keyring sized tools

This post has been spawned from my interest in pocket-sized tools, and trying to build the ultimate handy set of keys for my work keys. I have a few tools in my collection already, and I’ll write a short review of those, as well as showing some tools off my wish list. This list ignores multitools I have reviewed previously. Most of them are far too big to be included in this post anyway.

Gerber Artifact

my Gerber Artifact

I recently got my hands on a Gerber Artifact, which looked awesome. It has a small pry bar, Bottle opener, “x-acto” style replaceable blade, and a Philips head screwdriver on the tip. I had nothing like it in my collection, so i put in an order

Mini guitar amp

So, i have a couple of guitars, a crappy acoustic, and a fender squire electric.

I have  a couple of guitar amps, My Squire came with a little 10 Watt amp, and I also have  a massive 40 watt cabinet, which is WAAAAAY overkill for my “playing”.

I usually find, even with the little 10 Watt amp, I’m never even close to cranking it. I only go the 40 watt amp because it didn’t cost me anything (well, it cost me a couple of bucks for a new IEC socket).

I have noticed lately a few places selling mini guitar amplifiers including local store JB Hifi, however, they seemed fairly expensive, for what looked to me to be a fairly basic chinese made plastic cabinet, and what i’m assuming to be, a fairly cheap speaker and internal amplifier.

So, as one does, I got thinking, and I thought I probably have enough stuff around the shed to make something equally as good.

Portable Vice Stand

Above, you can see the vice stand. I haven’t done much documentation of the process, so you get the finished product, and thats it unfortunatly. The black blob on one leg is a bunch of electrical tape, which i have used to take out the wobble from the stand, as the feet aren’t perfectly even.

This one came about from various projects where I needed to work outside, but needed something to hold and support my work, as well as having a couple of new tools to try out, including an auto tinting welding helmet, and an angle grinder cutoff stand near identical to the one pictured below:

In the end, the stand was a bit higher then i had planed. The stand was supposed to be about 90cm high,  but somewhere along the line, I made it 100cm

construction was pretty basic, with the feet in 3 pieces – one full length of about 50cm, the other two are half that and are joind to the large one in the center, a couple of bits of strap welded ontop of the crossed feet to give me somewhere to weld the main pipe, and then there was the main pipe itself wich was welded ontop of the cross. The end plate the vice bolts to was acually already on the pipe I used, so that made my life a little easier.

My welds were far from awesome, but they are holding for the time being. if they break, i can always re-weld the stand, and depending on how things go, I may end up cutting it off and making it shorter, and hopefully improving on my welds. My new welding helmet helped me aim my welds better, and made it much easier to weld. I’m very impressed.

Thats it for another one of my projects. so until next time, have fun, stay safe.
Matt

Camcorder Microphone Adapter

This is my latest project. It is a converter box that converts the 3.5mm stereo microphone input on my camcorder, into some common interfaces, Such as XLR, RCA, and dual 3.5 mono plugs.

Specifically, the driving idea was driven by the XLR inputs, and I was contemplating making a simple cable with 2 XLRs, but I decided to go with the jiffy box and extra inputs for flexiblilty

The TGIMBOEJ

So, I’ve recieved the  tgimboeja little while ago, and I’ve been slowly getting around to going thru it properly, and documenting everything, and adding my bits and pieces.

OK to start off with, here is the box as it came, just opened up:

and then removing some of the bubble wrap to take a peak:

The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk

Todays blog is about something I’ve been looking at for a while. It is EvilMadScientist’s “The Great Internet Migratory Box of Electronics Junk” or TGIMBOEJ for short.

Actually, it is not one box, but many boxes, circulating thru the postal system, full of electronic -treasure. If you want to get a good idea of what you can find in a box, I’ve included a link to the Flickr group right here

Reciently, I finally put my name down on the list as a potential recipient. Hopefully I will be contacted soon, as I look forward to receiving one

I was thinking of making another box myself, however, there is not a huge list of Australian participants, so I wonder if its worth it, or if the few people will just get overloaded with the same few boxes, so for now, I’m going to wait for a box to come my way, and find a good collection of bits and pieces to put back in it (which shouldn’t be a huge problem, I have lots of junk….)

Well, until next time, when hopefully I have some of my own work to post, Have fun making stuff.
Matt out.

Things Happening around here

So, I Haven’t really done anything worth posting reciently, however, I do have a few things on the brew, and I thought I would make a post hinting at what they might be

Synths

First off, I’ve been surfing around the Music from Outer Space website, and I’m feeling like tackling an ambtious project, that has lots of knobs, and shiny things.

To be a little more specific, I’m planning on starting with the Mini-Synth, So I can get a feel for things. I like things that make sound, and music, however, I lack the training and talent to make proper music myself, but I don’t let that stop me drooling over gear
To make this uber ambitious, I’m even going to attempt to create my own PCB, using the laser printer toner transfer method, which will be interesting, as it will be one of my first attempts at etching a PCB. I will probably attempt some smaller boards before I try the big one.

Mixers

I’ve noticed one of my more popular blog posts is my 2 channel mixer. I have since outgrown it, and now I’m back to using my behringer mixer to mix everything together. In order to free up the mixer again, and to give myself another project to play with, I plan on attempting to make myself an active multi channel stereo mixer – probably about 4 stereo channels in size. Stay tuned for that one.

