Tools I love, Tools I loathe

[Dave, 397]

Stuck at home today with the kid, so might as well toss out a couple of bones. Much as I really do hesitate to judge tools too harshly lest it turn out some poor guy has a locker full of my negative target du jour and feel bad or offended, I cannot stop myself here.

I should also explain how my relationship with tools and stationary equipment goes. Not having been, save for one brief period, a homeowner in my life, my collections of tools and equipment have always needed a shop space of some sort to inhabit, and in fact the shop space has generally existed for specific purpose that led to the collection of tools. When the need for the shop space expired or otherwise passed away, I have ended up liquidating tha lions' share of the stuff housed within, saving only the jems and prizes that could be stored in the coat closet or in the closet with the water heater, or in a dock locker, or...

There is a good and bad to all of this, of course. I hate buying things more than once, for one. There are also those few items that you know you'll never have again, like the late 40's 20-inch Delta bandsaw and so on. Things like that saw are hard to find a storage home for, and someone had made me a tremendously good offer for it. If I could have found a guy to long-term-lend it to I sure would have. I own a wonderful old Delta contractor-type saw of same era that I bought at a yard sale for 75.00 or so and spent another 150.00 rebuilding. Even repainted the speckle finish with GM trunk paint. It's a terrific little saw and incredibly smooth and accurate once dialed in. I put a pair of good quality sheaves from the bearing shop on and spin it with a length of link belt. Very, very smooth, almost as smooth as a well-massaged Powermatic 66 (which can be so smooth you wouldn't know it was running if there were not a sound with it). Used it all the time to cut .025" strips of ebony and rosewood for instrument binding. Weighs a ton. I'm gonna miss it dearly when it's time to part .

Then there are tools you dearly wish you hadn't bought.

I recently had to replace the motor for that lovely old saw. Of course, I'm tight on cash right now. Usually I would go out to Grainger's and spend the bucks for a good-quality motor, but I needed something cheap. So, even though I know better, it was off to Grizzly. 99.95 for a 1 HP motor, Taiwan's finest. Works OK, decent power...but it is not smooth at all. So much for the beautiful joy of that 9-inch Delta's smooth operation. This thing is so poorly balanced inside that the miter guage tries to vibrate right off the saw table. And...I took the first one back because it was rough like that. The second was the very same thing, so here I sit.

Some things you just take for granted, like a shop-vac that works. Long ago I had an old Sioux wet/dry vac that had a big stainless cannister and would have sucked the cat out from behind the couch if you wanted. When I quit racing and liquidated most of the goodies from the race shop I sold it to a buddy who had always admired it a great deal. Found it in a trash heap to get it in the first place, replaced the cord and brushes...he still has it, and it still kicks butt.

In it's place I bought the biggest, meanest 'Shop-Vac' brand vacuum they had at Costco. Not too bad, and I used it in the guitar shop for about 7 years as well as whatever little jobs and projects came up elsewhere. No sooner than we started in on the Triton, it started running slow and throwing sparks out of the motor housing. Bad armature...and you know, they charge almost as much for a new armature as for a whole new vac. That armature, BTW, is not much bigger than the one in my sewing machine's motor! 5HP indeed!

Of course, I was very short on funds at that moment, so I made a home-school field trip on price comparison and feature shopping with Jessie one day and drove all over looking for the best deal...

I shoulda known better than to do what I did, to buy what I bought...but it was big, it had lots of attachments, it was a very sharp price. I shoulda known better given that it is made by Emerson Electric, makers of everything cheap and crappy including cheapo record players back when...Remember? Same outfit.

I especially shoulda known better than to buy something that is essentially a Home Depot house brand. I should know better than to buy ANYTHING at Home Creepo but I was born too stupid to know any better.

Ridgid????

Ahem!

(Well, it sure appeals to all that macho ego enzyte-buying American white male bad stereotype as a name, I guess. Probably appeals to some of the gals, too. Goes nice with the shiny, candy-colored curvy "Garden Tractors" out front I guess. Put a headlight and a hitch on a riding mower, give it a pretentious name, double the price...and hey, people will buy the tihing and Make Payments Forever! How did our society get this collectively stupid and gullable, I ask you!)

"Flaccid" would be a much better brand name for it.

This is the most squalid pile of crap I think I have ever wasted the money to buy. The suction is pretty poor, especially if you run more than just the basic ridiculously-short hose that comes with it. Things that you'd never imagine clogging a large-diameter shopvac hose do a number on it, and this is due to the poor suction. I can't use the thing without having to clear the hose out at least once over a fairly small piece of masking tape or sandpaper or whatnot and a bunch of grinding dust piled up on the "obstruction". The filter, while quite large, plugs up almost instantly in use. The vac works even more poorly if the cannister is full enough to reach the bottom plate of the filter, which is so long it sticks down in there more than half way. I spend almost as much time cleaning out the filter, clearing the hose, and emptying a 1/3 full cannister as I do using the fool thing.

