Announcements – Cool Tools

Announcements

05/23/17

We Refreshed Our Website

Our simplified site

09/6/16

CargoRAXX – unrecommended

Interior cargo management system for SUVs

08/31/16

Infinity Glass Jars – Unrecommended

Heavy-duty black glass containers

08/10/16

Reader Survey Results

What we learned about our readers

05/15/16

Feedly is a great way to read Cool Tools

The best way to read Cool Tools

04/27/16

Good deal: Pogo Connect iPad stylus $9

Touch sensitive stylus for drawing and painting on the iPad

04/12/16

Farewell, Tips

What we learned from our experiment

01/12/16

Cool Tools is seeking a freelance editor/writer to write and curate tips

Help us develop a regular stream of cool toolish tips

11/12/15

Write Reviews for Wink Books and Get Paid

Reviews of wonderful books that belong on paper

10/27/15

Welcome to the Cool Tools Redesign

If you are reading this from the Cool Tools website (instead of RSS or the mailing list) you will have …

08/17/15

Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities $20 sale (50% off regular price)

Get the Cool Tools book at a bargain price

08/7/15

Wink Fun is Looking for Reviewers

Review things too silly to be considered toys

Let’s Talk About Clamps Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up here.

Every time a newsletter goes out, I get wonderful emails from readers telling me how much they enjoy it. At the same time, I get a spate of unsubscribes. Often, the subs go up by the same number they go down. It’s frustrating. Because of the positive emails, I know there’s an audience for what I’m doing here. Can you help me reach more of it? Can you post a link to this newsletter in your social media? Share with other maker enthusiasts? Thanks so much for your help.

Let's Talk About Clamps

In this “Ask Adam Savage” segment on Tested, Adam is asked about shop clamps. This leads to a typically-Adam thoughtful and wise deep dive into the many uses and types of clamps: c-clamps, bar clamps, vice grips, quick-grip clamps, welding clamps, jeweler’s clamp, bench vises, lever clamps, kant twist clamps, and last but not least, spring clamps. One great tip takeaway: Don’t ever buy one clamp. Buy at least two, and if you can afford it, but 4 or more.

Packing with Expanding Foam

Here’s a great idea from the engineering.equip Instagram channel. Using expanding spray foam to create secure, form-fitting packaging for equipment.

Making Lego Handles for Your Shop

Ruth Amos (of Kids Invent Stuff) created these handles for her new backyard workshop out of Lego bricks.

Scribbing/Cutting Circles in Styrene

I subscribe to FineScale Modeler magazine, even though I’m not really a scale modeler. I was as a teen and still like looking at what people are up to in that hobby. Mainly, I look for modeling tips that I can apply to my hobby of miniature painting and tabletop game modeling. Here’s a great case in point. You can use a scribbing compass to cut circles in styrene. You just have to be patient, make multiple passes, and finish up with a hobby knife if the piece is thick or stubborn.

A Collection of Razor Rules of Thumb

A “razor” is a rule of thumb that simplifies decision making. Here’s a collection of the sharpest razors gathered by Sahil Bloom and posted on Twitter.

The Feynman Razor
Complexity and jargon are used to mask a lack of deep understanding. If you can’t explain it to a 5-year-old, you don’t really understand it. If someone uses a lot of complexity and jargon to explain something, they probably don’t understand it.

The Luck Razor
When choosing between two paths, choose the path that has a larger luck surface area. Your actions put you in a position where luck is more likely to strike. It’s hard to get lucky watching TV at home—it’s easy to get lucky when you’re engaging and learning.

New Column: Ask Gar

If you have questions about tools, things you might have read here in the past, resources you’re in search of, email me.

Reader Rick Griggs asks:
“I need to buy headmounted lighted magnifying glasses. I don’t know what to look for, and thought you’d reviewed (or linked to a review) of these in a distant past newsletter that I could read/watch to learn more, but I can’t find anything. If you have done this, please point me to which one.”

Hey Rick,

I’m not sure it was in the newsletter. I know I talked about these in my old tips column on Make:. The one I have is shown above. It costs under $10 on Amazon! For my purposes (miniature painting), it’s great. It has two lenses that offer 1.5X magnification each and a third monocle lens at 7X magnification, providing intensities at multiples of 1.5, 3, 8.5, and 10. The light angle is adjustable in two directions and the light pack can even be removed from the headband for use elsewhere. A lot of features for under ten bones!

***

My old pal, Steven Roberts, asks about racks to hold Stanley organizing cases:

“Do you know of any quick-turn kits/products to handles stacks of Stanleys? Of course the solution is obvious, but I have so many projects that I don’t want to do it. If someone has made one, or published a good repurposing of something like a bakers rack or other off-the-shelf (heh, so to speak) tool, I’m all ears!

”If you have responses to questioned asked by readers here, let me know.

Shop Talk

In response to the “Maker Slang” column last week, John Seiffer writes:

Regarding the term Minimal Viable Product (MVP). It was coined by Eric Ries in his book The Lean Startup as a way of learning what potential customers found valuable before spending a lot of time and money building something that people didn’t want to buy. Unfortunately, I think Reis did not do a very good job of naming this because it really doesn’t mean a stripped down product. In his world, it refers to anything that you can quickly learn from. Some examples could be a fake landing page which actually does nothing but gather insight about whether customers click on the link or not. I know of a company that used wire frames drawn on paper as an MVP to learn what people would pay for. Yes, it can be a stripped down version of an actual product, but in most cases, if you’re doing that before you’ve learned what people want to pay for, it’s overkill.

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