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Tools, homemade and moded


Hey, anything worth doing is worth doing right... ;-)

I thought it was “Any job worth doing is worth doing twice!”

Corollary to “Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off indefinitely!”
 
I thought it was “Any job worth doing is worth doing twice!”

Corollary to “Never put off till tomorrow what you can put off indefinitely!”


If it aint worth doing three times, you may as well just go home. Cuz we f*** up a lot of s*** here.
 
“We’re so nice, we do it twice.”
 
At first you don't succeed, hide all evidence that you tried.
 
I have a few random home made tools and stuff. Whatever it takes to get the job done. I’m sure I’ll be making more. If I think about it I’ll pull some out. My tool chest has a drawer devoted to oddball stuff
 
I found and old chainsaw blade and grinder make for a cheap fan wrench for my 4.0.
 
Doing long zoom meetings like me? Don't care for the cellphone looking up your nose? Then make one of these.
I bought a cheap "goose neck" phone mount from Amazon. Hated the danged thing, sent it back, and made this one. Works great.
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A tool I made to brace the water pump while removing the fan clutch. The drawing is the final version, the picture is the second version I made with a lot of holes to see how it fit best. I use a short piece of chain to support the end and keep it off the AC lines and wiring while using a wrench to loosen the clutch. A 1-7/16 inch wrench I found on Amazon for $15 fit the 36mm fan clutch nicely.
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12mm wrench that my grandfather bent, and brazed a rod to, to make it easier to put a carburetor back on a 1980s Dodge Colt. Keeping it in case I ever get another one, LOL!

My grandfather could braze a LOT better than he could weld. Anything I own with brass drooled all over it, he might have well signed and notarized......
 

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I don’t have anything to compete with the mouse trap (which has REALLY inspired more ideas), but here’s a few I came up with in no significant order.

First, I save everything. My friends call my garage the “shed of miracles” cuz they come ask me how to do something, and then I go out and get the parts.

One of the things I save forever is paint. I have bought the commercial paint stirring tools, and I’ve made little tiny propellers out of some sheet metal and a threaded rod, etc., but nothing ever worked right for a paint that hadn’t been touched in 10 years. And then I came up with this:
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It’s a 1/4-20 threaded rod, with about a 1-1/4 inch long piece of angle cut out of a drawer slide or such, with a flexible plastic whatever that I cut out of the bottom of a macaroni and cheese package. This is actually the 1.0 version. I have since moved to a 1.1 version, using a lock nut on the bottom (when I reversed the 1.0, the nut unscrewed and all was lost in the bottom of the can of the 10-year old $3.00 rust-oleum!!). I folded the piece of flexible plastic under the nut, so the bottom is flexible, and then I cut the sides at a taper so the sides are flexible. When I use it, it scrubs the solids out of the bottom of the can and it scrubs the sides of the can and of course it mixes as it spins on the drill. My only caution is to start very slowly because it’ll throw the paint all over your shop, but it gets all the solids out of the bottom very quickly.
 
My second patent idea is a custom-made hook using a drill to unscrew or screw in the eyebolts that hold the spare tires on the Ranger and Ford trucks.

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This particular one was made out of a piece of wire shelving. I’m guessing it’s 5/16 in diameter with the vinyl coating on top of that. I believe this one took me four or six or maybe as many as eight minutes to bang out In granddad’s vice. I ground down three sides of the end so it doesn’t slip or spin in the drill chuck.

I got the 110v Ryobi Drill in a pawnshop for five dollars. It doesn’t work very well with a battery operated drill. I also knocked the chuck off the drill, put some of the red thread lock on it, and put it back together. If the tire bolts are rusty, it was a 50-50 chance if this masterpiece would unscrew them or if it would simply unscrew the chuck off the drill.

I have two smaller versions for eye-hooks and eye-bolt’s and cup hooks, And I’m working on a version that would actually lock onto the eye. Right now I’m experimenting with the beam clamp on this exotic version.
 
The third item for the patent office is an exotic method I’ve developed for hanging up everything: extension cords, hoses, power tools, car rims, you name it. There are endless possibilities!!!!

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I call it a “piece of string,” but technically I think it’s actually a loop of nylon cord. There are a million things available for five dollars each or more to hang up anything you can imagine when organizing your garage. I came up with this 30 years ago. I use a $0.002 sheet rock screw, strategically placed, or sometimes a cup hook. I make a loop out of the nylon cord, and hang it off the screw. When I wind up something like the extension cord, it’s very easy to reach through the middle of the coil of wire, grab the loop, and hang it back on the screw.

