Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up here.
I want to grow my subscriber base. To aid in this, I’m announcing a Holiday Giveaway Challenge. I’ll be giving away a bundle of inscribed copies of both of my tips books (Vol. 1, Vol. 2) and three of my favorite everyday tools: The Williams ratcheting screwdriver, the Canary cardboard cutter, and a plastic razor blade. To be eligible for the drawing, you need to convince three people to sign up for my newsletter (and then email me their names). If you sign up 5 (or more), you get two entries in the drawing. Contest ends Midnight, Dec. 11. Sorry, but this contest is US-only!
Force Conversion Calculators
On Digi-Key’s website, they have a set of calculators for converting between various units of physical force (newtons, gram-force, metric ton-force, and others). So, the next time you need to covert between Sthène and Poundal…
Torture-Testing Bench Vises
Bench vises are one of those common tools where people rave about the cheap ones available at Harbor Freight. I’ve always wondered how true this was. So, seeing this Project Farm video, I was anxious to know how the Freight would fare. Todd tested the following brands: Heuer, Ridgid, Yost, Wilton, Baileigh, Irwin, Forward, Central Forge, Olympia, Myoyay. Vises were tested for clamp load, durability from impact, anvil durability, and clamp load failure point. This is one of the few Project Farm videos I’ve seen where Todd pushed the tool to complete failure.
Sure enough, the $69 (at time of testing) Harbor Freight vise (Central Forge) performed amazingly well. Not surprisingly, the $500 (at time of testing) Heuer was best overall. Now that I see this testing, I’m definitely going to grab a Harbor Freight vise. When we moved to California last year, I left my two vises on the east coast and I’ve been missing having one (beyond my Dremel hobby vise).
The Basics of Photochemical Machining for Precise Parts
In this Applied Science video, Ben provides a nice and thorough introduction to photoetching small, precise metal parts, aka photochemical machining. The process is involved, not really for beginners, and this is a work-in-progress video. But, because there aren’t any vendors out there (that I’m aware of) providing this service for small-batch photochemical machining, this video is a way in if you need to consider creating such small, precision metal parts on your own.
Bringing a Rusted Cast Iron Skillet Back from the Dead
Over on Boing Boing, Mark Frauenfelder shared this video on one of the many processes (basically they’re all the same with some variation) for reviving a completely rusty cast iron skillet. Years ago, I decided to revive the 3 very rusty skillets I had in the bottom of my pots and pans cabinet. I watched several videos and followed a similar process. It was so satisfying to bring these decades-old kitchen tools back to life.
The Existential Pleasures of Restoration and Repair
Good as new!
Speaking of kitchen tools, my wife’s handheld mixer died recently. I heard it seize up as she was making something downstairs. We could’ve just bought a new one (this thing is ancient), but I really wanted to fix it, especially as she told me of its lineage. This is the first and only mixer she’s ever had. Every holiday feast was made with this mixer. She raised her kids on this mixer. Her sister gave it to her. As I like to say, tools always come with stories, and this one has great stories. I took it to my workbench, took it apart, and had a look. I quickly discover that the wormgear that transfers the motor’s spin to the beater gears was frozen. Some WD-40 and and few gentle twists with the needle nose and it was working again. Easy! The beater ejector had long ago broken, so I fixed that, too. The mixer was filled with decades of dust, batter gunk, and thickened oil. I took everything apart, cleaned it, inside and out, and put it all back together. This process was an act of love, for my wife, and also for the stories this mixer tells. And now, will continue to tell.
Noteable Quotables
“I always work at the edge of what I understand.” -Musician, artist, Brian Eno
“There is nothing worse than a brilliant beginning.” –Pablo Picasso
Shop Talk
Paul Cryan writes:
Watching the Stumpy Nubs vid on oscillating tools, I thought about getting mine out and seeing if it could solve some of my “learning issues” with 3D printing. Not only did my Dremel Multi-Max MM40 fit with a Diablo HCS flexible adhesive scraping blade do beautiful work cutting away support material from PLA prints, but I’m pretty sure it will work to get those stubborn PETG prints to release from the PEI print surfaces I’ve got on all my printers. To my surprise, at a shallow angle of attack (e.g., < ~30 degrees) the oscillating adhesive blade doesn’t seem harmful to the print surface, despite its keen front edge, and it wiggles under really stuck PETG. As pointed out in the Stumpy Nubs video, the oscillating blade can be grabbed without danger. I think it might become my new favorite way of releasing sticky 3D prints so that I don’t damage the surfaces of my printers.
***
Reader Kristian Reinhart (who was the winner of last year’s holiday tips challenge) sent a batch of new tips. Here are a few:
* The quickest non-chemical way I’ve found to clean up the surface of 3D prints (especially flats or edges on FDM prints) is using a snap-off blade and scraping over the surface. Much less hassle than sandpaper. Card scrapers, especially small ones, also work great, and depending on their shape and the shape of the print, shape do so far better than the snap-off blades, but they’re not as ubiquitously available and require maintenance.
* When lending tools or other things, I take a picture and edit it to write down the name of the recipient, then I store those pictures in a separate folder on my phone. That way, I always know exactly what I lent out to whom, and from the date of the picture, when.
Become a Patron!Support our reviews, videos, and podcasts on Patreon!
Cool tools really work.
A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
Everything you could possibly want to know about recycling human waste is found in the third edition of the Humanure Handbook.
In addition this heroic book tells you how to make your own small homemade composting toilet using 5-gallon buckets and a regular toilet seat, and how to compost the deposits usefully. This can be used for an emergency toilet, for a cabin, or in a motor home, or for everyday use if you have a garden. One of the videos on the book’s website details the clever idea of how a music festival used sawdust toilets instead of porta-potties to much relief.
