Author Topic: Confessions of a tool junkie  (Read 121430 times)

andytheflyer

  • Andytheex-flyer.....
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #200 on: 10 November, 2019, 10:54:47 am »
Now this man really is a tool junkie..........

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guSG03tB2vQ

Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #201 on: 11 November, 2019, 09:39:16 am »
Was in Barnetts (A brilliant and huge traditional DIY / lighting and cookware shop in York) on Friday and they had a nice Bahco box of screwdriver bits on special offer. Full set of PZ, PH slotted and Torx. So I bought it. I already have Wera and Weha sets of the more common ones so this will fill in the weird used only once in blue moon sizes. Now I can throw away the quality street tin of rubbish bits I have collected over the years.
I also bought a set of Wiha SoftFinish screwdrivers for normal clean jobs to go with the Were Chiseldrivers I already have for more heavy duty jobs in the garage (these are brilliant by the way they have striking caps and hex shoulders shanks if you need some serious leverage)
This is part of the plane to replace the loads of cheap tools I have acquired over the years with a smaller number of better quality ones.
Next weekend I will be going through my toolboxes and dumping all the crap screwdrivers.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that.

Torslanda

  • Professional Gobshite
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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #202 on: 07 December, 2019, 10:11:55 pm »
By the by I need some new pliers for shop use. I have some Park long nose but after 7 years of constant daily use they're getting a bit tired.

Looking for a set, long nose, combi, side cutters.

Bahco? Knippex? Or something else...?
VELOMANCER

Well that's the more blunt way of putting it but as usual he's dead right.

Zipperhead

  • The cyclist formerly known as Big Helga
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #203 on: 08 December, 2019, 01:43:47 am »
Won't somebody think of the hamsters!

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #204 on: 08 December, 2019, 09:24:29 am »
Is that like a Birmingham screwdriver? (Having googled, I know what it is and have even used one, but had never heard the name.)

This is a Birmingham screwdriver
(click to show/hide)
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #205 on: 08 December, 2019, 10:07:17 am »
..... I'm still hankering after a bandsaw and am considering a seasonal request letter for late December.

Sore point with me, that.   I only needed a small one, so I bought an 8"-throat Metabo BAS 261 in 2017 and a worse POS for the money I've yet to see - bad design and sloppy assembly.  I had to invalidate the guarantee half a dozen different ways to make it usable.  I get the impression that if you're going to pay less than 800€-1200€ you might as well go to Aldi.  Unfortunately, most low-end machines use the same style of upper blade guide arm, which is specially designed to stop you seeing the blade with both eyes at once. Oh, and if you use the built-in LED illumination on the Metabo it casts a deep shadow right where you don't need it.


I was seriously considering the 10" one Aldi have been offering recently for £150. Although there are a lot of good reviews around, there were just too many "had to send it back twice" or "had to modify it" reviews to make me pull the trigger - even at that low price.

It seems at the lower price points - whatever the brand (or indeed whatever it's branded as) you get a lot of people raving about them but at least 25% of reviews are terrible....
Those wonderful norks are never far from my thoughts, oh yeah!

Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #206 on: 08 December, 2019, 11:10:14 am »
..... I'm still hankering after a bandsaw and am considering a seasonal request letter for late December.

Sore point with me, that.   I only needed a small one, so I bought an 8"-throat Metabo BAS 261 in 2017 and a worse POS for the money I've yet to see - bad design and sloppy assembly.  I had to invalidate the guarantee half a dozen different ways to make it usable.  I get the impression that if you're going to pay less than 800€-1200€ you might as well go to Aldi.  Unfortunately, most low-end machines use the same style of upper blade guide arm, which is specially designed to stop you seeing the blade with both eyes at once. Oh, and if you use the built-in LED illumination on the Metabo it casts a deep shadow right where you don't need it.


I was seriously considering the 10" one Aldi have been offering recently for £150. Although there are a lot of good reviews around, there were just too many "had to send it back twice" or "had to modify it" reviews to make me pull the trigger - even at that low price.

