A Tough New Portable Coffee Maker

I like fresh coffee. Unfortunately, a sensitivity to caffeine means I am forced to be a “decaf man”.  Most coffee shops seem to think us decaf drinkers are either weird or degenerate and refuse to deliver a really good decaf. To say the least, getting a reliably good decaf coffee on the road has been difficult. Now a recent solution called the OXX has solved the problem for me.

I found this tough new portable coffeemaker called the Coffeeboxx at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference in San Francisco last year.  I liked them so much, I bought three. These machines are built tough and look like a toolbox or maybe an ice chest. They have a durable dirt and dent resistant exterior with a large carry handle. They sure don’t look like coffee makers.

The OXX plugs into any 110v outlet like the one in my job truck. If your vehicle lacks a 110v outlet, you can get and inverter. An inverter provides a 110v outlet that plugs into your cigaret lighter. The comes with a huge portable water canister making it fully self-contained. The canister will make at least seven 12 oz. coffees on one fill.

It uses the common K-cup coffee pods so you can get virtually any kind of coffee you like. As I mentioned I can never find a decent, full-bodied decaf out on the road. But the OXX makes it easy for me to brew one up in about 3 minutes. I just pop in a Peet’s dark roast decaf pod and push the button. The fold-down fill area holds my big Yeti cup perfectly. I keep plenty of regular coffee pods in my truck so I can share with my “normal” coffee drinking friends.

UPDATE as of 2/10/2010: Forget trying the reusable plastic coffee cartridges. Using an improper coffee grind in the cartridges can clog up the water lines causing the unit not to work.

If you like fresh coffee, whether it be regular or decaf, you will enjoy the convenience of having your favorite brew readily available any time you want with the OXX Coffeeboxx

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Bench grinders are awesome tools to have for everyday use around the shop. There always seems to be some metal part that needs to be shortened, sharpened, trimmed or buffed and a good grinder is just the tool for the job.

A warning and note of caution is required here. As useful as these tools are, great care is required when using them. Grinders are powerful motorized spinning tools and should only be used per the direction of the manufacturer and with proper safety gear including: hats, gloves, eye protection, hearing protection and spark resistant clothing.

On the Northern California ranch where I grew up we had a huge and ancient grinder that sat at one end of the shop. It was big, weighty and perched on its own massive stand. Mounted on walls around the tool were things you might need when grinding stuff. There was a “dresser,” a strange looking tool used to help keep the grinding wheels clean and shaped properly. There were extra grinding wheels of various grits, safety glasses, leather gloves, a fire extinguisher, a bright light with a flexible spiral neck pointed at the work area, and always a bucket of water. If you are setting up a shop grinder you will need all these things too.

On the ranch we used that grinder almost everyday. Ours had a wire brush wheel on one side and a grinding wheel on the other. The wire brush wheel made cleaning parts and the threads of rusted bolts possible. That was necessary because my parents and grandparents survived the depression and WWII and as a result they saved and reused everything. Especially metals. 

Sparks will fly!

The grinding process creates heat, a lot of it, so the water bucket served to cool off hot parts. You just dip them right in, and after a little sizzle they were cool enough to handle again.  As a curious kid, I never missed a chance to watch a grinding job.  I was warned not to stand too close as the operation would send startling amounts of bright sparks flying all over. Reflecting now, I suspect that the handy water bucket in our shop was also a back-up to the fire extinguisher. But no one ever said that, and I never had the potentially exciting opportunity to witness it either. 

High and low speeds

There are two kinds of grinders: high speed and slow speed.  High speed grinders operate at over 3000 RPM. These are machines with high inertia and are used to remove massive amounts of material quickly.  In the process, they also generate lots of heat almost instantly when the fast grinding wheel touches the work. That heat can have a damaging affect on sensitive metal products like the edges of knives or cutting blades. When an edge overheats, it reduces hardness of the metal in the burned area thus allowing it to dull faster. This ruins the edge because these overheated areas cannot be repaired. You can tell when metal has been overheated because the affected area will immediately turn a blue or black color.

