Can't Find What You Need? Make Your Own Tools

As much as DIY ethics apply to music, the same rationale has lived much longer in the world of tools. Trying to find any tinkerer that hasn't made up some sort of custom jig or way of doing thing, is harder to find than someone who truly can explain and rationalize gun control. While eating lunch or just thinking on ideas, we always scour youtube for new videos on tools, tips and tricks. Check out this great workshop of custom tools in England. Making your own spot welder, now that sounds damn cool!

Forget Lions, Tigers and Bears, Tools Are Our Kind Of Tattoo Flash

Forget lions, tigers and bears, tools are our kind of tattoo flash. We have a cool project in the works and decided to post a teaser of what is in the works.

Rusty Knuckles © 2013 tool illustrations

Rusty Knuckles Belt Loops Featured On Craftsman Slideshow

The biggest honor I think one can ever receive is when folks dig your work and talk on it. We have been producing our signature belt loops for about six months now. They are a clean style and made to function perfectly, plain and simple. It is a great honor to know they are featured on the Craftsman Tools Flickr slide show on Craftsman.com. Sears Craftsman tools and toolboxes have been a staple item with us, since getting our first three drawer tool box as a kid filled with sockets, a few ratchets and some other hand tools from the bearded one up north. Stoked beyond belief, is probably the best way we can sum things up.

Got a tool junkie in your family? Order them some new tools

Rusty Knuckles Belt Loops designed for Rough Design Co. featured on Craftsman.com photo page

The Birth Of A Custom Tool. Axe Making With John Neeman

Creating something by hand is a building block experience. It could be a mundane chore or a complex operation. Instilling craftsmanship and hard work into any project should always be the goal. Seeing crappy work, such as what he had done recently to a new door being put on baffles me. The slackers even left the stickers on the door and drilled out holes in the wrong area and left them to be seen. Quality is something we strive for and get damn stoked when we see other folks who exemplify this notion. 

John Neeman is a craftsman who makes tools by hand. His methodology is a mix of modern day technology, with old world ideas. To see a person in their element and going through the motions of creating from scratch is a peek back in time. With the amount of throw away consumer goods that pervade store shelves, knowing quality items are out there ignites our fire for new ideas.

Check out the original short film on Vimeo



The Birth Of A Tool. Part I. Axe Making (by John Neeman) from John Neeman Tools on Vimeo.

"This is a short documentary movie that shows the whole process of how the John Neeman tools are being hand crafted.

"It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift which is our hands. If the craze for machinery methods continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of the living machines given to us by God." Mahathma Ghandi"

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Henry Studley Toolbox, Work Of Genius

Keeping your tools organized is absolute zen. I cannot walk in my shop and not know where every tool is or what cabinet section within which it is located. Now is our tidiness on the level of Henry Studley? I think not, but the design of his toolbox and the contents within it speak of the precision to the instruments which he built. Just from the tool locations and setup it is easy to imagine how well his piano's were put together. 

We have spoken multiple times on how we are losing craftsmen and the art of having a trade and it is a sad state in our mind. Whatever hobby or craft that you have to which you find an affinity, push it to another level. Whether it be leather craft, welding, mechanic or even a musician, take it to another level and just keep pushing. The more things become just a commodity, lets challenge that reality and help to turn the tide.

Link to original article on FineWoodworking.com

Custom toolbox created by piano builder Henry Studley

The history of H.O. Studley and his tool chest
 
Massachusetts piano maker Henry Studley built his magnificent tool chest over the course of a 30-year career at the Poole Piano Company. The chest lived on the wall near his workbench, and he worked on it regularly, making changes and adding new tools as he acquired them. Using ebony, mother-of-pearl, ivory, rosewood, and mahogany -- all materials used in the manufacture of pianos -- he refined the chest to the point that now, more than 80 years after his death, it remains in a class of its own.

Packing more tools per square foot than seems physically possible, piano maker Henry Studley's unrivaled tool chest also manages to be beautiful in the process. The chest stands as perhaps the most exquisite example of 19th-century tool-chest craftsmanship.

Considering how many tools it holds, the famous chest is really quite small; when closed, it is just 9 in. deep, 39 in. high, and just more than 18 in. wide. Yet it houses so many tools -- some 300 -- so densely packed that three strong men strain to lift it.

