Milwaukee V28 Free Promo
Monday, July 31st, 2006
Through August 31, Milwaukee’s offering to send you a free V28 tool with the purchase of qualifying single tool kits. You’ll need to check in at the Milwaukee website for details, but this looks to be a pretty slick deal if you’re in the market for a new high-power cordless tool.
For example, it looks to us as if you could pick up a V28 Sawzall for free just for buying the 0724-24 V28 Hammerdrill kit. That’s not a bad deal, considering.
BTW: We understand that the new V18 gear should be hitting shelves during the month of August if all goes well. We offered a little early information on the new like a while back, and we expect to have some first-hand “hands-on” experiences to share with you shortly.
V28 Free Promo [Milwaukee]
We’ve mentioned saw guides in the past, but most of them were designed specifically for cross-cut work. This is the first guide we’ve seen designed specifically for rip cuts, and it looks quite interesting. The Rip Master attaches to the base plate of your circular saw and after making a few adjustments allows you to make rip cuts ranging from as little as 1/16″ to as large as 24″.
(Monday, July 31, 2006) Normally Monday night is chock full of build shows, but it’s “shark week” on Discovery, so everything’s been bumped. Since most of the build shows are on hiatus, maybe this week would be a good time to get out in the shop instead, yeah?
Black & Decker recently released a cordless pole pruning saw intended to simplify your pruning work. If you haven’t used a pole pruning saw before, think of it as a chainsaw-on-a-stick — in this case, a 14′ stick. This one is electrically operated, using their standard 18V interchangable battery, and is capable of up to 6″ diameter cuts using its 8″ bar and chain blade. Black & Decker claims the unit will cut up to 100 1-1/2″ pine branches per charge.
Whether you admit it or not, we know that you know what we’re talking about – that brief second where things all go wrong and that little bit of metal something falls into a space that by all calculations it shouldn’t have been possible for it to fall in. Yet there you are jamming your fingers down a hole altogether to small for them, trying to reach that little whatsit.
A well lit work area is one of the starting points of any project in the garage or shop, and when we recently went looking for a light to go in one of our work areas, we came across the diamond plate utility light from Lithonia Lighting. This unit hit all the high points that makes a true Toolmonger grin.
Working on your favorite project car, or even your daily driver can be frustratingly impossible if you don’t have the right tools. Removal of a harmonic balancer — also known as a torsional damper — can be quite difficult without a puller designed to help. The torsional damper is the pulley wheel and weighted flywheel connected to the crankshaft in your vehicle, and removing it is a pretty common task during an engine swap or during some accessory replacement. You might recognize it as the wheel you use as a guide to adjust the timing.
If you’ve been busy in the shop this week and haven’t had time to keep up with Toolmonger, we recommend checking out the following posts when you have a chance:
A couple of things jump out at you when you first see the Xtreme, the most notable of which is the large, redesigned center vial. (In previous models the vial had a top enclosure and was 20% smaller.) With the new layout you can see the position of the bubble from (in our experience) as much as 15 feet without even squinting.
The construction of the level boosts a new box-beam design that Stanley claims to be five times stronger than previous models. You can feel its ”sturdiness” by simply picking it up. It exudes strength at every corner. The machined leveling surfaces are quite smooth and polished to a mirror finish. Add to that the silver finish and bold sturdy handle/handles and the Xtreme tends to stand out visually in a crowd of otherwise brightly painted levels at the store. Some of our friends who saw it couldn’t put it down because they “just liked holding it.” Of course we — and many of our friends — are facinated with shiny things, so there you go.
Dual purpose, sturdy rubber end caps adorn the Xtreme, and both protect the level against falls and bumps but also are removable so that the levels can be connected to one another for those long surface reads. The Xtreme also uses rare earth magents –- which are roughly twice as powerful as the normal strip magnets -– to provide a more stable experience. Like it’s predecessor in the Stanley line, the Xtreme has Block vial accuracy of 0.0005 in/in with a lifetime accuracy warranty on the vials.
Lisle Corporation has manufactured the “Jeepers Creepers” line of automotive creepers for some time, but has recently added a line of plastic “low profile” creepers that’ll be of use to anyone working on a modern, lowered car.
Everyone has need of a utility blade at home or at the office for one use or another. Irwin’s new ProTouch Retractable Blade Knife is aimed at that kind of total all-purpose utility. Coupled with 6 of Irwin’s “Unbreakable” Bi-Metal blade system, the ProTouch makes for a handy addition to the toolbox.
We enjoyed the ProTouch, and found that it delivers a good solid feel and a few welcome surprises under the hood. We’re still putting the Blue Blades to the test and intend to report back to you soon with our experiences. We can tell you in the short run that they cut at least as well as other blades we’ve used, and we’ll know more about durability as time marches on.
