Worthless Tools Gallery. What Tools do you regret buying?

GarageGuy said:
I have a couple of air chisels that seemed like a good idea 35 years ago, but never really get used. I bought them for cutting and separating exhaust system parts. They *will* work for that, but there are many other tools that work better. Even at that time, an oxy-acetylene cutting torch was faster and easier, and nowadays plasma.

Both of my air chisels still work like new (I keep them well oiled), but they haven't been used for an actual job in over 30 years. I smile when I walk through the DIY stores and see new air chisels amongst the other air tools. I wonder who is buying them and what they are using them for.

GG
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Easy. Cut the end off the chisel, press fit a plastic block and use it for ramming up greensand molds. Works a treat except for the beating your wrists take. A similarly modified needle scaler works better, but I've had no luck getting one that works more than a few minutes.
 
stupoty said:
i've gota vice that looks very similer, mine has provided good results, what issues did you have with it?

the kurt one does look very very solid :)

Stuart
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stupoty I might have been out of luck with all my vises.
This vise came from ARCEurotrade (UK) and I bought it together with my Sieg X2 mill.
It came with a manual with accuracy tests measurements on it that I suspect are an exact copy in all manuals.
My vise failed miserably in three of the following accuracy tests

IMG_004.jpg
G1 0.1
G6 0.1
G8 0.2 on a length of 50mm

As for the rest of the tests I'm not sure I can verify them so I presume they are correct

In plain words that translates as follows.
The body of the vise was not parallel to the base. i.e. when I tested the surfaces on which the jaw moved for parallelism with the base I found that the reading was not equal at the two ends (lower at the far end from fix jaw).
The movable jaw was too loose to hold the work against fixed jaw without a round bar. The main reason for that loosenes was that the movable jaw body was 0.1 thicker and the holding bars had a 0.1 gap between moving jaw and the vise body (the little white area between red and green in the following drawing)
Sketch.jpg

Fixing it was pretty simple!
I made the surface of the body parallel to the base using my fly cutter
and I reduced the thickness of the moving jaw skimming the base of it so there is (virtually) no gap between holding bars and vise body.

BTW
ARCEUROTRADE give them vises away for nearly half price now. If I was in UK I might buy the bigger one (100mm) and fix it.

ARC100.jpg

it is not bad for £46.75 including VAT.
BUT...
I live in Greece and I do not wish to pay another £25 p&p. I don't think is worth it.

Thanks for your interest on the subject

Petros

PS

the KURT-STYLE one looks VERY solid but 16 kilos is far toooooooo heavy for my little x2 mill

IMG_004.jpg Sketch.jpg ARC100.jpg
 
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ogberi said:
Easy. Cut the end off the chisel, press fit a plastic block and use it for ramming up greensand molds. Works a treat except for the beating your wrists take. A similarly modified needle scaler works better, but I've had no luck getting one that works more than a few minutes.
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That's a great idea. I am planning to build a home foundry in the next year or two. It would be easy to make a chisel with a big flat face to ram a flask. Thank you!

GG
 
Intersting about the vice, i just checked, i got mine from http://www.glostertooling.co.uk/

i will try and have a check of the specs, i havn't mesured mine to be honest. I've managed to gang mill parts that came out within <0.02mm and i tend to check it with indicators if i'm working on things that are particulaly critical.

Stuart
 
30 or so years ago I spent £40 inc taxes on a handsaw designed to cut fired brick and light weight blocks ( It would be about £120 sterling , USD $ 200 ish ? ) these days .
T'was a lovely job , each CTC tooth was silver soldered in the blade at four to the inch and the profiles of each tooth was brilliant .


I wanted to make a new door way from our lounge into the kitchen and brick up the old one to make the off lounge dining area twice as large . What I didn't want to do was start hammering & grinding during the evenings & making a hell of a dust mess.

