General Craft & DIY discussion

'tis that time of year. The catalogs are pouring in so I can spend myself into debt. Most go into the recycle bin, but there are a few I always enjoy going through. What about you? Do you know of some good ones for hard to find items? Do you browse them just for fun or ideas?

American Science & Surplus
http://www.sciplus.com/
is one I always like to look through. They have a cheesy, B&W catalog & descriptive style, but they're fun. It's full of crap, but also some hard to find, nifty items. Need a Van de Graaff generator? They have a couple plus odd items you'd never think of, like new, unused motors for vents on a B-14 airplane.

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KlockIt
http://www.klockit.com/
is another catalog I love. Not only do they have all kinds of clock movements, plans, & kits, but they have some very nifty furniture kits & ideas.

Hey Jim!

Once again, we agree. This is the time of year I spend recklessly, finally buying the stuff I've been putting off getting so I'd be able to finish ($$$) the large projects of the season.

I just placed an order at American Science & Surplus... could barely stop myself from buying the sextant they have, but I already know where I am and I'm not leaving dry land.... I couldn't resist a hand crank radio for ten bucks though!

Wow! That's spooky. I actually have that page earmarked as a 'probably'. That's the 20:1 Radio on page 22, right? I thought I'd get one for each of the kids.

I was hoping to find cheap hand cranked flash lights cheap. I got a couple from Harbor Freight last year - just a couple to test. I LOVE them. I keep one in the car where batteries usually don't last long. Really comes in handy.

I also have the Ginormous Gem (p.39) marked. I have a staff that one of those would look cool in. I'm also planning on getting some of the Pocket Work Lights for $4 each. Marg got me one last year & it's wonderful. Last time the power went out, I hung it from my shirt & it was perfect. It also made doing the plumbing under the sink a lot easier. Those LEDs are bright.

Too funny! I'll let you know how well the radio works when it gets here...

Meanwhile L.L.Bean is busy advertising what could be the next big surplus item, a SOLAR powered flashlite!

LOL! There is something twisted about a solar powered flashlight.

I was tempted to get the Spud Launcher. The kids & I would have a blast with them, but it would be such a mess to clean up. There is no way we could all be trusted not to shoot them all over the house.
;-)

Thanks for the recommendation, Jim. I see some stocking stuffers in my future. =]

Jim wrote: "American Science & Surplus
http://www.sciplus.com/
is one I always like to look through. They have a cheesy, B&W catalog & descriptive style, but they're fun. It's full of crap, but also some har..."

Candy got me to thinking about where I get project ideas. While catalogs are a big source, magazines are another. Most have so many ads in them, they're almost catalogs, so I edited the topic name to reflect that.

Birds & Blooms magazine has gorgeous pictures, many supplied by the readers. We give a subscription to 2 aunts & my mother, plus have one ourselves. It's well worth the $15/year or so.

They also have a great web site with one section devoted to projects.
http://www.birdsandblooms.com/Backyar...

I've made several things from these project pages. I rarely do it the exact way they do, but the overall measurements & ideas are handy.

"American Science & Surplus
http://www.sciplus.com/

I received the hand crank radio today. They sent it through the postal service so it took four days longer than needed (The pony express would be much faster here in Northern Maine!).

It works as advertised. One minute of cranking= about 20 minutes of play. One and a half minutes= 30 minutes of play. It plays about the equivalent of an old transistor radio.

I had hoped it would use a capacitor, but it's got two AAA ni-cad batteries inside. While the batteries work it could be cranked quite a while and hold a much longer charge, yet like old solar calculators, after a while the ni-cad batteries die.



While the radio works directly by cranking, I've been thinking that if I ever got my hands on a dynamo operated device I'd see if I could substitute capacitors instead. It wouldn't run as long, but then, capacitors would never go bad so I could throw it in a drawer for years and if indeed there was an emergency it would still operate.

Sounds like a cool Winter project in the making!

Oh! I thought all those operated on capacitors. I wonder what my flash lights have in them. Do NiCad batteries have to keep some charge in them or they'll die early? I seem to recall lead acid batteries without a charge will freeze easier.

I keep one of the crank flashlights in my car. Haven't used it in a while. That's why I thought it would be so handy there. Months can go by without me needing it. Used to be, by the time I'd need it, the batteries would be dead.

