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.
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.
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.
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.
The concept is brilliant: have one phone number you keep forever, and have all other phones in your life, as you upgrade, or move on, pass through your One Number. You give only that one number out for any cell phones, landlines, or internet phones you have. When someone calls it, you direct which of your phones it rings, and how. Oh, yeah and it is free. I’ve had a Google Voice number since the days when it was called Grand Central (before Google bought it), and it can do so much more than just funnel your numbers. Readers list the benefits. — KK
Things I love:
One number for everything. No more worrying about porting or losing numbers, or having to inform anyone of a change.
Managing contacts and phone numbers via Gmail. Easy and intuitive.
Being able to record different greetings for different contacts, and different contact groups. All my “work” calls get an official voicemail, and myfriends each have their own individualized voicemail that I can change when I want.
Texting through Chrome and the Chrome Voice extension is awesome.
Archiving text messages and voicemails, and having that history searchable by Google’s powerful search engine means never getting rid of a message ever. I like having a record of things from years past.
Making calls right from my desktop without ever having to pick up a phone. Also one-click calling from my Contacts list.
Free video-chatting with multiple parties (upcoming feature when Hangouts merges with Voice). — Logan LaVail
Sending and receiving text messages from Chrome. I text with my employees in the field all day long, and GV is invaluable for that.
Voicemail transcription. It’s only 80-90% accurate, but that’s enough to tell if a message is urgent.
Call screening. People I know and work with ring through, the rest have to identify themselves.
Carrier independence. I can drop my cell phone provider tomorrow and point Google Voice to a new number or numbers at any point. No porting necessary.
2 numbers at once. I moved to a new area but kept my old Google Voice number. No need to worry if people haven’t gotten my new number. — Aaron Weiss
I haven’t even bothered to memorize the numbers attached to my last several phones. At my last job I was given an iPhone, minutes after being handed the phone I was able to route calls going to the same old phone number that I had already been using for years.
Sending text messages from the browser and managing your texts,
Managing calls and voicemails just like email is hugely valuable.
I actually wish that Google would start charging for this service because I would be absolutely devastated if they discontinued it. — Steven Hudosh
Long live this neck saver! Hail to the hand-freer! I’ve been using a headset on my phone for a decade now, and I continue to be puzzled why everyone else doesn’t. A headset lets me make two-hour teleconferences without a bit of discomfort. Having to grip a phone for any length now feels unhealthy. Mine is a pretty typical set with one ear piece and a tiny boom microphone, that altogether weights a few ounces, if that. It takes no extra effort to slip it on when the phone beeps. My hands are completely liberated. With a comfy headset I can take notes, search for a paper, look up a number on my computer, or just stretch, without neck crinks, sore elbows, or squashed ears. You can choose from dozens of models including cordless sets, ear buds, ultralights, or cheapies. Radio Shack has a low end for cost $20 while Hello Direct has a complete selection of the fancy goods, and a line of headset accessories. I’ve seen some go for $6. A lot of people used to refuse them because they thought it made them look dorky, but I see more and more executives sporting them now, and with cellphones it’s become fashionable to have a set in your ear.
But because a headset is so much better for your health I wouldn’t be surprised if companies began to mandate headsets strictly for health reasons. Do your body a favor and use one. — KK
For the last seven years, I’ve used the Mini Recorder Control to document every ‘phoner’ I’ve done as a freelance writer. Like the Recorder Control from Radio Shack, it acts as the go-between for a land line headset and any recorder with a 1/8″ mic jack. However, this one’s about about half the price. Since it’s light and compact, mine is always with me in a little pouch stuffed with a notebook, pens and a Griffin iTalk Pro that allows me to record direct to my iPod. Over time, I’ve upgraded from a desktop dictation machine to a handheld mini-cassette recorder to two different versions of the Griffin. The only item in my “bag of tricks” that hasn’t become obsolete or pooped out is the Mini Recorder Control. Interestingly, I found many of my colleagues in journalism school had independently discovered this exact gadget. — Steven Leckart
No more hold music
Lucy Phone
Lucy Phone is a tool that has helped me deal with one of the annoyances of modern life: waiting on hold. From LucyPhone’s website you can look up the company or toll-free number you want to dial. LucyPhone acts like a conference call: it calls your phone and connects you to the company you wanted to dial.
At any point in the call when you’re placed on hold, you tap ** (star star) and LucyPhone takes over. You can hang up, and LucyPhone will call you back once an operator has picked up on the other end.
From the call operator’s perspective, once they take your call, they are played a brief message from LucyPhone while your number is being called. As soon as you pick up, you are connected to the operator.
The recommended help site GetHuman. com (p. 9) now integrates LucyPhone into their site so that the process is truly seamless, and you don’t even have to initiate the call.
The service is free for consumers. The only drawback I’ve noticed is that it only works for toll-free numbers, so you still have to do things the old fashioned way with companies with local only numbers.
I find LucyPhone much less stressful and annoying than my previous technique of putting the held call on speakerphone and hoping I didn’t leave the room at just the moment I came out of the hold queue. — Nicholas Hanna
Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.
