Driving a screw directly into wood forces the grain of the wood apart. Soft wood will crush a lot and allow the screw to force its way through. Hard wood is much more likely to simply split when the screw forces its way between the wood fibres. Either hard or soft wood will split when you scre...
Professional sheet metal workers can make long straight bends in sheet metal by the use of a machine called a 'break'. One part of the machine clamps down on the sheet while the second lifts the rest of the sheet up to some angle. A home made break can be as simple as a 2x4 clamped down over th...
So your bilge pump, or the water line into the lake, or something inside your swimming pool needs repair. Do you have to get it high and dry to fix it?We tested three materials under water: a special epoxy called WetBond, regular epoxy and PL Premium polyurethane adhesive.WetBond is a two part ...
We got this question from a store customer who was trying to decide which blade to buy?Wobble Washer Dado BladeThe first photo shows what we call a "wobble washer" blade. Actually the blade itself isn't wobbly, but the washers on both sides are bevelled. You can rotate them to skew the blade in...
Leigh Bamford is a young tradesperson who takes historical restoration, even just old house repair very seriously. With five years of experience, she insists on using old materials and old techniques on old buildings.RemvoialRather than using a power grinder to remove the old mortar from between...
One of our viewers sent in this tip.Although you can supposedly caulk outdoors even when the temperature is down to almost -10 degrees Celsius, if your caulking material itself is that cold, you won't be able to get it to flow out of the gun, let alone stick to anything.First, keep the caulking a...
Some caulking guns do have some nifty new details on some of them, like a knife for cutting off the tip of the cartridge or wires to poke holes in the tubes.I don't know why, but the wires are often not long enough to do the job if you cut just a little bit off of the tip. Bad planning. (Years la...
Marian from Baltimore Ontario has a big hole in her foundation wall where a steel 'I' beam was removed, as you can see in the photo she sent us. Her contractor filled it in with mortar and bricks. She would rather fill it with concrete.So we set up a block of concrete with a similar hole, and c...
One tool that does a bit the same job of a carpet knee kicker is a carpet stretcher.This device has two long poles hinged together. You grab the carpet on both sides of the room and then expand the long poles by the hinging action. This will force a carpet straight or even put it under pressure...
People often ask the question, what drives invention? For Charbel Khalaf it was a health statistic: Carpet installers have 50% more knee problems than tile installers, yet they are working on a softer surface. Why? Because carpet installers attach the edges of wall-to-wall carpets with a dev...
