The other day, my Black & Decker PowerShot staple gun failed to reset, again. Usually banging it on the side of the table would do the trick, but not this time. I banged and banged to no avail. I checked for jams. There were none to be found. It was broken.
I decided to take it apart and see if I could find something loose or broken and easily replaced. This failed. As soon as I removed the last screw and separated the halves of the case it went all splody sending several parts around the room, propelled by the springs inside. So be it. Repairability was a long shot on something this cheap. There is always a trade off to be made between initial manufacturing cost and repairability. When something is cheap the balance usually leans towards low manufacturing cost. I had already resolved to buy a new one if I couldn't fix this one, so I wasn't too upset.
You'd think this would be an easy enough endeavor—You'd think. I went to Target and picked up a Stanley TR45 and some staples. I was only planning to staple some thin polyethylene tubes so I didn't need a heavy duty model. The one thing I liked about this was that you could open it to clear jams.
The packaging said it took JT21 staples so that's what I bought, but he damn things didn't fit. They were slightly too narrow to fit on the rail upon which they slide. Figuring I just got a bad batch of staples I went to my Local Ace hardware and bought another box from another manufacturer. They didn't fit either.
So the staple gun was the one that was mis-made.
What the Fuck! These are staples and staple guns, not mechanical watches. The tolerances aren't that tight. Cheap Chinese manufacturing shouldn't be a factor here. If I were stapling up a tarp to hide a camp fire from the ravenous undead, I'd have been fucked.
Since burning the gas to return it would cost almost as much as the thing costs I decided to try to fix it by bending in the edges of the rail. This didn't work so I just threw it away.
I then went back to my local Ace and bought an Arrow T50 because the box claimed it took the same size staples I already bought and it was made in the U.S. It worked fine.
The poorly made staple gun was bad enough but why isn't there an industry standard for staple sizes? There is for the office type paper staplers. ISO has standards for pretty much everything else. Seriously, if it can be measured ISO probably has a standard for it. As an American I know that the standard sized staples wouldn't be available to me since they would be metric, but the more things that have an international metric standard, the more pressure there is for the U.S. to finally get with it.
When the dead rise to mack on our brainy goodness we are going to need to do a lot of improvisation. We are not going to have the luxury of making return trips to the deserted hardware stores for consumables of just the right dimensions or dealing with tools that can't even do what they are manufactured to do.
Friday, December 17, 2010
Wednesday, December 8, 2010
The Yankee Screwdriver
I've recently re-discovered a piece of retro-tech that should never have been abandoned, the Yankee screwdriver, and I don't seem to be the only one to have done so.
These are the screwdrivers where the blade is turned by the user pushing down on the handle. Ask Mr. Google for pictures and a more elaborate description of how they work.
They seem to have fallen from fashion with the introduction of cordless electric screwdrivers and drills, which I am now abandoning.
Let's consider the downsides of the standard manual screwdriver. First, they're slow. You can let go and reposition your hand on the tool only so many times in a given time frame and your wrist can only be rotated so much. For a long screw this can be annoyingly time consuming.
Secondly, it is difficult to keep them centered when repositioning for the next turn, especially with that bane of humanity, the slotted screw.
For years now, people have been using corded drills to drive screws. This is usually fine on the bench or when working on a medium sized piece that doesn't involve moving around a lot, tangling the cord and creating a trip hazard, but not when you are moving around a large piece of furniture or something along those lines. And frequently you have to dig up an extension cord, just to use it.
Cordless drills solve the problems of cord tangling and the need for an extension cord but then there is the problem that no one has managed to invent a battery that doesn't suck. They never seem to be charged when you realize you need them so you have to find something else to do while you charge the battery. After a number of chargings they fail to hold much of a charge. They are always in some proprietary, unopenable enclosure so it is frequently cheaper to buy a new drill than it is to buy new batteries. When you really want to apply a lot of torque they drain quickly. And they are big and clunky.
Dedicated cordless power screwdrivers are just junior versions of the drills, with the size problem somewhat mitigated.
One shortcoming of all the power options share is that you really can't control the speed of rotation or feel the torque being applied to the screw.
The Yankee has none of these failings.
It is powered by your own muscles, meaning no battery or cord and you can feel what you are doing and it won't run out of power. You push it up and down so you don't have to reset it for multiple turns. And they are small and light.
I believe that there are several reasons it failed in the market. One is that people, especially male people, are easily seduced by the latest gizmo. I know I am.
Probably, the major reason they failed is that they Stanley failed to adapt. The major shortcoming of the Yankee was the bits. When the cordless electrics came out, they used the, what are now standard, hexagonal bits, which were already in use in bit switching manual screwdrivers. The Yankee used Stanleys* own style bits which when lost were hard to find and expensive to replace. I don't know why Stanley failed to change the Yankee to accept the standard bits. It could be that they thought that thought that they could get away with what printer manufacturers are doing now, trying to keep people locked into a proprietary format. Or, since they made the electric drills and screwdrivers they may have thought that the Yankee was just obsolete. Or it could have been just an oversight. I don't know.
