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They’re nothing super-special, but you can never have too many lights of various sorts kickin’ around the shop. Northern Tool is currently offering a pack of three different LED lights — all featuring various flexible arms — for $10.
The smallest is a “mini 1/2-watt light” with a 4-3/4″ arm. The middle-sized one includes three LEDs and a 7-3/4″ arm, and the big hulkin’ on with the clamp mount brings six LEDs to bear with an even longer flex arm.
Wel-Bilt 3-Pk of LED Flex Lights [Northern Tool]
Nothing says handcrafted like hammered metal. Not only is the pattern random, but the angle and depth of the blow are too, which is hard to replicate with a machine. To get this look on your own projects, Eurotool sells a set of three hammers with two different striking patterns each.
The hammers are hardened to Rockwell 48 and are meant to be used on non-ferrous metals, which in this case means metals that don’t contain iron rather than non-magnetic. When using the hammers you want to back the piece with with a metal block or anvil.
You’ll pay $50 for this set of three hammers. Eurotool also sells hammers with other patterns.
Hammers (PDF) [Eurotool]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon [What’s This?]
In the ’90s many budding (and retired) woodworkers made extra cash by turning rare wood into pen casings, then selling them to “luxury” pen buyers for big bucks. It got so popular as a pastime that companies began selling blanks and all the hardware in kit form. Hell, some companies even made a name for themselves selling the whole shebang up to and including chucks and mini-lathes. For a while you couldn’t talk to five people about woodworking without running into someone who’d tell you about their side business making pens.
I realized today that I haven’t run into one of those folks in quite a while. But I did run into an ad for the iPhone case pictured above. From a company called Gresso, it’s made of “200-year old African Blackwood [...] a rare, exclusive material of incredible strength and durability.” The back-panel Apple logo is 18-karat gold. Your price: just $4,500.
No, really. Some — albeit probably only a few — people are willing to pay just shy of five grand for a wood iPhone case. I see an opportunity.
Some quick Googling turned up a couple of sources for “African blackwood,” and though none appeared perfect for the job, I’m positive I could find the appropriate stock for no more than $50. Pen blanks — generally 1-1/2″ x 1-1/2″ x 6″ run about $13, table legs run around $80, and I found a whole African blackwood dreadnought guitar kit on eBay for $475. Rockler sells a whole 20-piece turning blank assortment for $200, which includes lots of “rare” (and probably durable) woods. This doesn’t even take into account the veneer market.
I’ll leave it up to you to figure out what it’d take to drill a camera hole and fit it into the case. Just remember that you need to keep your solution under about three freakin’ thousand dollars to leave room for a healthy profit margin — and a little spare change to get a paper-thin Apple logo made and gold plated.
Just think what you could get for an iPad version.
iPhone 4 for Man [Gresso]