DIY

When I first became interested in electric trains as a hobby, I noticed the construction of a lot of parts was pretty simple. I wanted to replicate some of it myself. But I quickly became frustrated at paying $4 for a tiny sheet of brass and ruining half of it when I cut out my part. Here’s how to cut thin metal at home without wasting half of it.

The tools for cutting metal vary depending on the type of metal, but generally speaking, you can use relatively simple and inexpensive tools to do it, including a paper guillotine, electric metal shears, a nibbler, a rotary tool, or hand shears.

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As a longtime homeowner, a landlord, and a train hobbyist, I’ve collected a fair number of tools. Enough tools that I recently had to buy another tool cabinet because I was out of room. A fair number of my tools came from Harbor Freight. So are Harbor Freight tools any good? Sometimes. But definitely not always. They aren’t all junk, but they aren’t all good either.

It’s hard to generalize with Harbor Freight because some of their tools are a good value for the money, or even an excellent value for their money. Others are a poor value. Harbor Freight has a reputation and has started offering better quality in recent years, but many of their cheap tools also remain on the shelves. But if you’re careful, you can do very well at Harbor Freight.

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Sometimes when the polyurethane dries on your project, it leaves white spots on the finish, marring otherwise nice-looking work. Maybe that only happens to me, but I don’t think so. Fortunately you can fix white spots on polyurethane. And when you know what causes them, you can prevent them in the first place.

White spots on polyurethane are generally caused by two things: Not stirring thoroughly enough before applying it, or a buildup of moisture. While preventing the white spots is easier than fixing them, you can fix them by sanding down the high spots and then drawing out the moisture. If the spot is small, you can touch it up with a furniture marker.

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Sometimes I dig through my toolbox drawers looking for something and find tools I’d forgotten I had. And I might or might not find the tool I was looking for. Sound familiar? You can spend hundreds of dollars on organization systems, but you may not want to. Here’s how you can organize tool box drawers cheap, and without blowing your whole holiday weekend.

Toolbox organization trays can help you sort and group similar tools and keep the tools from jumbling into a mess, striking a balance between foam systems that look nice but offer no flexibility, and chaotic junk drawers that hide your tools from you. If some of your tools have instruction booklets, having trays lets you keep them right next to the tools if you ever need them.

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I was organizing my toolbox when two of the drawers jammed. And people wonder why I’m so disorganized. Every time I try to organize, something like that happens. But anyway, it seems like finding out how to take the drawers out of a Craftsman toolbox is even harder than getting organized. Hopefully I can simplify that.

Most Craftsman toolboxes don’t use hand-operated tabs or levers like other brands. Craftsman toolboxes have a drawer stop that you can push in with a screwdriver after you extend the drawer as far as it will go. Push on the stop gently to avoid bending it too far. Once you push in the stop, it releases the drawer so you can pull it out the rest of the way.

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I have a couple of small parts organizer cabinets. Over the years several drawers went missing or broke. Fortunately it’s easy and cheap to make replacement drawers for a small parts organizer. You don’t have to throw out a $20 cabinet over some missing drawers. Here’s an illustrated guide showing how I made mine.

To make replacement drawers for a small parts organizer, trace out all of the sides on a piece of thick cardboard. The thicker the better. Leave flaps in each corner. Cut out the big rectangle. Cut one side of each flap. Score the rest of the lines and fold them, then secure with wood glue.

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What are thread cutting screws used for? You use thread cutting screws when you need to join two pieces together, but you can’t or don’t want to use tools to cut threads ahead of time to accommodate the screws.

Thread cutting screws are a special type of self tapping screw. People often use the words thread cutting, thread forming, and self tapping interchangeably. These classes of screws are very similar but they have subtle distinctions. Thread cutting screws create less stress on the workpiece than thread forming screws do. You can also get thread cutting screws for metal or plastic and wood.

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My sons have to take baths because their shower leaks but the tub doesn’t. I talked it over with a plumber, who kindly shared three relatively easy and cheap fixes for when a shower leaks but not the tub. In my case, the shower leaks into an unfinished basement utility room and not a finished ceiling, but in either case, you want to either fix the leak or not use the shower. Leaks lead to water damage and mold, and you don’t want those things.

My local plumber’s suggestions are to replace the faucet, caulk around the faucet and the overflow plate, and shore up the caulk between the tub and the surround. If the shower leaks all the time, it’s more likely to be the faucet. If it leaks just when certain people use it, the problem is more likely to be caulk. In most cases you can fix it yourself in less than an hour with less than $30 worth of materials.

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An outlet sparking when plugging in is scary when it happens, so I don’t blame you for asking. Is it normal to see a spark when you plug something in?

A spark, also called an arc, happens when electricity jumps from one surface to another, and is usually too small to even notice. If you routinely see a big spark when plugging something in, you need to do something about it, but the cost is frequently very low or even free.

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