HEAVY LITTLE OBJECTS

Category: Tool

  • #a88 :: Foldz-Flat pen

    ENLARGEIt’s a slick little gadget that seems like a brilliant idea: a full-sized pen that you can fold up and stuff into your wallet – until you realize it’s as thick as six credit cards.

    Still – piano-hinged chrome-steel panels and a triangular profile when assembled give it a charming retro-space-age cachet, cialis 40mg rx and the leatherette trim feels extra-ginchy.

    Get ’em here, health and you can be as embarrassed as I was to have paid $14.95 each for two of them.

    Oh, wait, the price is now $24.95. Bargain!

    Spotted at Cool Tools.

  • #A86 :: Tape ball

    ENLARGEThis keeps your straight lines covered, what is ed fends off errant brush strokes and roller hits.

    When I finished painting the bathroom, I pulled this off the walls and away from switches and fixtures.

    It began life as a tree somewhere, and got pulped, rolled, died, cut, glued and re-rolled, wrapped in cellophane and shelved. Now it’s an undifferentiated blob of linear splatter and stickum – about 10 inches in diameter and barely two ounces.

  • #a85 :: Australian stamps

    ENLARGEThe lickety-split digitization of all human commerce runs into a brick wall when it comes to sending physical messages.

    Until mass production sufficiently cuts the cost of 3-D printing and, viagra thus, the 3-D fax, humans must carry hand-made documents and machine-made objects from one place to another.

    To subsidize the cost of the trucks, trains, planes and numb-minded civil servants who move our stuff, we rely on the most archaic and quaint of constructs: A law requiring us to buy elaborately-printed squares of paper and glue them onto packages to prove we’ve paid for the service.

    This odd lot of Australian stamps came into the house as a gift and is handsomely shrink-wrapped and labeled – oddly – “GIFT.” Which mirrors the same sort of moebius-strip recursion that gave rise to the practice of using postage stamps in the first place.

    Or maybe I’m overthinking it. Again.

  • #a82 :: Rattan pouch

    ENLARGEThis came from Hawaii, thumb wrapped around a much more significant HLO that I’ll blog about later this week.

    Someone – Hawaiian or Chinese, I’m left to assume, since there’s no maker’s mark, wove it together from strips of reed.

    The top fits beautifully over the bottom – and resists casual attempts to pull it off: You really have to haul on it to get the halves apart.

    It’s empty now – of the beautiful thing it once contained – but full of potential: what else could it hold? How safe will the contents be? Who should see them, and who must not? And when will I fill it? And why?

  • #a76 :: Set screw

    ENLARGEThis threaded, case slotted nugget of galvanized steel is smaller than a pencil eraser.

    Somewhere in my house, medicine something is slipping because this fell out of it.

    I won’t know exactly what that is until it falls apart.

    I’m waiting.

  • #a68 :: Wrist Rocket

    ENLARGEThe year that she spent chained to the crown of a 400-year-old sequoia was perhaps one of her shortest.

    The winter was mercifully mild. The fire season breathlessly exciting but 3 miles away and short.

    And the weekly trysts with her strapping support team leader in an elaborate system of web belts and pulleys they rigged up in the densest boughs proved invigorating and electrifying – particularly every time she arched her back and saw nothing but 130 dizzying feet of air between her sweaty brows and the forest floor below …
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  • #a67 :: Corner punch

    ENLARGEJust the trickest little tool.

    I punch off the corners of my personal business cards with it.

    Adds a nice effect to photo albums, sildenafil etc., too.

    I found it in the stationery aisle at Target.

  • #a66 Self-recharging pig flashlight

    ENLARGEA little switch near his rump pops out a handle.

    Pump it for 60 seconds, cialis 40mg and flip the switch near his shoulder, more about and his nostrils glow blue-white for about a minute.

    He’s made in China, and easily found online.

  • #a61 :: Artist’s hand model

    ENLARGEIt was the first thing she had put out on the thrashed card table at the group yard sale.

    She had meant it that way, erectile a break from the failed career, from the crushed dream, from the gorgeous, neurotic, narcissistic jerk who gave it to her.

    But here it was still: The last thing to be boxed up for GoodWill so they could sweep and put away the tables and retire inside for one more frozen Margarita and god knows what all else the evening held.

    It should have sold earlier – hell, $1.50 knocked down to 50 cents, and it still didn’t move.

    But after the fifth giggling kid in a row had left it with three fingers and thumb clenched around its raised middle digit she could bear it no longer and moved it out of reach, to the back of the table.

    She restored its articulated knuckles to the graceful suggestion of direction it had held ever since … the thumb clasped around beneath the straight-angled index finger, others curled neatly beside as if to say “There, that way, go that way” … ever since Jason dumped her.

    Was it pathos or bathos she was enduring now? She couldn’t be sure. The classics professor had been so ungodly dull.

    She stared down at it, struggling to block visions of him giving her the box with puppydog eyes, of him stroking her breast with it, picking his ear with it, leaving it with pinky and thumb extended from fist in the corny-hippy Hawaiian “hang loose” gesture whenever he left in the morning.

    Finally, she flipped it into the trash. Then she thought about it all the next day on the bus to art school.