For every tool, Studley fashioned a holder to keep it in place and to showcase it. Miniature wrenches, handmade saws, and some still unidentified piano-making tools each have intricate inlaid holders. Tiny clasps rotate out of the way so a tool can be removed. In places the clearances are so tight that the tools nearly touch. The chest, which hangs on ledgers secured to a wall, folds closed like a book. And as the chest is closed, tools protruding from the left side nestle into spaces between tools on the right side. Amazingly, despite being so densely packed, the tools are all easily accessible.

Custom calipers by H.O. Studley

Studley was well into his 80s when he retired from the piano company. Before he died in 1925, Studley gave the tool chest to a friend. That man's grandson, Peter Hardwick, loaned the chest to the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C. in the late 1980s and later sold it to a private collector in the Midwest. That owner again sold the tool chest to another private collector, where it now resides.

Almost lost among the tools but no longer obscure to history, the name of the maker, H. O. Studley, and his Massachusetts hometown of Quincy are engraved on small plates just above his brace. Scraps of ebony, ivory, rosewood, and mother-of-pearl left over from his work as a piano maker gave Studley raw material for his tool chest and many of the tools it contains.

Henry Studley's custom toolbox with all the tools taken out

Liberty Tool Company - Providing Sustainable Tools

Are you just a wee bit nuts for tools? Yep, we thought so. Hell, you might not be reading this or even perusing such a site as ours, for that matter, without enjoying a finely tuned instrument. Old tools or ones that have been used and lasted for many years have tales to tell and are generally a good indication, that their purpose is still being served. 

It is easy to go into a place such as Harbor Freight and pick up cheap tools and for many of us that might be our only option, which is totally fine. If we had the extra coin, that beautiful Mac Tool Truck would be pulling up to our shop weekly, but it has yet to come to fruition. We ask this though, why not seek out other places to find decent tools and reuse what is already in existence. Nothing against the major tool manufacturers and we value their presence. Used bins, flea markets and more importantly businesses such as Liberty Tool Company want to help the artisans and craftsmen in all of us with their continual rotating supply stash. There are a plethora of places to find used tools and if you are a bit handy, why not fix them up and keep them in good working order. Peep the video about Liberty Tool and help to keep small businesses viable. America and every country in the world has small independent businesses along with large corporations, but who can you actually call when you need help or advice on how to fix something? We are betting the small independent shops so help to support them and make friends. Never know who might just have the info you need to fix that random item.

So santa, we are happily waiting on a few items to arrive anytime you please. Doesn't have to be at the end of December, we are fine with all the other eleven months. Here is our short list in no certain order as we could use them for the Buell and Chevy 3600 builds:

• Bridgeport Milling Machine

• TIG welder

• Spot welder

• Deep well impact sockets, metric and standard

• sheet metal cutting shear

• Klein Phillips head screw driver with wire nut tool top (we didn't lose it chief, but we will make amends to keep the family squabble from getting out of hand!)

All images courtesy of the Liberty Tool Company

Set of 4 Antique Pliers: Kraeuter, Red Devil, OTC

Antique Tomahawk / Francisca Style Throwing Hatchet 13" Made In Italy

Vintage box wrenches

Vintage B.C. Ames Co. 1/1000" Dial Indicator

1876 Woodman's Patent Ornate Dial Indicator

L.S. Starrett No. 279 Machinist's Radius Gauge

Antique Goodell Pratt RPM Speed Indicator

Inventive Escape Tools Made By Prisoners

Imagine this, you just got nabbed for a crime you didn't commit and they lock ya up, akin to the West Memphis 3. What the hell do you do? Needless to say you learn to become quite resourceful and look at your situation in one of those come or hell or high water types of scenarios and devise a plan. The planning will take time but the payoff could be huge. Unfortunately Michael Westen or Jason Bourne are not here to help so get MacGyver on the case and dream about a roll of duct tape and a swiss army knife, or better yet get creative.

Have a look at some of these inventive escape tools created by a few German prisoners. With a lot of time on your hands, anything can be possible. Otherwise the only way to pass the day is figuring out who is going to shank you next or doing more pushups.

