You have drilled a hole for a door handle and now discover you need a larger hole. One method is to completely plug up the old hole so that the pilot bit of the hole saw has something to centre into. One of our viewers sent in the idea of taking a dowel the size of the existing hole and simply ...
Aside from the old fashioned mortise and tennon, or the longer tongue and groove, about the only way that craftsmen could join two boards together without hardware was to use dowels. Dowel joints were never precise, even though I have three different doweling jigs sitting on my shelf. But then ...
In this segment of my TV show I had a chance to show off what is probably my favourite new tool -- yes I really recommend this thing. It does not spin, it does not hammer and it does not move in orbits. It simply obsoletes left and right a very small amount. The secret is in the great variety...
We often use miter saws on the ground simply because when we make a cut one end of the board or the other is going to fall down, and falling from a table or a stand makes everything difficult if not dangerous to controll. Many of us carry little blocks just the height of the miter box table to s...
A standard drywall saw is a crude not very sharp saw that you punch through the wall and cut with. There are new drywall saws beginning to show up in stores that have the sharp Japanese style teeth that cut in both the push and pull directions and with a very sharp point to the saw. This Shark ...
Have you ever wondered why the centre drill of a hole saw is adjustable? You want it fairly long to get a good centred start before the hole saw hits the material, but if it is too long for the job, you will have problems.Look at the first photo and you will see that the drill is going to break o...
How do you repair damage in a laminate floor since the decoration is actually very thin?The putty solutionYou could gouge out the problem and apply a hard putty. Plastic Wood won't stick well enough but you could use some non-shrinking wood fillers which are not quite as strong but take stain be...
Plastic nails -- now there's an idea to avoid rust marks on fences.A couple of years ago (1979) I stumbled into Raptor Plastic Nails made in Texas and designed for just about every type of project except structural framing. They were all made to be used with pneumatic nailers. I wanted to test ...
Some tools go un-noticed on the hardware store shelves, like the rotary hammer chisels. At first glance this appears simply to be a heavy duty hammer drill. It has a special quick change chuck called an SDS system and will only work with drills and other accessories with the special SDS shanks....
You see a lot of TV advertising these days for what is called a rotary tool, this is like a small drill that takes all kinds of different bits with small 1/8th inch shanks.Very similar machines are made by Dremmel, Sears and Black & Decker. Are they really worthwhile.Yes.The key is the wide ...