It seems at the lower price points - whatever the brand (or indeed whatever it's branded as) you get a lot of people raving about them but at least 25% of reviews are terrible....
You, of all people, should know that cheap tools are generally teh meh. ;)

andytheflyer

  • Andytheex-flyer.....
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #207 on: 08 December, 2019, 11:41:12 am »
..... I'm still hankering after a bandsaw and am considering a seasonal request letter for late December.

Sore point with me, that.   I only needed a small one, so I bought an 8"-throat Metabo BAS 261 in 2017 and a worse POS for the money I've yet to see - bad design and sloppy assembly.  I had to invalidate the guarantee half a dozen different ways to make it usable.  I get the impression that if you're going to pay less than 800€-1200€ you might as well go to Aldi.  Unfortunately, most low-end machines use the same style of upper blade guide arm, which is specially designed to stop you seeing the blade with both eyes at once. Oh, and if you use the built-in LED illumination on the Metabo it casts a deep shadow right where you don't need it.


I was seriously considering the 10" one Aldi have been offering recently for £150. Although there are a lot of good reviews around, there were just too many "had to send it back twice" or "had to modify it" reviews to make me pull the trigger - even at that low price.

It seems at the lower price points - whatever the brand (or indeed whatever it's branded as) you get a lot of people raving about them but at least 25% of reviews are terrible....

IMHO, you are better off hunting for a better quality used machine on Fleabay or wherever, then doing whatever needs to be done to get it back to near-perfect condition.  That way, and I've done this, you end up with a better quality machine, that you know inside out, and you may well have still paid less overall than on some cheapo bit of re-badged new Chinese tat.  That's not to say that the Chinese cannot make good quality tools, they certainly can, but they make tools to a price point set by the UK importers, and that price point is too low to buy anything even half decent.

And breathe...........

Kim

  • Timelord
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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #208 on: 08 December, 2019, 12:59:16 pm »
Is that like a Birmingham screwdriver? (Having googled, I know what it is and have even used one, but had never heard the name.)

This is a Birmingham screwdriver
(click to show/hide)

Made in Digbeth[1].


[1] "It's like Stokes Croft, but industrial"

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #209 on: 09 December, 2019, 11:28:20 am »
A Stokes Croft screwdriver is probably a can of nitrous!
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

robgul

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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #210 on: 09 December, 2019, 09:12:06 pm »
Is that like a Birmingham screwdriver? (Having googled, I know what it is and have even used one, but had never heard the name.)

This is a Birmingham screwdriver
(click to show/hide)

Made in Digbeth[1].


[1] "It's like Stokes Croft, but industrial"

Huh, the spoiler pic is just the lightweight model

Rob

Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #211 on: 02 January, 2020, 05:04:43 pm »
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche

Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #212 on: 03 January, 2020, 07:58:07 pm »
I was in Japan House ealier. Amongst other things that looked lovely but were too spendy for me were these (my finger included for scale).


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Mrs Pingu

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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #213 on: 03 January, 2020, 08:18:36 pm »
Further to the above, the same should also apply for cow-okers who "borrow" Lindstrom cutters in order to attend to their manicure.

In the same vein, siblings who want to borrow your nice wee cuticle nippers to cut their inch thick adamantine toenails.
Do not clench. It only makes it worse.

robgul

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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #214 on: 03 January, 2020, 08:42:17 pm »
I acquired one of these today   

https://www.screwfix.com/p/marxman-green-chalk-non-permanent-marker/1977K?tc=YT7&ds_kid=92700022888057570&ds_rl=1241687&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1244066&ds_rl=1249796&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1249484&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIyvHa3KTo5gIViLPtCh0Vdgp0EAQYAiABEgJ9B_D_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds   

- really clever and just a fiver.   

I sent Mrs robgul to collect it and she picked up a Dymo labelmaker in Aldi's Special Buys on the way home - all sorts of stuff now bears labels!