If I had a cat, I bet he'd enjoy playing with the open end of the hose while it was running. Yep boys, it's that bad.

I see they have them on sale again, too.

You've been duly warned.

Best,
Dave

[Dave, 397]

Much as I like the 5" random-orbit (mine's a Porter-Cable "quicksand") for a lot of things, I do not care for it too much as a finish-prep tool on opengrained or softer woods. The hard grain gets real smooth and the pits just stay nice and irritatingly deep. True enough, the last bit of prep is often nicest if done by hand, but somewhere before you get to that stage it's fun to have a non-counter-productive tool.

I think the 1/4 sheet electric sander is still a great little tool and is oft-neglected anymore in favor of the random-orbit. While it does not cut stock as fast as the quicksand and its' bretheren, it is, after all, a FINISHING sander.

I may have railed about this before, but...

I had a Makita years ago and loved it. Not only was it an incredibly good little tool, they had them on sale at Costco when I bought it...it was cheap. It was great. It was not so great once I dropped it in salt water while plugged in and running. For whatever reason, I replaced it at that time with a 19.95-on-sale POS from Sears that barely worked at all by comparison. As soon as I had the opportunity I replaced it with a Milwaukee and buried it in the bottom of a toolbox or drawer.

I liked the little Milwaukee OK, but it still wasn't as good as that Makita. Finally we managed to wear out the Mil., and I got the Craftsman out. It was an infuriating experience as usual, so I promptly tossed it in the trash barrel! Rethinking the plan in a minute or two, I dug it out, wrapped the cord up, cleaned it off nice and carried it out into the main shop area...walked over to my good assistant's bench, plunked it down and told him frankly that while I hated it it was better than nothing...and that if he wanted to clock out, hop on his bike and run across to Hardware Sales (a wonderful, huge, Mom-and-Pop industrial hardware store about whom I will someday write a sonnet) for a new one he could take the Crappsman home.

AJ jumped at the offer, and within 40 minutes I was ripping a brand-new Milwaukee out of the box. Oh Boy! Put it right to use...hmmm...something doesn't feel right here....it is almost as awful as the one I just gave Aaron!
I looked close at the thing, and in tiny letters at the bottom of the label the finest words to read at that moment: "Made in Taiwan". I had just spent 70.00 for a 29.00 Grizzly sander in a different box, essentially. The downside of Hardware Sales or any decent commercial outlet is that they expect you to have a brain...and the return policy reflects that. It's not Despot, so you can't use it and take it back just 'cause you don't like. I thought about breaking it discreetely and returning it as defective for an account credit, but that kind of nastiness is all too rampant anymore and part of the disease of our society (I won't start on that!)...so I kept the fool thing.

Last Milwaukee tool I will ever buy. Just plain disgusted over it, that they made that label so small and sneaky, that they started buying a crummy imported one and selling it at the same price as the "real" one, same item number and everything. Unforgivable.

I am afraid to buy a new Makita anything anymore, as I know a couple of people now who have replaced a worn-out and much beloved tool with an identical new one only to find it wasn't so fine as the old one had been. Used a frequent work partner's brand-new drill a couple weeks back, and had to agree with him. It stank.

Last weekend a cabinetmaker friend of mine who has just sold his house and needed to clear out the excess baggage in the shop...he made me a wonderful gift of an old Makita 1/4 sheet, just like the one I drowned 15 years ago. Well used, well loved, label worn off and stipples in the plastic worn smooth. Needs a new backing pad in a big way...and works circles around the rotten red thing.



OK...the cheers for 3M. Sometime around 1989 I bought a 3M masking gun and all the different width blades. I think it cost me 50 bucks or something, which seemed excessive...but I had shopped for best price, even! This is the old grey plastic one.

At some point I loaned it to a friend of mine who had need for one, and as I had no real need for it I never worried about chasing it down to get it back...I knew where it was, after all...and Mel's an Airframe-and-Powerplant mechanic who takes very good care of things.

Finally, when I starte in on 397, I went looking for my handmasker...which, turns out, went away along with a lot of other crap when somebody burglarized Mel's garage. She offered to buy me a new one, but I figured it was as much my fault as anything for having left it go for a number of years, and let it ride...she has a mortgage, a car payment, and a kid to raise alone.

