makezine.com: TNT, Round 02: The History of Us

TNT Newsletter for July 28, 2006

Not one, but two screw gun alternatives, hitting the nail on the head, 21st-century crystal radio, learning from the ancients, and drawing a straight line.

Dear Readers,

It all started with an Instructables post. (Instructables, for those of you not in the know, is a great collaborative site for posting instructions on how to make everything from wooden bicycles to fractal pecan pies.)

MAKE columnist Tim Anderson posted about a contest he had with his friend Don, pitting an old tool against a new one. Turns out the old tool held up pretty well. (See below for his review, and another users response, recommending a push driver instead.) As great as new gadgets are, I've been noticing a lot of people fiercely defending their treasured old tools lately, so I thought I'd dedicate this edition of TNT to the oldies but still goodies.

If you're looking for a well-loved tool, eBay or Craigslist are probably the places to hit first, but there are a lot of websites dedicated to selling you the perfect vintage tool (or maintaining the ones you already had gathering dust in the back of the garage). Some, like the classic brace and bit, fill in for modern electric tools in a pinch (or a black out). Others turn out to have been the best for the job all along and haven't changed much in centuries.

Here are a few resources to help you track down that exact plane you remember from your granddad's workshop, find the modern equivalent of an old tool, or just chat it up with other classic tool lovers:

It might make sense to start with the all-text Antique Tool FAQ page. It will give you a good, non-partisan look at the antique tool world and a sense of what to look out for.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~alf/en/antique-tool-faq.txt

The Galoot's Progress is a fun website for "galoots" (defined on the site as "a person with a deep passion for old hand tools, their ways, workings, and their history").
http://homepage.mac.com/galoot_9/galtprog.html

There are an amazing number of websites selling old and antique tools, and many of them are listed on this Open Directory of Antique Tools.
http://dmoz.org/Recreation/Antiques/Tools/

And don't forget to just try searching the web for names of tools you'd like to try out; there are a lot of contemporary manufacturers who haven't forgotten how to make some of the classics.

Screw Gun Alternative

Reviewed by Tim Anderson
http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=pd_sl_aw_tops-1_tools_10475103_1/103-2089707-4420602?search-alias=tools&keywords=bit%20brace
$18

I had a screw-off with the famous Don Montague the other day. We squared off across a crate that had too much stuff attached to it with drywall screws. We would vie to see who could extract them most rapidly. He had his trusty sidearm, the Dewalt battery drill. I used my old faithful brace and bit with a screwdriver bit. He pulled ahead at first, zipping the screws out as fast as they would come. I wasn't far behind. Once a screw got started, I'd switch to one-handed, gripping the top knob and swinging the handle around like a flywheel, so the screws were coming out almost as fast as with a drill.

Then we started swapping yarns and the brace really shone; it was so quiet I didn't have to stop working to talk. The battery drill was loud enough that Don had to syncopate his work to let the tales flow. So I started to catch up. Unfortunately, we ran out of screws to pull. When the smoke cleared, Don was the winner. (Due to his skill and indomitable spirit more than the equipment, of course.)

We were both surprised how well the thousand-year-old tool had done, the basic old brace and bit you never use. Pick it up again and try it with a screwdriver bit. It's got no batteries to charge or cord to trip over; it's quiet; and you can even drop it in the water a couple of times without hurting it or electrocuting yourself. It's a whole lot faster than you'd expect, and you won't split your wood or break screws as much as before.

Editor's Note: Tim received a few comments recommending a variation on the brace and bit, the push driver. Besides the one below, see Instructables for the complete conversation.

Discussion

Yankee Push Driver

Reviewed by Matt Nicksic
http://www.lara.com/cgi-bin/store/commerce.cgi
$22

Stanley bought out the Yankee brand name at some point and has subsequently diluted it by selling non-push-style screwdrivers under the Yankee name. These are great tools and for many applications are better than a brace and bit, since they do not need room for the handle to swing and they come in a couple of different sizes.

The first time I saw one of these as a kid, De Niro was brandishing one in the movie Brazil (it's also a great example of the tool's speed and ease of use). At first I thought it was some fictitious movie-magic tool until a little later when I saw Roy Underhill with one on the Woodwright's Shop. While building and tearing down stage sets in college, I never had to worry about the tool walking off either, since everyone else was too busy fighting over the last charged battery pack to learn how to use it.

Discussion

Nail It

Reviewed by Arwen O'Reilly Griffith

Two handy tips I picked up in an old, out-of-print book of "household helps": To drive nails in plaster without cracking the plaster, put the nail in hot water for a few minutes and it can then be driven in securely without damage to the wall. To loosen screws and nails which have become rusted into wood, hold a red hot iron to the head of the screw for a short time and use the screwdriver while the screw is still hot.

Discussion

Japanese Marking Gauge

Reviewed by Ross Orr
http://www.hidatool.com/woodpage/marking.html
$35

It comes up often enough in the shop: You want to mark a line X inches in from the edge of something. You end up futzing around with tape measures, pencil tick-marks, and straightedges--but still aren't sure you got it exactly right. Well, Japanese woodworkers have been worrying about this problem for a few centuries longer than you, and have evolved a better way: the marking gauges called kebiki.

The kama kebiki type has a comfortably rounded oak grip, and two (retractable) steel knives for scribing lines. Scoring cut-lines in wood reduces chip-out; and strips of thin veneers, plastics, etc., can be sliced off directly. Plus it's one of those special tools that gives you pleasure just picking it up.

Discussion

The Ancient Engineers

Reviewed by Arwen O'Reilly Griffith
http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780345482877
$23

MAKE pal Peter Mui brought this book, by L. Sprague de Camp, in to us because he thought it was right up our alley, and he hit the nail on the head (so to speak). A classic, the book has been reissued many times since it was first published in 1960. This is a fascinating look at history through the eyes of engineers, and places them in the context of their times, quoting liberally from contemporary documents (and sometimes even poetry!) to bring the scene alive.

The Ancient Engineers is a wonderful mixture of excellent research, detailed descriptions, drawings, and photographs. Take some of the assertions with a grain of salt--it is over forty years old, after all--but enjoy de Camp's delight in the ingenuity of his forebears. He paints a fascinating picture of the daring and vision of these early men (and sometimes women) who quite literally built the foundations of our civilization.

Discussion

Crystal Radio Kit for the Modern Era

Reviewed by Joseph Pasquini
http://midnightscience.com
$35

In today’s modern world of radio communications, it’s easy to dismiss radio kit building as a remnant of the past. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Thanks to the efforts of the family-owned and operated Xtal Set Society, kit enthusiasts can once again put solder to the pad and enjoy a great--not to mention functional and educational--radio build.

Their Big Brother XS404 Crystal Radio Kit has molded coils as well as the option to wind your own, an antenna tuner, variable capacitance diode for station tuning, and a transistor amplifier for the included ear piece. Unlike the frustrations often associated with the simple crystal receivers we all grew up with, the XS404’s tuner aids in suppressing nearby signals while the PN2222 transistor serves to boost weaker ones.

Discussion