Slower is better

Slow speed grinders are kinder and more forgiving to the workpiece. Tools of this sort operate at speeds of 1800 RPM, or even slower. These relatively slow RPMs generate heat too, but it happens at a more controllable pace that is ideal for work on delicate metals. This is exactly what you need for sharpening work because the edges of cutting tools are very thin and can overheat easily.  With a slow speed grinder and some practice you can learn to sharpen just about any cutting tool without ruining the hardness of the blades.

Slow speed grinders tend to cost a bit more because they need better motors.  Slow motors need to have more power and torque to overcome lower inertia and possible stalling during the grinding process.

Back to the grind!

I can recommend any of the following slow-speed bench grinders for your shop. I personally own the Baldor grinder (pictured above) because it is made in America, has a great motor, is very versatile, and it is a heavy duty tool. The Jet is made in China but is an excellent but lighter-duty tool. The Cuttermasters is strictly an aficionado’s sharpening tool with high-tech, state of the art grinding wheels : Baldor, Jet, Cuttermasters Tradesman

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Drivers sets for drill and impact tools

You may not be old enough to remember this, but at one time Phillips-head screws and screw drivers were an exotic new fastening technology. Before then, the common method was the simple paring of a straight slot screw and screwdriver.

Brief history fasteners and drivers

To increase production on the automobile assembly lines, a way was needed to more efficiently mate and hold the screw driver to the screw. In a stroke of brilliance in 1932, Oregon resident Henry F. Phillips patented the “recessed cruciform” screw and its driver.

During WWII the use of this new fastening technology became widespread throughout industry as production speed accelerated. By the end of the war in 1945 every good mechanic had Phillips-head screw drivers of assorted sizes and gauges in his toolbox.

Advances in screwing technology

Phillips drivers and fasteners are excellent for hand tool applications, but not so good for modern power tool applications. In more recent years, a number of specialty drive/fastener combinations has been developed to work better with power tools. Allen, Box and Torx drivers and fasteners each have a specific purpose and application, and all are widely used now. If you run across one during a repair project you will want to have the right tool to deal with it.

Summary

Make sure you have the right driver for the fastener. Reasonably priced sets are available covering all different drivers and sizes. I recommend getting sets with extras of each (like this one). They sometimes break and are easily lost. Sets packaged small enough to be stored in the same box as the power drills are especially useful. Most of these driver kits can be had for less than $50, so get one for each tool box you have. It may just save you a trip to the hardware store at an inconvenient time.

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Congratulations on taking time to use this free website. I truly hope you find the information here fun and useful? Please send me your comments and feedback. Writing and maintaining this site is a lot of hard work. By sharing these pages with your friends, you help me to continue the effort.  You can easily share these pages to all your favorite social media sites via the shortcut buttons on the sidebar. You can also simply email the page link to your friends. Please share often.

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Thanks again!

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Helpful power tool kits for homeowners

Like word processors for writers, battery powered tools have become indispensable for general home repairs because they are so versatile.

Cordless tools can be used to drill, drive screws, power hole saws or to remove or tighten fasteners like nuts and bolts using socket attachments. Kits like these are handy and will get used all the time. So you’ll want to get durable products of good quality.

Multi-tool kits are better deals

The reason you want to buy a kit is because it is way cheaper than buying the individual tools and batteries piecemeal. The manufacturers all make kits that can be had with various mixes of components including saws, drills, sanders, grinders etc. Occasionally a maker will have a special sale on packages that include new tool offerings or tools they are planning to discontinue. These are especially good ways to get low cost batteries.

I recommend you start with a kit that has at least two primary tools like a battery powered drill kit with an impact driver, two extra batteries and a charger. Get a kit that includes big 5.0 amperage/hour batteries possible. Beware of cheaper, “teaser” sets that have low amp/hour batteries

All kits come with handy but heavily-branded carrying boxes or bags that hold the tools, extra batteries and charger. Buy on-line for the very best deals and use my links below for reliable vendors.

Summary

When assembling a useful homeowner tool set you will want a battery powered drill kit to be a part of it. I like the DeWalt or Makita sets best, but Milwaukee, and Bosch make acceptable kits. Hitachi also makes similar tools but I was only able to find them with 3.0 amp/hour batteries. Any of these will be a good addition to your tool set.