  • #a60 :: Nite-Ize S-biner

    ENLARGELittle bitty spring-tip flip ‘n’ switch hip clip. Comes in many sizes

    I have yet to find an actual use for it. Too heavy for the cartoonishly overloaded keyring.

    Too light for much else. Max load 10 lbs.

    So why did I spend $1.99 plus tax on it at Fry’s?

    It’s fun to fiddle with, seek I’ll give it that.

  • #a58 :: Grinding wheels

    ENLARGEClamps (spring, link ask plastic, viagra order steel), drill bits (metric, English), dental picks and scrapers, pottery sculptors, socket wrenches (metric, English), hammers, screwdrivers (slotted, Philips, Torx), scales (analog, digital), scissors, pliers (needlenose, cutting, stripping), locking pliers (needlenose, small, large), wrenches (box, open, ratcheting), rulers (brass, steel, aluminum, 12-inch, 24-inch, 48-inch), forceps, scalpels, magnifiers (10x, 2x8x, folding, pocket, dual-lensed – and grinding wheels like this.

    The tool vendors at L.A.’s swap meets load these and hundreds more tools of every description into plastic bins, set them out beneath easy-up shelters and sell them to geeks like me for what – in America – would be pennies on the dollar.

    These glittering wheels are meant to be used with Dremel tools. I have literally no idea how I’ll use them, but when I do, the metal heads coated with fine abrasive grit will make them the perfect tools for the job.

  • #a57 :: Chinese clock key

    ENLARGEI have too many projects.

    Let alone the fun, rx engaging day job, adiposity the kids, web the still-not-build-logged-but-almost-done basement studio renovation and this little site, I always seem to take in orphans, hoping to nurture them to completion.

    My latest is an antique ukelin – an obscure 1920s stringed instrument that – I learned to my amazement the other day via Google – is meant to be simultaneously bowed and plucked … (more…)

  • #a56 :: Atwood Tactical Whistle

    ENLARGEPeter Atwood hand-makes the most exquisite pocket tools.

    I discovered his work last summer via Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools newsletter.

    That one post, search and a subsequent re-post at BoingBoing made the New England tinker suddenly rock-star famous – and made his marvelous little wrenches, price knives, prybars and uncategorizable nifties virtually impossible for anyone with a day-job or without an industrial-strength web-bot to snag:

    The moment Atwood hand-finishes a batch of tools and posts their availability, they’re snapped up and treasured – or by some of the more unscrupulous, flipped straight onto eBay where they enjoy a sizeable markup.

    I was lucky enough to buy two of his tools before fame put that barrier between his work and his fans (there’s no barrier with him personally – he’s an industrious and extremely affable blogger – Hi, Peter!) and I can’t decide which tool is my favorite … (more…)

  • #a53 :: Quail call

    ENLARGEThe sound gusted through him just before he staggered back and sat down hard in the marsh grass.

    A boom – probably a 12-gauge – arrived milliseconds after the shot caught him full in the chest and knocked him onto his heels. Funny, this site the delay. Kind of funny how that works.

    Who in god’s name would be out taking game birds with a cannon like that? Sonsabitches. God.

    He began a swift inventory – Face, ambulance head – no blood. Chest – some, but no organs punctured – he couldn’t be sure.

    And this thing in his hand – an elegant little sandwich of Bakelite and chromed steel around a taut membrane of fabric.

    He had blown into it – just before he was shot.

    His father had given it to him: “This is a good call, once you learn how to use it.” And then his father showed him how real it sounded. “You just have to practice.”

    And he had blown into it, and then the … God. So much blood in the water.

    The dog bounded over to lap his face. Then he saw the blood jumping from the inside of his thigh. He pulled himself up onto his elbows, breathing hard. The dog barked.

    He blew an alarm cry from the little zeppelin of antique plastic. Maybe José would come.

    Before he passed out, he patted the dog one last time, and exhaled, sagging back into the marsh, where water seeped cold down his neck, and pants, and boots.

    Maybe I shouldn’t have practiced so well.

    Maybe …

  • #a52 :: Tattoo needle & inks

    ENLARGEThis evening, more about visit web Justin (this gifted gentleman) used these to finish my arm (front | side | three-quarter | full | video).

    Not just fantastic work. Deep art.

  • #a51 :: Digital keychain

    ENLARGEPicture this object surfacing in the late 1800s.

    “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic.”

    Arthur C. Clarke really mattered. He’s gone now, visit more about leaving behind a legacy of important work, viagra approved good stories, and one of the great epigrams of modern civilization.

    This thing is as trivial as it is powerful. It can play four or five dozen low-rez images in a slideshow with checkerboard dissolves. But how does that do much more  than enchant, on a snapshot-as-fetish level?

    When the price drops and these are cranked out in China by the millions, I want to create a pocket gallery of about 2,000 of these, sending out each one full of images in the pockets of friends and strangers, and think of it walking or dangling from steering columns all over the world, slowly being scratched by keys.

  • #a48 :: Fishin’ reel

    ENLARGE
    Vinny and I went fishing once. My best buddy since 6th grade A/V duty, viagra buy my (then) future best man. My good friend.

