World's Cheapest Noise Canceling Headphones

When I'm in the shop I usually like jamming to my music but the tunes don't sound good over the buzz of saws, routers and vacuums.  I do what I can to keep the noise down for my neighbors so turning the volume up to eleven is out of the question. Besides being rude to the neighbors, extreme decibel levels can be quite damaging to your ears.

I've tried wearing ear buds or headphones in the shop but even though you can still hear the music, you can also hear the tools and the two don't mix.  I looked at noise cancelling headphones but they can be insanely expensive.  What I needed was inexpensive headphones mixed with great noise cancelling capabilities.  I saw these inexpensive hearing protectors and when I ordered them they actually worked quite well, but still no music. I had some inexpensive headphones laying around and wish the two could be combined somehow.  Once I started playing, it was amazingly simple.

Removing Rust From Hand Tools

I was working on a project cutting quite a bit of plywood and I came to realize my circular saw had achieved the status of powered splinter maker, it was time for a new blade. My circular saw, like most, has a blade wrench tucked away in the shoe. When I went to remove the wrench, it offered quite a bit of resistance, more than was expected. I soon discovered my blade wrench had suffered a respectable case of oxidation, nothing that would ruin it, just enough to cause it to really stick in it's little holster. Well, I had been holding on to a chisel I had been using on the same project that had also rusted a bit, again, not unusable, just rusty. Time to clean.  I could use the old wire brush and a lot of elbow grease, but did I tell you I was in the middle of another project? Let's do a soak.

Flexy Slinky-Action Extension Cord

I was curious when I saw this product on a web advertisement and when asked, the nice people at Philatron were kind enough to send me a sample. A springy "slinky" extension cord that coils up nice and neat when not in use....gimmicky?  Let's check it out and see.

Simple Sturdy Garage Storage Shelf

The first part of making your garage into a usable workshop is making space to work. An easy and affordable way to do this is by using store bought storage totes for organization and building a heavy duty shelf to store those on.  I purchased a bulk pack of totes so I would have a uniform look and matching totes would also help maximize my storage with a uniform size.  You could always use mismatched totes, no big deal, just measure all the different totes and use the largest measurement in any dimension when sizing your shelves.