, drill, impact driver and hand saw as I finished off the flooring in the hall closet, got the door casing shortened and the bi-fold door re-hung. I took the afternoon off.

Best
Les

A shovel .......... spreading 7 tons of # 57 gravel .

DeWalt 20V recip saw to cut up some beat to heck deck furniture.

Years ago, I stumbled across a cheap screwdriver with a small set of 5-10 bits. I tried upgrade by purchasing a cheap version with a box with a bigger set of bits. The box and bits were an upgrade, but the original screwdriver's handle shape and build were better and more comfortable. The old screwdriver fit in the box, so that's the screwdriver that I use the most these days.

The last 2 tools that I used were my AC Hydraulic low profile high lift jack and my Esco jack stands, and my dad's old Craftsman ratchets and the Craftsman sockets my parents got me for my 16th birthday.

(related subject) Maybe we all need to buy a more modern hammer.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/25/1111041/the-man-who-reinvented-the-hammer/
excerpts from the article below

Quote:

After MIT, Schroder spent two years designing weapons for the US Navy before enrolling in a doctoral program in plasma physics at the University of Texas at Austin. As he was approaching his final year, he and his wife, Lisa, went to Walmart one day to run an errand. “Like a stereotypical guy, I walked into the tool section and I started looking at the hammers,” Schroder recalls. “I realized all the hammers were designed incorrectly. It became almost an obsession for me.”

What Schroder picked up on wasn’t the design of the tools, exactly, but the fact that the manufacturers were effectively broadcasting a flaw. “The labels of all the hammers said ‘We have a shock-*reduction grip’ or a ‘vibration-reducing grip’ and I would try it and it didn’t work,” he says. “They were saying: ‘This is not a solved problem.’ They just gave me the information I needed. Have you ever heard of a tire company that says ‘Our tires are round’?”

At the time, Schroder was taking another exacting class, this one on mechanics. The professor told students he planned to cover 14 weeks of the syllabus in a mere six weeks and focus on special topics in the remaining time. Many students were intimidated and dropped out, but Schroder stuck with it. (“It was the type of abuse I was used to at MIT,” he jokes, pointing to his brass rat. “So it was just fine.”) Somewhat fortuitously, one of those “special topics” was baseball bats.

Because Schroder was so consumed by the hammer vibration problem—another activity that involves the mechanics of swinging—he read books about the legendary Boston Red Sox batter Ted Williams to learn more. He interviewed carpenters. He spent a fair amount of time with a hammer in his hand. “I got to be pretty good at it myself. I was just hammering all the time,” he says. “I ended up losing part of my hearing because I was doing all this work on anvils.”

He developed tests to measure vibrations and crafted a “cyberglove” that would read them and upload the data into a computer program. After two years of data collection and analysis, he concluded that most attempts to improve hammers involved adding length and therefore weight. That causes fatigue and potentially exacerbates what is known as “hammer elbow” or lateral epicondylitis, a repetitive stress disorder that can plague construction workers.

Schroder determined that there was a “little spot in a hammer where there’s not much vibration”—the part of the handle most people would naturally grasp. He figured out that if you remove weight from the parts of the handle adjacent to the grip and insert foam there, that insulates the user’s hand from the shock of impact and resulting vibration. Using foam inserts also made it feasible for him to redesign the hammer head to increase the effective length of the hammer—and boost momentum transfer by about 15%—without adding weight. In other words, his design not only reduced vibration but made the hammer hit harder with less effort.

These modifications also cut manufacturing costs. Today, Schroder’s design improvements have made their way into the majority of hammers sold in the United States, making hammering much easier on users’ elbows—and relieving manufacturers from the mounting threat of lawsuits for vibration-related workplace injuries.

In the course of tackling the hammer problem, Schroder says, he learned that being an inventor is as much about perseverance and grit as it is about science or imagination. His professors told him he was wasting his time and shouldn’t bother. Then, after he presented his innovations to hammer companies, they said they didn’t think his developments were patentable—yet proceeded to incorporate them into their new designs. Two patents were ultimately issued to Schroder, and 16 years later, after suing the hammer companies, he was finally compensated for his innovations. He paid off his house, took his wife and five kids to Italy, and gave the rest of the proceeds to charity, he says.

Quote:

Originally Posted by oldE (Post 12428987)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1742040552.jpg

And yes, there are three different patterns in the pic. A bamboo , a teak and an oak. The wife likes it, I am just the handyman. :D

Best
Les

Interesting, the combination of different woods.

Chainsaw.
Tree came down across our road. Only takes a couple minutes to clear the road, but as long as I'm here with a chainsaw, may as well cut the whole thing into rounds for next year's firewood.

Today I'm going to the hangar to work on the airplane. Lotsa sheet metal tools will be next.