A dust sheet either side of the wall and an hour or so of gentle sawing should soon see me cut the two 6 foot nine long verticals.
I carefully plumbed the wall , drew on fine marker pen lines to follow, then drilled the top two corner holes as square as I could .
Checked the trueness with a right angle found they were square on, drew the verts on the other side & proceeded to use an 8 mm TCT masonry drill off hammer to make the saw start slots for each side of the frame hole . I drilled them from both sides just to be accurate , it wasn't long before I had two nice and clean 8 inch long slots on each side to insert the saw.
Stood on a well set trestle board arrangement , I slid the saw in and took the first gentle push forward.
It felt weird knowing that I was sawing brick so easy , as I pulled the saw back for the next stoke I saw it was now devoid of all the teeth that had passed through the hole .

Arrrrragh LOUDLY !

I collected all the teeth and cleaned up . Took the saw back to the tool shop the next day and handed over the teeth and saw.
" OMG Dave , your the third guy who has had a saw like that , never mind here is a more expensive replacement , see how you get on with that. "

That evening after setting up again I slid the saw in the slot and gently pressed it forward . Yep ,all the bloody teeth came out on the first stroke forwards. A my wife of three months, " Alison " was laughing & giggling fit to pee herself . ( Even today she still finds it funny )

Fuming I cleaned up and decided to take a simple soft thermal brick to the tool shop the next morning and a basic house brick


Ron the counter man who was free had a worried look in his face when he saw the bricks . There was another guy to my right banging his fist on the table giving the sales man a right ear bending , he too had one of these " More expensive " saws.

I made a joke about it all and declared , " Ron if you can cut these two blocks in half with a new saw I'll bugger off and say it's me at fault , if however you get the same result give me a nine inch angle grinder and TCT diamond impregnated brick blade .

" Errr I'd better get the boss Dave ..

By now there were several more customers hoping to get served . I carefully & calmly explained the situation to Mal the outfit boss and repeated my offer . By now there was 16 guys queued up behind us starting to chunter & mutter as they drank their freebie teas ,coffee's or chocolate drinks out the free vend machine in the shop .

Full of bravado , Mal , in front of an ever growing queue of potential customers took me up on the offer , dragged a new workmate portable bench/ vice off the display stand , inserted the soft thermal brick and gently drew the saw back four inches across the block to start the cut .....Ratta tat tatter tat ....15 teeth fell out .

" OAF ", he said to Ron, ( Well it sounded a bit similar) " Give him the top of the range Bosch 9 inch angle grinder and a 9 inch Diamond Borth blade "

The guy with the other saw said, "What about me " ? ... A crestfallen Mal then said , " Aye you too " .
You should have heard the cheer that went up from the other guys in the shop .

That incident kept me a faithful customer of the tool shop for the next 20 years or so till I moved from the area , last time I visited family in the area the shop was still going strong in the same name . Thought I didn't see any brick cutting handsaws in the brickies tool section of one of the big shop front windows .
 
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Some of my first power tool purchases were from Sears,70s, top of the line jig saw, 1/3 sheet orbital sander, and a belt sander. I began to see a pattern. Craftsman.
 
Bought a Harbor Freight punch and die set. The plastic punch guide broke the first time I used it. Might be OK for punching holes in gasket material but doesn't work well for brass shim stock.
 
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After my wife ran our gas powered string trimmer with raw gas and ruined the engine, I had the bright idea of buying a Ryobi electric string trimmer that used the same 18 volt battery that my cordless saw used. Note that this was before they came out with their ONE battery system and the fancy batteries. The battery was a simple Ni-Cad pack. Anyway it lasted all of about 5 minutes before running out of power. Maybe the new batteries would do better, but it was sold with the intent to use the pack that I have. Simply garbage. Battery still works fine in my saw.
 
george wilson said:
I have found my contour sander quite useful. You have to expect to change a SMALL piece of sand paper pretty often. It's SMALL. I have found mine useful for polishing knife blades I am making,with wet or dry paper. saves my old fingers!!:)
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Thanks for the tip George. I'll have to dig it out from the bottom of the tool cabinet next time I sharpen a knife.
 
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