Help me to help you

Congratulations on taking time to use this free website. I truly hope you find the information here fun and useful? Please send me your comments and feedback. Writing and maintaining this site is a lot of hard work. By sharing these pages with your friends, you help me to continue the effort.  You can easily share these pages to all your favorite social media sites via the shortcut buttons on the sidebar. You can also simply email the page link to your friends. Please share often.

The very best way to help me occurs when you use the embedded links to buy things. Using a link is easy and free, yet it provides a great source of support for this site. The vendors I’ve chosen to link to have proven to be the very best resources available so that is why I recommend them personally.

If you have questions or just want to say hi, please send me a note.

Thanks again!

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 A Bench Vise, The Best Tool On My Work Bench

Sometimes the best tool is the simplest one. Over the summer I finally found time to build a workbench in the garage of my new home. The bench is great, but after using it for a couple of projects, it became obvious it was missing something. It needed a bench vice.

Since I’m a lover of older, well-made tools, I normally would have started searching antique and second-hand tool stores to try and find a good old vice. But not this time. I have a new bench, in a new garage, in a new home, so I decided to shop for a new vice.

After looking around I found two makers that seemed to set themselves apart as far as quality goes. USA made Wilton, and UK made Bessey. Both of these companies make products that are high quality, made to last…and expensive. I really liked the Bessey models as they are dropped forged and guaranteed to be unbreakable.

After recovering from a bit of sticker shock, I eventually settled on the American made Wilton Model 1755 with 5.5” jaws. I recommend that you get one from Amazon with free shipping..

This tool had a number of features that I liked.

• Fully enclosed screw design that seals lubrication in and keeps contaminants out. This helps to extend the smooth operation and life of the vise
• Rugged 60,000 PSI ductile iron body
• Steel pipe jaws hold up to 3 1/2in. pipe safely and securely
• Great for irregular shaped objects
• Reversible jaw inserts are serrated on one side for extra grip and smooth on the other to prevent marring on softer surfaces
• Large, machined anvil work surface designed to take a beating while forming and shaping materials
• Longer spindle nut ensures a lifetime of smooth spindle movement
• Treated with rust inhibitors for all-weather performance
• 4-bolt mounting pattern instead of the industry-standard 3-bolt pattern for sturdier performance

Installation requires thoughtful layout so that the tool will be well-supported, and positioned in a way to function at its best. For instance, most bench vices I have seen are mounted too far back from the edge of the bench. This means nothing held in the jaws can extend below the bench without hitting it.  To avoid this problem, the vice needs to be mounted quite close to the edge of the bench meaning the edge must be strong enough to support it. The vice needs to be supported by structural members mounted under the bench, and it needs to have plenty of clear space around it for working.

My installation took about an hour, including the addition of two 2×4 reinforcing supports under the bench surface.

The final installation is exceptionally strong and has a nice clean appearance. I am very pleased with the result and can hardly wait to put this new tool to work!

Help me to help you

Congratulations on taking time to use this free website. I hope you find the information here fun and useful? Please send me your comments and feedback. Writing and maintaining this site is a lot of hard work. By sharing these pages with your friends, you help me to continue the effort.  You can easily share these pages to all your favorite social media sites via the shortcut buttons on the sidebar. You can also simply email the page link to your friends. Please share often.

The very best way to help me occurs when you use the embedded links to buy things. Using a link is easy and free, yet it provides a great source of support for this site. The vendors I’ve chosen to link to have proven to be the very best resources available so that is why I recommend them personally.

This is the place to visit if you want information on: How to improve air quality; ways to improve the valueof your home; what are the best cleaning services; do you really need handyman services; how to plan and execute home renovation and home improvement projects; ways to hire a handyman; what to do during spring cleaning; ways to go about tidying up a messy house; and generally how to be a better homeowner.

 

Make sure you download your monthly maintenance checklistfor this month.

If you have questions or just want to say hi, please send me a note. If you are looking for help performing the work described and you are in the San Francisco area, go toHPS Palo Alto Inc.and request a free evaluation.

Thanks again!

Resources

 

 

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