My understanding from researching e-bike batteries is most types do better if they are charged regularly and always recharged after use. I always make sure the tractor batteries are fully charged before I shut the units down, and for the Ferguson which sits all Winter I run a charger on it every few weeks. (I never heard of a lead acid battery freezing, even when it hit 42 below zero here))

My ni-cad phone batteries, which are automatically charged when I hang up the phone (think old style... not cell) lasted six years.

Batteries lose a percentage of charge just sitting, and for rechargables a percentage of capacity as well.

Yet companies make capacitor driven toys that charge with batteries... why haven't they created useful dynamo/ capacitor devices in this consumption driven society... perhaps we then wouldn't buy MORE fast enough to satisfy the need for corporations to keep making more profits (and toxic waste).

And how inconvenient... what would people do if they had to crank their cell phones.

(Uh oh... my environmentallly oriented fanatical recycler reuser re-purposer negative carbon footprint personna is coming through!)

I'm never sure with batteries. The first rechargeable drill we got was an expensive Makita & had to have its charge fully run down before recharging according to the instructions. Otherwise, it wouldn't accept as much of a charge - it had a memory. I was glad when that went away as the technology got better. It was a PITA.

My biggest gripe now with them now is the cheaper drills say the battery can only be charged for a few hours. They supposedly don't stop charging automatically. I can NEVER remember to unplug something after a few hours. Never. Just isn't happening. The cheap Kawasaki drill I had may have died from that. The cheap Harbor Freight one I have now seems to survive it, though.

I keep one cheap, cordless drill in the shop. Otherwise I rely on hand or corded tools, depending on what I need. Corded tools are a lot cheaper, smaller, & lighter for the speed & power they develop. I have a little generator for power outages & it's easy to toss into the truck if I need power elsewhere, but more often I'll grab a hand tool.

I'm not a big fan of cordless power tools, if you can't tell. I think the current trend of making everything into electricity for batteries is horrible. They're very hard on the environment, bulky, heavy, & expensive. The electronics & motors for them rely on a lot of rare earths that are strip mined in China & other places, so I can't see how or why folks say they're better for the environment than a gas motor. There's so many different things in them, I wonder how anyone can tell for sure, though.

I bought a porter-cable cordless drill once. It never had enough power and two batteries couldn't get through a days work. After a year the batteries died. Replacement batteries cost more than the unit did new! I said never again!

Just last week I was at the hardware store, and it's still the same. New cordless tool and two batteries= $100. A single replacement battery $90.

And yet the cheap black and decker 1/4 inch drill I bought when I was young still works! I don't use it much, as I have two dewalt corded drills now and long heavy duty extension cords.(had to buy a spare drill in the middle of a job when a switch went bad... I replaced the switch inexpensively so now I have a beat up one and a nice one... and both work great after many years of tough service!)

I also have my grandfathers hand and breast drills that don't need electricity at all and were state of the art in the 1920's!

I'm with you on battery powered devices... and even though you're a computer guy I think computers and cell phones are two of the most damaging products on the planet betwen using so many rare earth minerals and a two year "life" that adds to toxic waste. My computer is seven years old now. And they still come out with new and improved every two years, making new programs and web pages fatter and fancier rather than more efficeint so people have to "upgrade" ($$$$).

Who can tell for sure? Telecommunications companies are making lots of money and don't care about the environment at all. They know but will sell sell sell and let your grandkids deal with the consequences...

I moved my reply to the new Tool topic here:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

I like the Family Handyman magazine for general hints and such.

I was looking through one that is about 5 years old and there is a warning about using/buying counterfeit electrical parts with the concern being that they are made of inferior parts and may not provide protection.
The warning was specific about circuit breakers.

I wondered, with more time gone by, if this now applies to more things made in China and other places.
I'm wondering about chargers and such.

Likely the warning does apply. It certainly applies to the batteries themselves. A lot of us have bought discount batteries that only last 6 months or so while the seemingly more expensive name brands will last for 3 years.

Of course, the latter vary. I deal with UPS (Uniform or Uninterrupted Power Supply) & laptop batteries a lot in my job. Batteries generally last about 3 years, but some fail in 2 while I had one set of UPS batteries that lasted over 7. Not sure how that happened, but it's a big, expensive UPS so maybe I got what I paid for.

