{"id":37354,"date":"2020-11-19T09:00:43","date_gmt":"2020-11-19T16:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=37354"},"modified":"2020-11-17T12:50:24","modified_gmt":"2020-11-17T19:50:24","slug":"making-every-scrap-count","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/making-every-scrap-count\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Every Scrap Count"},"content":{"rendered":"

Making Every Scrap Count<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Cutting

Cutting too-small scraps on a diagonal to get the most out of them.<\/p><\/div>\n

Jimmy DiResta has started doing \u201cTip of the Day\u201d videos on his\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0stories. This gladdens my heart because Jimmy telling me about his Dad doing these was one of the inspirations for\u00a0my tips book<\/a>\u00a0(and by extension, this newsletter). When Jimmy was working construction with his Dad, every morning over coffee, Dad would announce \u201ctip of the day\u201d and share words of wisdom with his crew. Now, Jimmy\u2019s doing the same with his internet \u201ccrew.\u201d In the above tip, he shows how, if you have a piece of special wood that you want to use and it\u2019s too small to fit the desires space, try cutting it on the diagonal and positioning the two resulting triangles to create a composite piece.<\/p>\n

Is Keeping Idea Notebooks a Bad Idea?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Some

Some of my pocket notebooks from over the years.<\/p><\/div>\n

One of my favorite books on the craft of writing is Stephen King\u2019s\u00a0On Writing<\/a>. I\u2019ve learned and incorporated so much from it. One bit of his advice that I completely disagree with is about not keeping idea notebooks. King is fond of saying that \u201cnotebooks are where your ideas go to die.\u201d I love the volumes and volumes of my pocket notebooks. They not only hold ideas that I\u2019ve had (and yes, many I end up using), they form something of a record of my creative thinking over the years. But, the reason King gives for his dislike of such book contains a kernel of truth. He says such notebooks only capture weak ideas that don\u2019t have enough presence for you to remember them. Really brilliant ideas, he says, never leave you, they haunt you (we know they haunt\u00a0him<\/em>) till you have to do something about them. That part I agree with. For me, good ideas (that I might come back and mine later on) go into notebooks. Great ideas persist whether I write them down or not. [Over the past 15 years or so, I\u2019ve kept the same kind of notebooks, the\u00a0Moleskine Cahiers<\/a>. I\u2019m up to about 25 volumes. If there was a fire in the house, besides saving my beloved Angela and Toci the cat, these are what I\u2019d grab next.]<\/p>\n

Jar Remover Rubber Grips in the Shop<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Rubber

Rubber persuaders for the shop.<\/p><\/div>\n

We all know about the usefulness of\u00a0rubber jar openers<\/a>\u00a0in the kitchen, but they\u2019re also useful in the shop. Besides using them on bottle and jars, they also come in handy for getting extra grip and torque on tools like drivers and for tightening handles and knobs on machinery.<\/p>\n

3D Print a Pocket Hole Jig<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Save

Save yourself some dough and 3D print your next pocket jig.<\/p><\/div>\n

If you do woodworking and have access to a 3D printer, you can save money on pocket hole jigs (used to drill angled holes in wood for fastening to another board).\u00a0This 3D printed jig<\/a>\u00a0is equivalent to the\u00a0heavy-duty jig<\/a>\u00a0that Kreg sells for $70 (including bit and driver). Besides the few bucks in printer filament, the jig uses two \u00bd” ID bushings.<\/p>\n

Delaying Removal of the Protective Plastic on Electronics<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"The

The control surface of my washing machine is new all over again!<\/p><\/div>\n

You know how this works. Months after getting a new appliance or consumer electronic device, you realize that you forgot to remove that protective plastic film on the control surface. Removing it\u2026man is that satisfying. In fact, it\u2019s so satisfying (think: popping bubble wrap) that there\u2019s even a name for it: \u201cThat peeling feeling\u201d or \u201cTPF.\u201d And a\u00a0Reddit group<\/a>. Recently, I discovered that I\u2019d forgotten to remove the film on several devices. The most recent was my Maytag washing machine which is at least 15 years old. It was looking pretty shabby, but after removing the plastic, it\u2019s like new again! At least the control panel is. I\u2019m thinking that, in the future, I might leave that film on until the device is in need of a little facelift. That peeling feeling. Magic!<\/p>\n

Hand-Making a Gorgeous Shop Dustpan<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"World's

World’s most beautiful dustpan.<\/p><\/div>\n

In a\u00a0recent video series<\/a>\u00a0on Ron Covell\u2019s\u00a0YouTube<\/em>\u00a0channel, he builds a hammer-form for fabricating a gorgeous aluminum dustpan. The project is a collaboration between him and\u00a0This Old Tony<\/a>. Ron is making the pan and Tony will make the handle. Ron has one more video in the series and then Tony will do a video on making the handle. There are some great tips in here, like annealing (softening) aluminum for bending by using\u00a0black permanent marker\u00a0<\/a>to cover the metal and then burning it off with a propane torch. The ink burns off at the temperature needed for the annealing to happen. And he shares a tip for using bar soap on a disk sander and the workpiece to act as a lubricant and to keep the disk from getting loaded up with aluminum filings (aka \u201cswarf\u201d).<\/p>\n

Shop Talk<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"That's

That’s a “hose bib” to you, mister!<\/p><\/div>\n

Paul Dulaney<\/strong>\u00a0on using the wrong term<\/a>: \u201cI\u2019m not hands-on when it comes to plumbing and this week I called a plumber to replace the pressure regulator valve at the front of my house. I told him that I would also like him to replace the faucet that the garden hose is connected to. Apparently \u2018faucet\u2019 is the wrong word; it\u2019s called a ‘hose bib.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

I just discovered this myself when I\u00a0replaced my hose bib<\/a>\u00a0a few months ago. I\u2019ve always called it a spigot or outdoor faucet. While these terms are often used interchangeably, the most industry-accepted terms are hose bib (or hose bibb or hose bibb) and sillcock. The main difference between an indoor faucet and a hose bib is that a bib is made to withstand the elements. The term sillcock refers to the fact that it\u2019s usually located on the sill board above the house\u2019s foundation.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

In response to my piece on\u00a0dirty work hands<\/a>, reader\u00a0KokoTheTalkingApe\u00a0<\/strong>responded: \u201cWhen I studied printmaking, I was constantly getting block ink on my hands, and that stuff is powerful. Even a tiny bit will stain your hands, plus all the switches and handles and doors and equipment you touch, plus your clothes, your face, plus all the stuff that your clothes touch, etc. It just never stops.<\/p>\n

“But I had a woman in our class who was a semi-pro lithographer, making prints that sold for hundreds or thousands of dollars. She was taking the class just to broaden herself a little. Her hands were always perfectly clean. She didn\u2019t wash her hands all the time, she just was mindful of how and where she put ink. I would walk out of the class looking like a coal miner, and she looked like she\u2019d just come from the mall. She was skilled, that\u2019s all there was to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gareth’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales – Issue #69<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13684,"featured_media":37361,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[2371],"tags":[2372],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37354"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13684"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37362,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37354\/revisions\/37362"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}