All of these images are found on the site of Marc Steinmetz

Mace - Instrument found in the metal workshop of "Santa Fu" prison in Hamburg, Germany, where an unknown inmate manufactured and hid it. It is either a weapon or attached to a pole, might have been designed to push away barbed.

Radio Receiver - Sometime in the seventies an  inmate of Ludwigsburg prison, Germany, built this radio on the sly and hid it inside an encyclopedia. It was probably commissioned by another inmate who had no electronic expertise himself.

 

SHOTGUN - made from iron bedposts; charge made of pieces of lead from curtain tape and match-heads, to be ignited by AA batteries and a broken light bulb. On May 21, 1984 two inmates of a prison in Celle, Germany, took a jailer as a hostage, showed off their fire power by letting go at a pane of bullet-proof glass, and escaped by car.

STOVE / GRILL / TOASTER - An inmate of Ludwigsburg prison, Germany, botched together this multi-purpose tool from wire, a broken heating rod and sometin foil. It was found in his cell and confiscated sometime in the mid-eighties.

 

GRAPPLING HOOK - with segmented extension rod (13 segments, overall length: 4.5 meters); rope made of leather and string. This cleverly conceived tool assisted two inmates in their escape from Ludwigsburg prison,Germany, on August 19, 1987. The attached rod enabled them to place and retrieve the hook and thus negotiate two prison walls in succession.

 

DOUBLE-BARRELED PISTOL - This gun was found along with other homemade firearms in the cell of two Celle prison inmates on November 15, 1984. The weapons had been made in

the prison’s metal workshop. They were loaded with pieces of steel and match-heads.

 

 

SHIV - disguised as a wooden crucifix; found in an inmate’s cell in Wolfenbüttel prison, Germany, sometime around 1994; intended for use in an escape or as a general weapon. At that time a lot of crucifixes were fashioned in prison woodshops until jailers finally figured out  their true purpose.

 

DUMMY PISTOL - from blackened cardboard; found on June 23, 1988, in an inmate’s cell in Stammheim prison, Germany, after a fellow prisoner tipped off the jailers. The dummy was hidden in an empty milk pack and was most probably intended to be used for taking hostages in an escape attempt.

 

DUMMY SUBMACHINE GUN - made from a grease injector, wood, a rubber sleeve, and tape. The mock weapon was found in 1994 in a prison workshop in Wolfenbüttel prison, Germany, after jailers were tipped off that an escape attempt was being planned.

WHIP - with razor blades. The grisly weapon was found around 1996 in ‘Santa Fu’ jail in Hamburg, Germany, in the cell of a drug addicted inmate after his failed attempt to extort a higher Methadone ration by threatening a female prison officer with a knife.

 

HASH PIPE - fashioned from an empty horseradish tube; confiscated in ‘Santa Fu’ prison in Hamburg, Germany. Smoking implements are the most common illicit items in prisons. The range of materials they are made of mirrors the inmates’ great imagination.

 

SAW - An inmate of ‘Santa Fu’ prisonin Hamburg, Germany, fitted a wooden handle to a piece of saw blade for better handling. The tool was found in his cell and confiscated

IMMERSION HEATER - made from razor blades; found in a cell in ‘Santa Fu’ jail in Hamburg, Germany. Jailbirds use these tools to distil alcoholic beverages forbidden in prisons. Your typical inmate’s moonshine still includes a plastic can containing fermented fruit mash or juice, an immersion coil of some sort, a rubber hose, and a plastic receptacle for the booze.

TATTOOING NEEDLE - made from a toothbrush handle, a ball pen and an electric motor;  confiscated in ‘Santa Fu’ prison in Hamburg, Germany. Tattooing instruments are a popular and common source of income among inmates but are banned as ‘illegal objects’ due to the danger of infection (Aids, Hepatitis, etc.)

3D Printing and Creating New Parts From Powder Resin

If Jay Leno can build new "old" parts from 3d modeling software, well why shouldn't everyone else. The concept behind the modeling of these parts is quite interesting as it builds them from a powder resin and more chemicals can be added to further the strength. Currently they cannot match the strength of stainless steel but give them time as the possibilities are limitless.

More basic info on this type of printing can be found on wikipedia

How cool is this grill?

I enjoy scouring junkyards to find great old parts. Seeing something like this just gives me ideas for days.