Cheap chargers don't stop charging & that eats up batteries fast. Any time a battery gets too warm while charging, it's a bad sign. Others don't charge enough, as I found out with my solar electric fence charger. I tried to save money by replacing the solar unit with a cheap one & the battery cracked over the winter. My best guess is it didn't have enough charge.

My son was telling me about a problem his father was having with his battery powered drill. It got so the charge was holding less and less time so that he'd end up having to go get the wired one to finish up a job.
I was having the same problem with mine and thought, until I heard that, that it was something I was doing wrong. Mine is almost useless now after a few minutes.

Then, I heard a woman at work talking about her battery powered lawn mower. After about a summer and a half she had to go and buy a new battery.

We have a place called Inter State Batteries (squish together & add .com after it for their web site) right near work. I buy all my batteries from them. They'll even make custom batteries for most anything for a surprisingly affordable price - or so they told me - & they weren't kidding.

I have 2 old power screwdrivers I bought from Ace. I really like them because they're rechargeable & geared very low. They won't replace a screw gun, but do an amazingly good job. I bought them about 10 years ago & one wouldn't keep a charge any more. Although it has 'no user serviceable parts', I took it just far enough apart to get to the battery, pulled it & gave it to them. They soldered the connectors on & it cost about $5. It took me 20 minutes to get it back in & get the switch right (FOREVER!!!) but I managed it & it's as good as new.

The lithium ion batteries that I have in my Ryobi screwgun & drill are only about a year old, but I've used them pretty hard. They're fantastic. I think a lot depends on the quality of the battery & the type. My son told me about it until my eyes rolled back in my head. I finally just asked him what I should get for a cordless drill & he gave me this exact set. I have been very happy.

I wasn't thrilled with Antique Collector's Directory of Period Detail by Paul Davidson. He tried to cover too much territory & time which wound up confusing me. Still, I learned a few things & gave it a 3 star review here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Wanted to say thank you for the web/catalog suggestions. I always enjoy searching for supplies. A site I have ordered from several times: www.createforless.com, they have great sales.
Another site I browse but have not yet purchased is https://www.save-on-crafts.com/favors.... I also use www.firemountaingems.com because I love their catalogs!! Happy New Year Crafters!

If you want to make your own wind chimes, this site is a must.
http://leehite.org/Chimes.htm

Lee Hite's site has information on how to figure the tone & pitch of your pipes plus all sorts of other design concerns. Fantastic!

Woodworker's Journal magazine just sent me a great offer. $10 to get all their content online. That's past issues, how-to videos & a lot more. I think this link should work for anyone.
https://subscribe.woodworkersjournal....

If it doesn't, maybe you can find it by just going to woodworkersjournal.com

I don't know if this has been asked before but is there a similar site like goodreads but for magazines?

Not that I know of.

Great idea Renee

I rarely read magazines any more, but when I did, I sure wished there was a site to discuss them. More, I always wanted an index for them. At one time, I had a huge collection of "Wood" & a couple of other magazines & I'd vaguely recall some article or project. I could never find it.

I have collections of "Wood Worker's Journal" & "Fine Woodworking" as PDFs. At least I can search through them on key words. I get a lot of hits on ads, but I can usually find what I want, although it isn't as quick & easy as I'd like. It's often easier to do a Google search. Once I find the correct issue, then I can get out the correct issue.

A positive of the lock down: Some years ago I bought a DVD with 25 years of The Woodworker's Journal magazines. While I've gone through it sporadically, now I'm going through it in order & making a text document of the projects, techniques, jigs & such that interest me. Those of special interest are printed out AND I have time to play with them in the shop. It's great!!! :)

Do you have a favored magazine archive to go through?

Yay! Having time to do things is so wonderful!

Jim wrote: "A positive of the lock down: Some years ago I bought a DVD with 25 years of The Woodworker's Journal magazines. While I've gone through it sporadically, now I'm going through it in order & making a..."

How is this going? Your own index?
Have you made anything specific, or is it a wish list at this point?

I'm looking through my vintage issues of Nutshell News. It's a dollhouse miniatures magazine.
I am drawn to teeny things. Even when in antique stores (boy, am i missing my Sundays trips to the library and the antique store next to it.) I go directly to the teenies.