I may also attempt to make an uber small pocket mixer for mixing various sound sources together, on the run

Pongsats

I am fairly interested in the pongsats of JP aerospace. For a while, I wondered if they still did runs with pongsats attached, as their blog and homepage doesn’t seem to be too up to date, however, I did find a few references to recient launches from my shuffling round the website.

I’m getting excited about making my own attempt at a “smart” pongsat. Similar in concept to the picaxe based one here. However, I’m not going to copy their design at all, I plan on using my own ideas, and hopefully, jamming as much as possible into the small space and weight constraints present. This means Surface mount components, and custom PCBs. both which will be learning experiences for myself.

Parts

For all these projects, I’m going to need parts that I don’t have. Originally, I figured I could pick most of it up from Jaycar, which is possible, and fine in most parts, however, at their prices, the little projects, like the audio mixer soon delve into the range it would cost to buy a cheap, professionally designed solution.

This is where places such as Futurlec come in handy, with prices for most components coming in at a dramatically cheaper price.

and just out of interest, for those australians out there, interested in Picaxe Microcontrollers. The place with the best range I have seen locally is MicroZed. they seem to be the main distributor of picaxe related gear in the country

So Stay tuned for more info on these, and other projects, along with Photos, step by step descriptions, Video, and anything else I can manage to include.
I hope you’re exited.

Matt Out.

What could this be?

So, this is a picture of my current work in progress. It doesn’t look like much , but it should be a cool little tool when done.

This post is mostly a test of the ability to post to wordpress from Flickr.
I’m hoping its useful, maybe making it easier to manage blogs with photos, but we’ll find out i guess

Anyway, thats all for now, I’ll keep everyone updated. Cheeers

Instructables

So, This post won’t house any of my work, I’ve been a bit slack of late, so I thought I would add an interesting website I like to visit.

The website is Instructables

It is a website dedicated to making how-to’s on just about any topic you can imagine

Below I have linked to a few Instructables I have found recently on the topic of electronics

Homemade breadboard
Sure you can buy breadboards cheaply, but sometimes you want something of a certain size (eg. smaller then what you can buy) or maybe you just want to use what you have to make your own

Pocket Sized Soldering kit
I’m a bit of a fan of pocket sized things, and I Kinda liked this idea, and I’m already thinking of making my own, similar kit, hopefully with a few improvements. I haven’t seen the Altoids tins around here though. I’ll have  a bit of a harder look next time I’m at the shops for one, or  a similar tin, and then I’ll get to work

Maker tin
This one is less electronics, and more making things in general, Again, it is on the idea of keeping inside an Altoids tin. Its interesting, but I’d probably make in a little different

Audio Mixer
After looking thru this audio mixer, It got me inspired to have a go at making a mixer a bit more complicated then the 2ch mixer I made, stay tuned

Steampunk Pen Knife

This one is probably the one instructable i’ve been most interested lately. It is basically about making your own swiss army knife. I don’t know why its steam punk, seemingly if it has copper and wood in it, its steam punk. None the less, its still a cool one to look at.

Well, thats a few instructables I found interesting. This post was more to let people know about the Instructables site if they haven’t heard of it yet. If you like making things, I recommend going and having a look

My Multitool Wishlist

After creating my multitool review, I thought it might be nice to make a short list of the multitools I don’t own, but hope to get my hands on eventually

Spyderco / Byrd Byrdwrench

Technically, its a Byrd Byrdwrench. Originally, Spyderco made the SpyderWrench in the USA, but due to expense of manufacture, couldn’t keep making it, so it got discontinued.

It was popular enough however, that after not too long, they decided to start making it again, but this time thru Byrd, their Chinese budget operation.

and thus the Byrd Wrench

Multitool.org has a good review of the tools. Actually, multitool.org has a lot of interesting reviews. I recently found it, and now it makes my multitool wish list even longer

The Byrdwrench is unique in looks, and in function. unlike most multitools, the wrench can separate into 2 pieces. That is the main reason I find it so interesting, its uniqueness.

SOG Paratool

the Paratool is again unique, this time in the way it folds up. where most multitools work on the flip the handles all the way over principal, the Paratool’s plier jaws come out from the side of the handle. It appears to make a compact multitool

Leatherman Crunch

There just had to be at least one Leatherman in the list, and the Crunch is where it’s at

The basis of the Crunch is a pair of locking pliers, or “vice grips”. This is a worthwhile feature for many uses.

As with most multitools, the jaws still fold up into the handles

Kershaw locking pliers

Pictured here with the Leatherman Crunch is Kershaw’s equivelant. the Kershaw may actually be older then then Leatherman, but i’m not sure.

As you can see, it is along the same lines as the Letherman Crunch, but the jaws don’t fold up. The one advantage the kershaw has over the leatherman is the outside opening blade. For me, this is the biggest win on any tool. Back in the day, the knife was my most used part of a multitool, and having to open the whole thing up every time would be a pain.

SOG Powerlock

Here is the second one on the list from SOG.

The powerlock looks like a big mean machine. It has SOG’s lovely power assisted jaws, which actually gear up the pressure you can apply to whatever you are grabbing onto. This can be handy if the nut – or whatever – is being stubborn.

Conclusion:

So, these are the main tools on my Multitool wishlist, they, Its not a final list, as its always changing – expanding mostly. I’m a huge fan of doing things a little different to the mainstream. The regular folding pliers has been done a million times. From an ease of use point of view, I believe the best tools are the ones that have the knife accessible in the folded up position (which few seem to actually do), but that’s not a criteria I’ve used here, generally, these come more under coolness than usefulness.

I hope you liked my review.
Cheers