Rob

Kim

  • Timelord
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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #215 on: 03 January, 2020, 08:47:59 pm »
I sent Mrs robgul to collect it and she picked up a Dymo labelmaker in Aldi's Special Buys on the way home - all sorts of stuff now bears labels!

I'm a big fan of the Dymo embossed label.  It's like living in an episode of Look Around You, and gives homebrew electronics an authentic Back To The Future aesthetic.  But mine has the fatal flaw of lacking a '-' character.  I think they left it off to make room for umlauts or something.

This is inconvenient when you're, to pick a frustrating example, labelling the voltage outputs on a power supply.  But more importantly, it means you can't label things with "-o-matic" suffixes.  Useless!

(I recently thought I'd broken it, but it was just a bit of off-brand label that had got stuck in the mechanism, easily rectified with tweezers.  Which is a shame in that I don't have an excuse to replace it with a proper label printer, but saves me from researching label printers, which are printers and therefore a work of Stan.)

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #216 on: 04 January, 2020, 10:07:32 am »
The original daisy-wheel printer.  I've got a 1980s one somewhere, filched from my final employers when they were going bust.  The adhesive was always a bit hit & miss.  Nothing inspires confidence like labelling half a dozen drawers and finding the labels on the floor next morning.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

robgul

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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #217 on: 04 January, 2020, 10:51:46 am »
I sent Mrs robgul to collect it and she picked up a Dymo labelmaker in Aldi's Special Buys on the way home - all sorts of stuff now bears labels!

I'm a big fan of the Dymo embossed label.  It's like living in an episode of Look Around You, and gives homebrew electronics an authentic Back To The Future aesthetic.  But mine has the fatal flaw of lacking a '-' character.  I think they left it off to make room for umlauts or something.

This is inconvenient when you're, to pick a frustrating example, labelling the voltage outputs on a power supply.  But more importantly, it means you can't label things with "-o-matic" suffixes.  Useless!

(I recently thought I'd broken it, but it was just a bit of off-brand label that had got stuck in the mechanism, easily rectified with tweezers.  Which is a shame in that I don't have an excuse to replace it with a proper label printer, but saves me from researching label printers, which are printers and therefore a work of Stan.)

I had an embosing one years ago - this new one is the Letratag that prints (thermal) onto either a paper or plastic strip that's self-adhesive with a kiss-cut on the back to peel easily - and it has language options for special characters as well as a whole host of little emojis and icons.  Such fun

Rob

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #218 on: 17 January, 2020, 02:36:47 pm »
Received a nice little Stanley vice from Amazon this morning: clamps onto a tabletop and swivels on a ball & socket. Only problem: nary a trace of grease anywhere, and patches of rust on the ball making it hard to budge.  OK, it should take all of ten minutes to put right, but still... tut.

I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

robgul

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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #219 on: 17 January, 2020, 08:16:05 pm »
Just bought a brad gun a.k.a. nail/staple gun - fires 2" nails  :thumbsup:   - it's a battery/cordless model so very portable (stuff at the allotment to make from old pallets)  - been on a bit of a beano with tools recently as I also bought a biscuit jointer last week.

AND related to tools I'm off on 3 days of woodworking course next week to brush up some of my power tool skills.

Rob

T42

  • Apprentice geezer
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #220 on: 18 January, 2020, 09:27:46 am »
AND related to tools I'm off on 3 days of woodworking course next week to brush up some of my power tool skills.

Fun!  When I was looking for something in the Inlaw Paw's old stuff a few weeks back I found a playing-card box I made for the Inlaw Maw around 1970.  I did most of it with a B&D drill with a circular saw attachment, including cutting rebates into the edge of ¼" stock.  I wouldn't think of attempting that now.  I didn't even have a Workmate then so I had to work on the floor.
I've dusted off all those old bottles and set them up straight

robgul

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Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #221 on: 18 January, 2020, 10:04:08 am »
AND related to tools I'm off on 3 days of woodworking course next week to brush up some of my power tool skills.