I kind of gave up on it for now since I can't work in the shop due to my health. I was getting a bit tired of it anyway. There were fewer new decent projects, but I did find a lot of interesting articles.

Miniatures are cool. I don't have any real experience with them save for the few I made for my daughter's horse barn & the Quoridor pieces I made.

Real doll house furniture is incredible. I've looked at some & seen plans, parts, etc. Most is 1" to 12", isn't it? That requires incredible precision since the slightest mistakes are glaring.

You might not be into miniatures but you'd be surprised at the useful things/ideas/gimmies are in this catalog. Yeah, it's online, but i love getting my paper copy in the mail.
https://www.micromark.com

It is a fun site to look through. Some of those tools are downright cute!

Jaye mentioned not having an ereader. I highly recommend Sumatra PDF for the PC. It's a free PDF, eBook (ePub, Mobi), XPS, DjVu, CHM, Comic Book (CBZ and CBR) reader for Windows allowing you to read & print all those formats. Very small, fast, & easy to use & install. Most of my users at work use it exclusively now. It's a lot faster, more versatile, & easier to use than Adobe Reader.
https://www.sumatrapdfreader.org/free...

I don't particularly like reading books on the computer, but I often reference them. Sumatra makes word searches & copying text easy. I occasionally read some since a lot are available for free, over a million from Gutenberg.org alone. The Internet Archive (archive.org) has more & others are floating about from aspiring authors to tech documents.

Johnny Blackwell's Poor Man's Catalog is a book compiled from newsletter/catalogs from the 1970s. It's kind of a hoot & interesting reading. I reviewed it here:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

On and off i borrow Family Handyman magazine from the library.
I'm fairly useless when it comes to repairs and such. But that doesn't stop me from thinking I'll do stuff.
I love the tool info...new tools etc.

They have some nifty ones. They're bright & shiny, too. Hard to resist sometimes. I usually manage now because I force myself to honestly answer some hard questions.

How often will I use it? I've had too many gadgets that get buried in the back of a drawer or the bottom of a box. If I remember I have them, it takes me longer to find them than it's worth.

How proprietary are they? Many gadgets have working parts that will wear out or break. Can I replace them with something off-the-shelf or not? If not, will a similar brand have something interchangeable? I've seen too many companies & gadgets come & go.

I keep thinking about buying a pocket-hole jig. I don't make pocket-holes too often, though. When I do, I use a gouge, chisel, & long drill bit for whatever size screw I need fairly quickly. It takes longer than if I had a simple jig, but all the tools are used for other projects so I know where they are. I'd likely stash the pocket jig in some 'safe' place & spend longer trying to find it than the time I would save using it since I wouldn't use it often enough.

If I made a lot of pocket-holes, I'd do a lot of research before buying one since their cost ranges over $100. A cheap one might frustrate me with its limitations, but the most expensive may well have more adjustments than I want to deal with.

Most use a special, pointed drill bit which I'd try to avoid since I've dulled & broken a lot of drill bits. Could I replace the bit in a year or decade? Maybe, but I've never bought one & haven't really regretted it. I can still lust after them a little in the catalogs, right? There's some pleasure in that.

My general rule is that if I buy a gadget & don't use it in a year or two, I try to give it away. Of course, it's sometimes difficult to remember that it's still around. I try to give the shop a really good cleaning over Christmas vacation. I've finished all my holiday gifts, so I have time to move everything to vacuum up the fine dust that gets all over. A lot of stuff gets rediscovered & some leaves the shop. I still have a fair amount of junk around, but it's a generally manageable mess.

My cellar has a bunch of stuff unrecognizable to me. I've been divorced 30 years and the stuff my ex left behind is still there. If it was anything good i assume it would have gone. There's even 2 engine looking things . One on the work bench looks like it might have been part of an ancient lawnmower.
One of these days I'm going to have to hire someone to take it out.

The well repair men moved a heavy thing right to an inconvenient spot. I can't move it.
My cellar is mystifying.

I understand about knowing you have something but can't locate it.
That goes for more than just tools !

Now I want to look in your basement! I love going through places like that. A guy at work recently gave me an old 'junky' tool box that he had stashed in his basement for years. It belonged to an uncle that died. It was an absolute treasure trove with some great plumbing tools & a set of molding plane blades. Unfortunately, I can't use the latter since they don't fit my Stanley #45, but they're neat anyway.