    Out in his scruffy little 18-foot runabout with the asthmatic Evinrude – or was it a Yamaha – in Long Island Sound.

    We set out from New London mid-morning, fortified with a cooler full of beer and sandwiches and a boxful of old sea tackle.

    Swacked by a wicked sinus infection, I was popping 12-hour time-release decongestants, which slowly did the trick, so I felt well enough to sail.

    The wind and sea were fair, the air about 75 degrees. It was a damn nice day for catching bluefish …
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  • #a46 :: Scissors sharpener

    0330081.jpgBanks used to do cleverer things to get your money than yell at you through mass media.

    Die-cut a couple of chunks of pasteboard, capsule glue them together around a snip of steel rod, and print helpful instructions and your brand name onto the thing. And hey, maybe someone will remember you fondly the next time their scissors get dull.

    They moved on to credit cards and sub-prime mortgages and other wacky stunts, and they left useful ephemera like this behind.

    I’m going to guess this is older than 1960, but so timeless is the font, I can’t place it any more precisly than that. I wonder how well it works, but hey, all our scissors are pretty sharp.

  • #a45 :: Chain mail

    032908.jpgI think I must be magnetic.

    I yearn for metal. I gather it to me, cheap carry it around.

    Half my keyring actually functions. The other half is clogged with crap that won’t fit in my pocket genteelly, viagra order but weighs heavy in pocket and hand, information pills delighting my fingertips.

    This handsome chunk of stuff was hand-made by a RenFaire artist out of 96 pre-split, ready-to-assemble stainless-steel rings. It is dense, and heavy, and so close to hand most of the time that it feels a part of me. Supple, yet iron-hard in the right configuration, it defies me not to play with it.

    Best 11 bucks I ever spent.

  • #a44 :: LED keychain lights

    032808.jpgI won’t say I hate the dark so much as I love light.Fumbling in the dark for anything breeds frustration, illness fear and needless aging – even if it is only a matter of seconds.

    But all those seconds stack up, search so it’s best to go prepared or spend your last few deathbed seconds wondering why you never had light when you really needed it – such as, approved during your last few deathbed seconds.

    Used to be, you had to spend $12 or $15 on this sort of thing.

    Now, you can get 10 of these little keychain sunbeams for $4.68 at DealExtreme, the crazy-insane Chinese gizmo-mart I’ve mentioned before.

  • #a40 :: New $5 bill

    032408.jpgMoney is like weather: It shapes the tides on which ride our dreams and lives, this site rx yet we often ignore its true nature.

    “Crap, it’s raining” is to “Crap, I’m poor” as our planet’s ecosystem is to the new $5 bill: Until you stop focusing on what it’s worth, you miss the complex beauty of what it is.

    U.S. mints began pumping the new $5 bill into circulation about 10 days ago – packed with anti-counterfeiting gimmicks. Microprint, ultraviolet-sensitive threads, surface embossing, multiple hidden watermarks – it’s a wonder the damn things don’t cost at least $5 each to make, so extravagant is the technology and craft behind them.

    Our cash is no longer dull, green and filthy. Our tax dollars are at work, making more of our tax dollars. Our money is art. Yours?

  • #a36 :: Mimobot

    032008.jpgWhen it comes to urban vinyl, check I’m a dry drunk.

    I walk through Munky King or KidRobot and drool.

    I never buy anything in the $125.00 range, nor even the $9.00 range, never pick anything up to hold it or ask to see something in the case. I shuffle around the shop, hands shoved into pockets, shoulders hunched, staring into case upon case full of exotically painted (and priced) vinyl caricatures and … just … drool … (more…)

  • #a33 :: Whiskey cork

    031708.jpgThis is an old design.

    Latter-day marketing strategies have capped it with a ridiculous hat of plastic, site for the love of Jack, viagra but the object remains true to its origins: a plug of impermeable, super-soft wood for keeping valuable spirits clean and strong.

    I’m no conoisseur, in the traditional sense. Wine, beer, scotch – I only know when something tastes extraordinary – or horrible.

    My friends and I enjoyed this stuff neat, and with a side of seltzer. We enjoyed it with ribs – rubbed with salt, pepper and rosemary, seared, then barbecued for 2 hours and barely introduced to a whiff of store-bought barbecue sauce in the last 5 minutes of cooking. And we enjoyed it with brownies, believe it or not.

    Aged 12 years in barrels once used for sherry, this was a damn good bottle of scotch.

  • #a32 :: Antique fishing lure

    031608.jpgA brilliant, ailment hand-made thing: a swivel pulls a tiny steel squid head through the water.

    The maker has sewn metallic leatherette around the link between the head and the trefoil hook, dosage to make it more fishy.

    For extra fishiness, the head-fins are twisted: tugging it makes the thing spin like a propeller.

    No date or manufacturer known.

  • #a31 :: Junction-box slugs

    031508.jpgDisc-slabs of galvanized steel, medical 15/16ths of an inch in diameter.

    Electricians punch them out of junction boxes: Punch the slug. Plug the collar. Hook up the conduit – juice.

    Just rewired our basement.

    Contemplating a purpose for them.