Fun!  When I was looking for something in the Inlaw Paw's old stuff a few weeks back I found a playing-card box I made for the Inlaw Maw around 1970.  I did most of it with a B&D drill with a circular saw attachment, including cutting rebates into the edge of ¼" stock.  I wouldn't think of attempting that now.  I didn't even have a Workmate then so I had to work on the floor.

Ah - the old B&D "attachments" that turned the basic drill into other tools - IIRC I had a circular saw and a hedge trimmer.

Rob

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #222 on: 18 January, 2020, 10:56:22 am »
I sent Mrs robgul to collect it and she picked up a Dymo labelmaker in Aldi's Special Buys on the way home - all sorts of stuff now bears labels!

I'm a big fan of the Dymo embossed label.  It's like living in an episode of Look Around You, and gives homebrew electronics an authentic Back To The Future aesthetic.  But mine has the fatal flaw of lacking a '-' character.  I think they left it off to make room for umlauts or something.

This is inconvenient when you're, to pick a frustrating example, labelling the voltage outputs on a power supply.  But more importantly, it means you can't label things with "-o-matic" suffixes.  Useless!

(I recently thought I'd broken it, but it was just a bit of off-brand label that had got stuck in the mechanism, easily rectified with tweezers.  Which is a shame in that I don't have an excuse to replace it with a proper label printer, but saves me from researching label printers, which are printers and therefore a work of Stan.)

I had an embosing one years ago - this new one is the Letratag that prints (thermal) onto either a paper or plastic strip that's self-adhesive with a kiss-cut on the back to peel easily - and it has language options for special characters as well as a whole host of little emojis and icons.  Such fun

Rob
That would get me labelling everything just for the experience, call it an Adam complex, giving names to all the creatures, plants, rocks and stuff.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

robgul

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  • cyclist, Cytech accredited mechanic & woodworker
    • Cycle:End-to-End
Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #223 on: 18 January, 2020, 01:16:46 pm »
I sent Mrs robgul to collect it and she picked up a Dymo labelmaker in Aldi's Special Buys on the way home - all sorts of stuff now bears labels!

I'm a big fan of the Dymo embossed label.  It's like living in an episode of Look Around You, and gives homebrew electronics an authentic Back To The Future aesthetic.  But mine has the fatal flaw of lacking a '-' character.  I think they left it off to make room for umlauts or something.

This is inconvenient when you're, to pick a frustrating example, labelling the voltage outputs on a power supply.  But more importantly, it means you can't label things with "-o-matic" suffixes.  Useless!

(I recently thought I'd broken it, but it was just a bit of off-brand label that had got stuck in the mechanism, easily rectified with tweezers.  Which is a shame in that I don't have an excuse to replace it with a proper label printer, but saves me from researching label printers, which are printers and therefore a work of Stan.)

I had an embosing one years ago - this new one is the Letratag that prints (thermal) onto either a paper or plastic strip that's self-adhesive with a kiss-cut on the back to peel easily - and it has language options for special characters as well as a whole host of little emojis and icons.  Such fun

Rob
That would get me labelling everything just for the experience, call it an Adam complex, giving names to all the creatures, plants, rocks and stuff.

Our 10 year old grandson labelled their label machine as "LABEL MACHINE" - he also made a label with my name on it and stuck it on the back of my phone!

Rob

Re: Confessions of a tool junkie
« Reply #224 on: 18 January, 2020, 01:48:42 pm »
<snipped for brevity>
Our 10 year old grandson labelled their label machine as "LABEL MACHINE" - he also made a label with my name on it and stuck it on the back of my phone!

You've got a budding ISO 9000 compliance officer* there.  :demon:

https://dilbert.com/strip/1995-11-07


* Or whatever companies call the person whose job it is to make sure that everything is properly labelled, and that no matter how poor, the company procedures are well-documented and used consistently.
"He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." ~ Freidrich Neitzsche