My worst nightmare is when I clean up & rearrange things. For months afterward I'm wandering about trying to remember what the heck I was thinking & where I could have put stuff. It's infuriating.

Jim wrote: "Now I want to look in your basement! I love going through places like that. A guy at work recently gave me an old 'junky' tool box that he had stashed in his basement for years. It belonged to an u..."

Infuriating is the word. It encompasses a lot of house issues.
I'm starting the 4th summer of trying to find someone reasonable to fix my windows etc.
The cellar is a whole other issue. I used to see an ad in the local tri-town paper where a retired guy was asking for old tools to refurbish. I thought many times to call and have him come to see the cellar stuff but, being alone, i was kind of hesitant to have a stranger in. Now that I'm ready i don't see the ad anymore.
A perfect lesson about waiting too long and not striking while the iron is hot (whatever that means).

Does anyone have a favorite phone app for identifying plants & such? I've tried several over the years & they've gotten a lot better as optical recognition has advanced & databases have grown. There are a lot out there, but a lot of them are really spammy & not very good. I don't use them all that often, either. The best seem to use an online database which makes them slow, but more accurate than those that fill my phone with their database.

PictureThis was recommended by my mother & seemed to work really well for plants, but they recently changed from free to $3/month or something. It's a bit confusing, but they keep wanting money & only work on the phone, no online place to tweak things.

Seek works with iNaturalist
https://www.inaturalist.org/
an online community where I can see what I've identified or get help when there are issues. It works with plants, animals, & fungi, but I've mostly dealt with plants & a few insects. It can take a long time to make an identification requiring a lot of different angles before it finally takes a photo & then it only seems to send one up to iNaturalist. If I want to add others, I have to do it manually. Perhaps this last is ignorance on my part, but the time it takes can make live animals very frustrating. Just as it is getting close, they'll usually move.

The online community seems pretty good & one of my sightings has been added to a research group. I guess they're studying the distribution of Solanum carolinense the Carolina Horsenettle which is kind of interesting.

After a few identifications, it often locks up. I think that's because my phone is still trying to upload previous IDs to the iNaturalist site, so it gets confused. It's probably due to the poor signal I get at times. Still, it's been the best I've found so far.

I've tried other apps such as Merlin, the birding app from Cornell University,
https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/
but I suck at zooming in well enough with my phone camera. I find it easier to look them up with binoculars & a book. It will also identify bird songs, but it's usually too noisy.

I'd be interested in other apps that might work better. I'm in the Eastern US, so that limits things a bit more.

Jim wrote: "Does anyone have a favorite phone app for identifying plants & such? I've tried several over the years & they've gotten a lot better as optical recognition has advanced & databases have grown. Ther..."

I'm so old school i don't even have a cell phone.
I do have this tablet, but am clueless. I find it's easier for me to steer clear and remain ignorant.

Fat lot of helpful i am. Haha

When I see plants that are showing up in my fields more often, I can't afford to remain ignorant. There are far too many poisonous & otherwise pesky invasives that can be a real problem once they establish a foothold. "Star of Bethlehem" is a case in point.

I wound up having to get a state pesticide/herbicide license & waiting a year before I could buy the stuff that would kill it. It can only be reliably killed if sprayed during a few weeks in the spring with Gramoxone which contains paraquat. That stuff is so toxic that it would kill me if I get it on my skin & I have to keep the animals off the area for 40 days. I managed to kill it off in the main grazing areas of the field, but there are many areas where I can't do anything about it such as in the edge of the woods or near the ponds. It would kill off too much other stuff.

I just read an article that said over 60% of the plant resellers are selling some sort of invasive species that is legally banned, so the problem isn't getting any better. Of course, sometimes the plant I notice is just one I hadn't noticed before or is having a banner year due to growing conditions. That seems to be the case this year with Desmodium paniculatum Panicled Ticktrefoil. I've seen it before, but this year there's a lot of it, probably due to the high amount of rainfall we've had.

PlantNet has helped me identify unknown plants. It isn't perfect, but it often gives me a starting point, from which I have discovered identities. I use it on an Android phone.

Thanks, Melanie. I found it on Google Play here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/de...
It has very good overall ratings & also has a web site here:
https://identify.plantnet.org/

I'll install it & see how it does.