DIY

Did you know there are two lines of Craftsman tools? One is controlled by Sears and the other is controlled by Stanley Black and Decker. When it comes to Sears vs Stanley Craftsman tools, there may be a difference, and it’s certainly confusing. Here’s how this confusion came to be.

In March 2017, Sears sold the Craftsman brand name to Stanley Black and Decker while retaining a license to continue to use the name itself until 2032. This is why you can buy Craftsman tools at Sears, yet find different Craftsman tools at other stores.

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A loose dresser drawer probably won’t ruin your morning. But it certainly doesn’t help. Eliminating sources of frustration makes the morning go better, so here’s how to fix loose dresser drawers.

Loose dresser drawers are almost always caused by damaged or missing parts, often from trying to force open an overfull drawer. Once you repair or replace the guides or glides, the drawer stays in place and operates smoothly. The process only takes a few minutes, costs about $3 per drawer, and requires no tools other than a screwdriver.

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Commercial boxes for electronics projects are expensive. You can spend more on the enclosure than you spend on the parts it protects, in many cases. I’ve seen plenty of ideas for cheap enclosures from hardware store products. But I have a source for cheap project enclosures that’s both cheaper and more versatile.

Tin boxes, available at dollar stores and gift stores especially in the fall and winter seasons and in secondhand stores almost year-round, make sturdy and inexpensive enclosures with lots of space inside. They are comparable in size to commercial project enclosures but cost 1/3 as much. And if you know where to shop, you can get them year round at an even lower price.

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Is your shop vac blowing dust out the back? Mine always do after a while. Fortunately it’s an easy fix, and you don’t need to replace the unit. If yours just started doing it, stop what you’re doing right away and give the unit a checkup. You may save yourself 20 bucks.

A shop vac-type vacuum blowing dust out the back is always a filter problem: either your filter is clogged, missing, loose, or the dust is too fine. But once you clean or replace the filter, the problem goes away.

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Will a table saw cut through nails? Unfortunately I know the answer is yes. But I don’t recommend it, generally speaking, for a couple of reasons. 

The visible sparks that happen when you try to cut through nails with a table saw suggest what you’re doing isn’t a great idea. But you’ll also dull your blade, which creates a safety hazard long after the sparks stop flying. Read more

My son asked me to help him air up his tires on his bicycle because the valve stem was crooked. His friends tried to help him and couldn’t figure it out, and it was a new one to me too. Here’s how we learned to fix a crooked valve stem on a bike.

The good news is you don’t need a new bike or even a new tire, necessarily. Crooked valve stems are caused by a deflated inner tube bunching up. Sometimes you can deflate the tire and straighten the stem, but other times you have to pull the tire and stretch out the tube.

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When you buy a new doorknob, they almost always have a rectangular faceplate on the mechanism. In some older houses, the doorknobs just have small, round faceplates, or no faceplate at all. Here’s how to change or remove a doorknob faceplate so a new doorknob fits without you having to mortise the door.

To change or remove a doorknob faceplate, you literally pry the faceplate off with a screwdriver. The trick is just knowing where to pry. If you’re changing a lot of doorknobs, the time you save by not having to mortise the door adds up quickly.

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Table saws are extremely useful, but a good table saw is expensive. Even a cheap table saw can be rather expensive. So it’s very tempting to make your own, using a circular saw. But here’s why making a table saw from a circular saw is dangerous.

A homemade table saw lacks the safety features of even the most basic saw, including the riving knife, kickback pawls, and blade guard. Although frequently overlooked, kickback is the most common cause of injury from table saws, and building your own saw leaves you susceptible. It’s much safer to buy an inexpensive table saw.

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I don’t know whose bright idea it was to build garages and put only one electrical outlet in them. But it’s common in houses built before the 1970s. I don’t need to put the Taj Mahal out there, but I don’t like snaking extension cords across the garage to plug a tool in. So here’s how to add an outlet to the garage from the adjacent room.

To add an outlet to the garage from the adjacent room, knock out the metal knockout in the electrical box in an existing outlet, then drill through the drywall on the other side. Run a wire from the outlet to the other side. The project only requires a wall-mounted electrical box, a short length of wire, a cover plate, and a GFCI outlet if the circuit isn’t already GFCI-protected.

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