I don’t care what kind of hanger you have, nine times out of 10 the wire or whatever will start falling off the hook. This completely eliminates that. In this picture, about 14” wide, I have the positive and negative cables from my welder, one of those 6 foot chainsaws to the left of that, an extra pressure washer hose (they’re always a pain to hang), a 50 foot extension cord, and behind that I have a leaf blower and a hedge trimmer. It’s easy to grab any one of them without worrying about the other ones flopping down as you do it. If you’re really interested, I can provide detailed instructions and blueprints.

Btw, another space saving idea is the 2 x 4 frame all of this stuff is hanging from. I put my buzz-box stick welder on that frame, about 7 feet in the air, because I only weld once in a while and rarely change the settings. I have a piece of broom handle about 2 feet long, drilled through the end, with a zip tie looped in it about 3 inches in diameter that I used to turn the welder on and off....

Yeah yeah, I know this sounds nuts, but it keeps all the cords and all the hoses and the leaf blower etc. very organized, and you can do it in a compact area without them all mixing in between each other. I have actually layered such things up a wall by using different lengths, and they easily pull free-great space saving. After you do it for a short while, you can grab the leaf blower or the extension cord or whatever, unhook it with one hand, slide it into your hand, and roll it out to whatever you want to do.

As before, there is also a 1.1 version. If you have something that is particularly unruly, instead of starting with the loop on the screw, I take the loop and wrap it around the cord or whatever, pass it through itself, so you’re only hanging it on one side of the loop, and the loop is acting like a lasso around the unruly cord. I use this on a 100’ sewer snake, with about a quarter inch poly rope, and it never gets in a mess.

My fourth item, is my “crank rag,“ but I don’t have a picture handy. I will submit that in a day or two along with my gas-tank cleaning brush....
 
The third item for the patent office is an exotic method I’ve developed for hanging up everything: extension cords, hoses, power tools, car rims, you name it. There are endless possibilities!!!!

View attachment 51809View attachment 51810

I call it a “piece of string,” but technically I think it’s actually a loop of nylon cord. There are a million things available for five dollars each or more to hang up anything you can imagine when organizing your garage. I came up with this 30 years ago. I use a $0.002 sheet rock screw, strategically placed, or sometimes a cup hook. I make a loop out of the nylon cord, and hang it off the screw. When I wind up something like the extension cord, it’s very easy to reach through the middle of the coil of wire, grab the loop, and hang it back on the screw.

I don’t care what kind of hanger you have, nine times out of 10 the wire or whatever will start falling off the hook. This completely eliminates that. In this picture, about 14” wide, I have the positive and negative cables from my welder, one of those 6 foot chainsaws to the left of that, an extra pressure washer hose (they’re always a pain to hang), a 50 foot extension cord, and behind that I have a leaf blower and a hedge trimmer. It’s easy to grab any one of them without worrying about the other ones flopping down as you do it. If you’re really interested, I can provide detailed instructions and blueprints.

Btw, another space saving idea is the 2 x 4 frame all of this stuff is hanging from. I put my buzz-box stick welder on that frame, about 7 feet in the air, because I only weld once in a while and rarely change the settings. I have a piece of broom handle about 2 feet long, drilled through the end, with a zip tie looped in it about 3 inches in diameter that I used to turn the welder on and off....

Yeah yeah, I know this sounds nuts, but it keeps all the cords and all the hoses and the leaf blower etc. very organized, and you can do it in a compact area without them all mixing in between each other. I have actually layered such things up a wall by using different lengths, and they easily pull free-great space saving. After you do it for a short while, you can grab the leaf blower or the extension cord or whatever, unhook it with one hand, slide it into your hand, and roll it out to whatever you want to do.

As before, there is also a 1.1 version. If you have something that is particularly unruly, instead of starting with the loop on the screw, I take the loop and wrap it around the cord or whatever, pass it through itself, so you’re only hanging it on one side of the loop, and the loop is acting like a lasso around the unruly cord. I use this on a 100’ sewer snake, with about a quarter inch poly rope, and it never gets in a mess.

My fourth item, is my “crank rag,“ but I don’t have a picture handy. I will submit that in a day or two along with my gas-tank cleaning brush....
You can't patent this one. I've been doing it longer than you.
 

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