Category: TØØLS

Howdy! It’s midsummer already, huh?

  • July 22, 2025
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
That’s quite a bit of condensation inside the polymer flex sections of this gel knee pad, eh? The days are long but the years weeks and months are short. Trite but true. So what happened was… I blinked in May and, when I opened my eyes, July was almost over. Busy as I’ve been, though, […]

A special (and useful) mechanical pencil, from the Faber-Castell exam card pencil set

  • February 28, 2025
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS Writing ∧ Drawing Implements 🖉
In photos of tools that I took for the preceding post on this site, to give an idea of the relative sizes of the implements, as a rough scale I included the mechanical pencil that I’d used to mark up the pieces of wood and plywood that I’d cut and drilled.

Crumpling cabinet feet/wheel mounts: jerry-riggin’ a solution

  • February 27, 2025
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Contrivances HerpDerp Makin' stuff and breakin' stuff Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Back in September, I mentioned modding some vintage metal filing cabinets by replacing #3/8-16 screw-on foot pads with M10-bolt stainless steel wheels. That project entailed re-doing the threads in the holes on the footpad mounts by tapping the screw holes. It seemed to work perfectly and, at the time, I was quite pleased with myself.

Messing around with Tapcons and a concrete brick

  • November 12, 2024
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HerpDerp Makin' stuff and breakin' stuff Mucking About With Things Personal Firsts Swarf + Copeaux + Scobs The Diary of Lupin Pooter To see a world in a grain of sand TØØLS
This is a followup to my recent post on concrete fasteners. A large-scale furniture assembly project has been polished off and it’s about time to give anchoring our bookshelves to the walls a go.

Taladrado Rápido! Mayor Duración! (Faster Drilling! Longer Life!): Concrete Fasteners, Drills

  • October 27, 2024
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Makin' stuff and breakin' stuff Mucking About With Things The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Side-by-side comparison of the stainless steel concrete fasteners I’ve got right now. L-to-R: Tapcon 410 SS washer-head 1/4-inch screw, 304 SS M8 wedge anchor, and two 304 SS sleeve anchors (M6 and M8). The high floor-to-near-ceiling metal book shelves have been assembled, but all of our books (except for ones we’ve needed since the relocation) […]

Free Advice #003: Use a magnet, inside a plastic bag or beneath multiple layers of plastic wrap, to clean up shrapnel from drilling, cutting, or tapping metal

  • September 26, 2024
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Free Advice HerpDerp Makin' stuff and breakin' stuff Swarf + Copeaux + Scobs TØØLS
Earlier this month, I wanted to replace the bolt-feet on the bottoms of some filing cabinets with wheels, so I flipped one of them on its side, unscrewed one of the foot-bolts, and tried it in the closest-looking (size-wise) pieces of my bolt size-and-thread-check set, and found that it went smoothly into the female end […]

Some MTC nippers and Tsunoda pliers and their anti-counterfeiting stickers

  • June 13, 2024
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
An old tool haul from a relatively unexpected source. Left to right: MTC-3 125mm Micro Diagonal Nippers with Spring, Tsunoda 125mm RP-125SC-S Long Nose PLA-iers (Resin Jaw Pliers) w/ spring, Tsunoda 120mm MR-120 Long Nose Pliers, Tsunoda 115mm MP-115 Side Cutting Pliers, and MTC-4 115mm Micro Plastic Nippers: Flat Blade. Doing a bit of poking […]

New vs. used T130-2.0SK ATTEN soldering iron tip

  • June 8, 2024
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Bizznezz HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
New-in-tube ATTEN T130-2.0SK soldering iron tip. This is a mostly-photos followup to , which concluded with some photos taken of a lightly used T130-2.0SK ATTEN soldering iron tip, described online as a knife tip. It gets inserted into a corded handle that, in turn, plugs into an ATTEN GT-series soldering station (such as the ATTEN […]

Odd (and oddly transient) software (mis)behavior:
Could not find file 'gifski.dll'.
ScreenToGif seemingly losing or forgetting gifski.dll

  • April 25, 2024
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Yesterday, I encountered an odd issue where ScreenToGif seemed unable to use its own bundled or downloaded-at-install-time version of gifski (gifski.dll).

Getting back into the soldering saddle (Indium SAC305 vs. Kester K100LD with and without extra flux)

  • April 22, 2024
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Mucking About With Things Sodding soldering Testing The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
One of a few snapshots I took of the same soldered pins, in between twiddling the focus height adjustment on a microscope. In this first of three images, the uppermost bits of the pins are the most in-focus features. This and the next two photos are taken of a small region on the prototype board […]

The state of being mildly chuffed about carbide box-cutter blades
AND a brief characterization of the recycling and safety iconography on their packaging

  • April 7, 2024
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HerpDerp Is that the way it is? The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS
Yep, like it says in the title, I’m moderately chuffed (i.e. UK/Commonwealth lingo approximately corresponding to pleased or enthused) about having acquired some Stanley FATMAX tungsten carbide utility-knife aka box-cutter blades. Tungsten carbide box-cutter blades aren’t new. For all I know, you bown-bag your lunch five days a week and, Monday through Friday, you’re daintily […]

Just use a different-country ZAMAON (if feasible)

  • February 22, 2024
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The Diary of Lupin Pooter TØØLS ZAMAON.C0M
We’re living through interesting times. A relatively minor subplot of the whole shebang is the sclerotization and crumbling-at-the-margins of Web 2.0 behemoths like Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Apple (as well as their co-dependent, co-evolved big-tech-company symbiotes). At this point, the deterioration is undeniable and slightly painful to those who interacted much with the same […]