The book is also available as free PDFs; the chapter on building your own sawdust toilet is Chapter 8. — KK
After using composting toilets on a few sailboats and one in a relative’s cabin, I would say they are all prone to smells, breakage and disappointment. EXCEPT for the DIY five-gallon sawdust bucket described in the Humanure Handbook. Nothing to go wrong. I’ve never had a smell issue either in the toilet or the compost pile. It requires a little bit of ongoing effort, but in my opinion this is ‘positive’ maintenance as opposed to negative maintenance when any other toilet breaks down. As an added bonus the bucket can be built into an attractive box to match the style and material of your space and looks far better than almost any toilet on the market including water closets. — Mackey McLelland
I have used this sawdust composting toilet for 10 years now without problems. There really is nothing to have a problem with. I originally envied a neighbor who had shelled out for one of the big production composting toilets. It broke in less than two years (an important mechanical part of the ‘tumbler’ was poorly designed and failed). He was left with a couple hundred pounds of incompletely composted humanure in his house. To say that he was unhappy is an understatement. He has used a sawdust toilet since then. In short, unless local regulations require a production toilet (increasingly they do not) a sawdust toilet is the way to go.
A couple of suggestions: use wood pellets if you find sawdust hard to come across; they quickly turn to sawdust. Don’t turn your humanure compost piles just leave them…for years. They will take care of themselves. You can find instructions for a sawdust toilet on line easily. It is embarrassingly simple and much more hygienic (even though most people’s first reaction, including mine, is, “Ewwww.”).
The sawdust toilet also provides a perfect emergency toilet (for hurricanes, power outages, etc) Just keep a 5 gallon bucket, 2 lids, and a bag of wood pellets in a closet. Cut a salad plate sized hole in one of the lids for use as a ‘seat’ and put the other over it to ‘close the lid’. Just make sure to dispose of the humanure responsibly after the emergency. — Rob Groesbeck
This is the definitive source on composting crappers, from why to how, and yes, the scatological humor abounds. Yet this is a serious issue. Biosolids are recycled and used in the U.S. and around the world by governments and municipalities, and not always in the most responsible ways. Jenkins gives you the knowledge to do it yourself and do it responsibly. The entire contents of this comprehensive guide are available as a free PDF download, and the Jenkins Publishing site offers up instructional videos, too. Very helpful when I constructed my own bucket toilet. — Erik Knutzen
“We don’t want to eat shit!” they informed me, rather distressed (that’s an exact quote), as if in preparing dinner I had simply set a steaming turd on a plate in front of them with a knife, fork and napkin. Fecophobia is alive and well and running rampant. One common misconception is that fecal material, when composted, remains fecal material. It does not. Humanure comes from the earth, and through the miraculous process of composting, is converted back into earth.
That’s also why humanure and urine alone will not compost. They contain too much nitrogen and not enough carbon, and microorganisms, like humans, gag at the thought of eating it. Since there’s nothing worse than the thought of several billion gagging microorganisms, a carbon-based material must be added to the humanure in order to make it into an appealing dinner. Plant cellulose is a carbon-based material, and therefore plant by-products such as hay, straw, weeds or even paper products if ground to the proper consistency, will provide the needed carbon. Kitchen food scraps are generally C/N balanced, and they can be readily added to humanure compost. Sawdust (preferably not kiln-dried) is a good carbon material for balancing the nitrogen of humanure.
A wide array of microorganisms live in a compost pile. Bacteria are especially abundant and are usually divided into several classes based upon the temperatures at which they best thrive. The low temperature bacteria are thepsychrophiles, which can grow at temperatures down to -10°C, but whose optimum temperature is 15°C (59°F) or lower. The mesophileslive at medium temperatures, 20-45°C (68-113°F), and include human pathogens. Thermophiles thrive above 45°C (113°F), and some live at, or even above, the boiling point of water.
If a backyard composter has any doubt or concern about the existence of pathogenic organisms in his or her humanure compost, s/he can use the compost for horticultural purposes rather than for food purposes. Humanure compost can grow an amazing batch of berries, flowers, bushes, or trees. Furthermore, lingering pathogens continue to die after the compost has been applied to the soil, which is not surprising since human pathogens prefer the warm and moist environment of the human body. As the World Bank researchers put it, “even pathogens remaining in compost seem to disappear rapidly in the soil.” [Night Soil Composting, 1981] Finally, compost can be tested for pathogens by compost testing labs.
Allow me to make a radical suggestion: humanure is not dangerous. More specifically, it is not any more dangerous than the body from which it is excreted. The danger lies in what we do with humanure, not in the material itself. To use an analogy, a glass jar is not dangerous either. However, if we smash it on the kitchen floor and walk on it with bare feet, we will be harmed. If we use a glass jar improperly and dangerously, we will suffer for it, but that’s no reason to condemn glass jars. When we discard humanure as a waste material and pollute our soil and water supplies with it, we are using it improperly, and that is where the danger lies. When we constructively recycle humanure by composting, it enriches our soil, and, like a glass jar, actually makes life easier for us.
I grew up with a Carousel composting toilet in our house. It works well, Draining the urine, using a scoop of sawdust every time, and the occasional insertion of beneficial bacteria, all help prevent odors. We had a 12V fan, as well. Two years is the recommended time for between deposition and cleaning. We used it as our primary family toilet for over 15 years, before my father no longer wanted to clean it. It never broke down, and never had any issues. It can handle a whole family year round.
For individuals or occasional vacation use, I’d recommend the Sun-Mar standard Excel. — Courtney Ostaff