I figured I'd buy a new one when I got to paint. A bunch of times, I thought how it might be handy here or there, but there was always something else to buy. Finally got one last month and wish I had gotten a new one right away! I haven't painted with it at all yet, but it is extremely handy for doing fiberglass work! Instead of doing my best to work cleanly and then having to neatly gind the work to clean it up, I lay a bit of tape and paper along my edge. If I am around when the resin is still green, I just slice along the tape edge with a utility knife and peel! Worst case, if it has set overnight, it is a very simple matter to grind carefully down to the paper and then feather that edge. Sweet. Especially for all the messing around I did with my sectional recore and the silly little solid glass ribs in between the sections...I would have saved a weeks work, I venture to say, as well as a whole lot of abrasive materials.

One jeer, though...

3M now sell two different models. The consumer-grade one is made of bluish-grey plastic and sells for about 25 bucks....but the blades are plastic crap and the metal blades for the commercial unit do not fit. The commercial one is yellow plastic and is still about 50 bucks (blades sold seperately). This isn't bad, but the thing is made in Taiwan! It's not nearly as solid as the old grey plastic US made unit, and I have my doubts as to how many times you could drop one off a ladder before you needed to spend another 50 bucks.

All the same, it has, since I have finally got it, been a real timesaver and quite a thrill to have around.

Best,
Dave

[Dan]

Shopvac.
The motor on my Shopvac has a bearing and a bushing. The bushing is on the top of the motor and the bearing on the bottom.
The bushing started growling because it was dry. I carefully disassembled the motor and oiled the bushing and carefully re-assembled it. Worked well - for about two weeks. Started growling again.
I disassembled it again and oil it once more. Didn't last.
This time, I disassembled it and drilled a hole in the top of the motor so I could just pour some oil on the bushing or spray whatever I had in my hand without having to disassemble the thing again! Fuse is getting shorter with this thing as every growl spews out of it.
Finally the retaining ring that holds the bushing in place broke during one of it's fits of complaining, the pieces of retaining ring fell in the windings, and sparks flew out of the motor.

Now I have to throw it in the trash. How stupid of me to purchase a giant piece of plastic crap that will now sit in a land fill for ages and continue to pollute the earth forever. I am not an environmentalist by any means but I feel it was irresponsible of me to buy junk in the first place and then throw it out after it fails. So I can't do it. Gotta come up with a solution.

I found that the shaft diameter at the top of the motor shaft where the bushing rides is the same diameter as the shaft at the bottom where the bearing is. Hmmm.

I removed the washer and felt from the little bushing holder and found that the bearing OD fits in there with about .010" gap all the way around. Hmmm again.
I bought two new bearings and installed the bottom one as it was intended. I put the other bearing into the bushing holder for the top of the motor and centered it up by eye. It is a Shopvac, how close does it need to be? I put a bolt through the bearing to hold it in the center of the holder and poured epoxy along the side of the bearing and the housing.
I re-assembled the motor and the vacuum runs better now than it ever has. When I shut it off, the motor glides to a stop way longer than it used to.
I bought the new pleated filters for it and a drywall water trap (?) to capture the "mountains of talc like powered" to quote Tim, generated from grinding in the boat and the vacuum works great.
My mission here was to not throw a giant plastic thing away and I accomplished that goal.
I use this vacuum as a dust collector in the wood shop and it will run for a long time without getting shut off. It?s not made to do this. I abuse it and I know it. It?ll just have to do for now.

(Well, it sure appeals to all that macho ego enzyte-buying American white male bad stereotype as a name, I guess. Probably appeals to some of the gals, too. Goes nice with the shiny, candy-colored curvy "Garden Tractors" out front I guess. Put a headlight and a hitch on a riding mower, give it a pretentious name, double the price...and hey, people will buy the tihing and Make Payments Forever! How did our society get this collectively stupid and gullable, I ask you!)

This is exactly why I bought a 1070's Bolens garden tractor. This is one strong piece of machinery. I just laugh at the new Bolens line at Lowes.
Dan

[JetStream]

Good job Dan! I had a similar experience with my old Shop Vac. However, after the second oiling I did the American thing and pitched the motor. Like you, I couldn't bear to throw out this huge canister thing. It now contains about 400 pounds of used lead shot ballast. Don't you just wish that the manufacturers would spend the extra quarter to do the job right in the first place. Goes to show that the marketing dpartment and bean counters now have more pull than the engineering department.

[Curmudgeon]

Abolutely right fellas. I cannot remember the last time I assembled ANYTHING (kits) as-is. In fact, I occassionally disassemble/reassemble some things before they ever get used. A few extra washers here, some lube, a short piece of tubing there, will go a long way in lengthening the life of a product. Heat, friction and badly-aligned components need to be corrected, otherwise it'll wind-up a "pay me now or pay me later" situation.