If you’re looking for a camp shovel, rather than buying the folding variety, check out this Special Forces Shovel from Cold Steel. Sure, you can use it to dig, but you can also use it as a hatchet, an axe, a cleaver, a machete, a hammer, a paddle, and if you get bored you can throw it!

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J.W. Done makes an interesting tool for deburring internal cross holes: the Orbitool. As you may know, when two holes are drilled into one another there’s usually a nasty burr that can be very hard to remove. The common solution is steel or abrasive brushes; however, those can negatively affect bore finish and diameter.

The tool is a half round bur with the largest diameter at the end of the tool and a polished collar around the periphery. In use it’s inserted into the hole and pressed against the wall of the hole. When it reaches the cross hole the machine revolves the tool (or the part is revolved around the tool) filing away the burr at the intersection of the holes. They show both manual and automatic usage in their YouTube videos. They also offer carbide and abrasive-headed tools that operate on the same principle. There’s a detailed test report (.pdf) that shows the results obtained in a range tests.

Has anyone out there had the opportunity to use this tool? Looks like a great way to deal with a common problem in all sorts of manufacturing and hobby metalwork.

Orbitool [J.W. Done]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

If you need to take some quick tree core samples to determine the rate of growth last year, one tool you could use is this Swedish-made increment hammer from Haglof. To take a sample, all you do is strike the tree perpendicular to the trunk and and pull the hammer out. You then eject the core with the steel plunger.

Made from high-quality hardened Swedish steel, the 11-1/2″ hammer takes a 0.157″ (4mm) diameter by 3/4″ long sample from either hard or soft wood trees. A 2″ graduated scale on the shaft of the hammer is graduated in increments in 1/20″ or in millimeters for taking a quick reading in the field.

With an investment of $80 you can start taking some core samples. The ejector and the hollowed tip are replaceable if you damage them and cost $18 and $20 respectively.

Increment Hammer [Haglof]
Increment Hammer [EJ Motiwalla]
Increment Hammer [BenMeadows.com]

We’re hard-pressed to see why anybody would pay $75 for the Professional Bigslider Utility Mover.  It seems to be a beefed-up version of those roll-up slides that you hated when you were a kid.  In the interest of fairness we’ll give you the spiel before we ask your opinion.

You place the Bigslider underneath heavy objects up to 500lbs to slide them around on just about any surface including grass, concrete, carpet, and tile. The 2′ x 5′ x 1/16″ thick flexible plastic sheet weighs 3 pounds.  You can also roll the Bigslider into a cylinder and insert it into your trash bags to keep ‘em open while filling them.

Brush off and clean the Bigslider with water and mild soap as needed.  Obviously the Bigslider is easy to store — you can hang it, put it on a shelf, or place it behind the bench like you’d store that giant piece of cardboard you put under the car when changing the oil — but just don’t store it in direct sunlight.

So would you pay $75 for this product if you needed to slide around some heavy objects, or would you pass?  Is the Bigslider Hot or Not?  Let us know in the comments.

Professional Bigslider [Official Site]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]

I hate running around and trying to find tools when I’m working on a project, so whenever possible I like a tool that can combine the functionality of two tools into one — like the Sod Buster here.  It combines a small sledge and a cutting edge.  It could help out if you’re doing concrete forms around roots, for instance, where you could be pounding stakes and cutting roots all at the same time.

I’m not quite sure who makes it, but I found this one with a heavy-duty fiberglass handle online for $20.

Sod Buster Tool [Buckeye Trap]

Rob Todd must have gotten a little frustrated working in his garden and not having both spade and fork available at the same time. So he went into his shop and Frankensteined up this combo between a fork and a spade.

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4Dorks on Flickr posted this awesome (strobist) shot of his custom-built depth gauge, which he uses in conjunction with some of his other custom tools to build split-cane bamboo fly rods. For those of you who build fly rods, this tool helps set the v-gap in the planing forms.

Planing Form Depth Gauge [Flickr]

The thing about the world’s largest anything is that there can only be one.  Each of these things is in a class all by itself, and we tend to give them a healthy respect — especially when, as is the case with the Creusot steam hammer, it can flatten us like a pancake.

This huge-ass steam hammer was built in 1877 by Schneider and Co. in the French town of Le Creusot. Its big selling point was the unholy ability to deliver a blow with up to 100 tons of force. We’re guessing it made a little noise, too.

The funny part is that the forge work it was responsible for is now done in a different manner — so a steam-powered machine that was built over a hundred years ago is still king of all hammers.

World’s Largest Hammer [New York Times]

If you’re a pyro at heart, Flame Engineering’s Weed Dragon should get you fired up.  Fed by a standard 20-pound propane cylinder, the Weed Dragon blasts out a roaring 100,000 BTUs — with that kind of heat you can kill weeds, melt ice, thaw pipes, sterilize animal pens, or remove paint.

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Before you jam a potato into that broken bulb, take a look at the Bulb Base-Out tool — you insert it in the broken bulb base, twist the base of the tool, and then twist the bulb out.  I never had any luck with that old potato anyways.

The Bulb Base-Out’s magic is in the fingers at the end — they expand when you twist the base so they can grab the inside of the broken light bulb. Strategic Insight makes the tool from non-conductive plastic so the danger from shock is minimized.

You can get the Bulb Base-Out directly from Strategic Insight for $5 — any tool at this price is worth giving a shot.

Bulb Base-Out [Strategic Insight]

Snow and ice dams can cause major headaches for homeowners. At least once every winter the news will show someone on their roof with a snowblower — neither Toolmonger nor the manufacturers recommend this.  Instead, you can clear that snow off your roof simply and safely with the Avalanche series of snow removal tools.

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This looks like a unicycle gone bad, but it’s actually a snow-shoveling innovation called the Wovel. The Wovel simplifies your snow-removal tasks by harnessing the powers of the lever and wheel.  It’ll also help save your back since the Wovel primarily uses your arms and legs to move the snow.

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Incorrect torque on a small screw may not lead to a life-ending event on the highway, but on precision machines and carefully calibrated devices, small screws require careful handling.  If you don’t care to keep up with the digital age, an “old-fashioned” torque driver will do — but if you’re interested in the tools of the new millennium, check out this digital torque driver.

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Randomly searching the web, we found this patent for a combined hammer and wrench from 1902.  What’s interesting about this particular design:  The claw of the hammer doubles as the fixed jaw of the adjustable wrench.  The inventor wanted a functional hammer — not just some tool with a flat striking surface, like many multi-tools that have come and gone.

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How would you choose to finish a giant slab of concrete — by hand with conventional tools, or with Bartell Morrison’s ride-on power trowel?  I think if you visit Toolmonger on a regular basis, you know which method we’d pick.

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IDL Tools might save you a little space — they’ve fit three levels into the space of one. This tool also offers the advantage that when you pick it up, you already have three levels in your hand, and you most likely won’t have to reach for another. (Can you think of a project that needs four levels at the same time?) That “not having to reach” is a great feature.

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Mike, a Toolmonger reader, wrote us about a tool he saw in a YouTube video (see the screen capture above). He says:

“I’ve been looking at some bicycle repair videos on YouTube and found one where this fella has this outstanding little wrench. It looks like it has two dice-shaped ends with multiple wrench sizes. I’ve looked all over online and couldn’t find one though.”

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