The Good news is that there are still lots of them to be found at flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores and on Ebay and there are several companies making adapters so you can use the hexagonal bits with an original Yankee.
The better news is that two companies have started making them. One is a Chinese company that is called Isomax or Easypower. It's hard to tell what is the company name and which is the product name from the packaging. The other is A German Company called Robert Schröeder. The Chinese company makes a 17 inch one and Schröeder makes an 8.5 incher an 11.5 incher and a 17.5 incher. All take the hexagonal bits except for the Schröeder 8.5 incher, which uses the old Stanley style bits but it does have bit storage in the handle.
I bought the Chinese one and the Schröeder 8.5 incher. The Chinese one is as well made as any genuine Yankee I've seen. It has a plastic handle which some people might see as a shortcoming but I think it's better than wood. The length can make it somewhat unwieldy but this would also apply to the long Schröeder. Because of this I use the Schröeder the most. When building a computer I pretty much only use the Phillips #2 bit which stays in the chuck so the limited bit choices aren't that important. If I ever need to use some of the other bits I have a genuine Yankee and an adapter, although I suppose I could use the adapter with the Schröeder.
They do make drill bits for these, which makes sense they are also know as push drills. I've never used them as drills so I don't know how well they work as such and the only bit size that seems to be available is for drywall screws.
The fact that these don't need electricity to work and can tighten and remove screws quickly means that this is something you're definitely going to want during and after the Zombie Apocalypse.
*I don't approve of possessive apostrophes and I'm not using them unless the noun is plural and pluralized with an "s".
These are the screwdrivers where the blade is turned by the user pushing down on the handle. Ask Mr. Google for pictures and a more elaborate description of how they work.
They seem to have fallen from fashion with the introduction of cordless electric screwdrivers and drills, which I am now abandoning.
Let's consider the downsides of the standard manual screwdriver. First, they're slow. You can let go and reposition your hand on the tool only so many times in a given time frame and your wrist can only be rotated so much. For a long screw this can be annoyingly time consuming.
Secondly, it is difficult to keep them centered when repositioning for the next turn, especially with that bane of humanity, the slotted screw.
For years now, people have been using corded drills to drive screws. This is usually fine on the bench or when working on a medium sized piece that doesn't involve moving around a lot, tangling the cord and creating a trip hazard, but not when you are moving around a large piece of furniture or something along those lines. And frequently you have to dig up an extension cord, just to use it.
Cordless drills solve the problems of cord tangling and the need for an extension cord but then there is the problem that no one has managed to invent a battery that doesn't suck. They never seem to be charged when you realize you need them so you have to find something else to do while you charge the battery. After a number of chargings they fail to hold much of a charge. They are always in some proprietary, unopenable enclosure so it is frequently cheaper to buy a new drill than it is to buy new batteries. When you really want to apply a lot of torque they drain quickly. And they are big and clunky.
Dedicated cordless power screwdrivers are just junior versions of the drills, with the size problem somewhat mitigated.
One shortcoming of all the power options share is that you really can't control the speed of rotation or feel the torque being applied to the screw.
The Yankee has none of these failings.
It is powered by your own muscles, meaning no battery or cord and you can feel what you are doing and it won't run out of power. You push it up and down so you don't have to reset it for multiple turns. And they are small and light.
I believe that there are several reasons it failed in the market. One is that people, especially male people, are easily seduced by the latest gizmo. I know I am.
Probably, the major reason they failed is that they Stanley failed to adapt. The major shortcoming of the Yankee was the bits. When the cordless electrics came out, they used the, what are now standard, hexagonal bits, which were already in use in bit switching manual screwdrivers. The Yankee used Stanleys* own style bits which when lost were hard to find and expensive to replace. I don't know why Stanley failed to change the Yankee to accept the standard bits. It could be that they thought that thought that they could get away with what printer manufacturers are doing now, trying to keep people locked into a proprietary format. Or, since they made the electric drills and screwdrivers they may have thought that the Yankee was just obsolete. Or it could have been just an oversight. I don't know.
The Good news is that there are still lots of them to be found at flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores and on Ebay and there are several companies making adapters so you can use the hexagonal bits with an original Yankee.
The better news is that two companies have started making them. One is a Chinese company that is called Isomax or Easypower. It's hard to tell what is the company name and which is the product name from the packaging. The other is A German Company called Robert Schröeder. The Chinese company makes a 17 inch one and Schröeder makes an 8.5 incher an 11.5 incher and a 17.5 incher. All take the hexagonal bits except for the Schröeder 8.5 incher, which uses the old Stanley style bits but it does have bit storage in the handle.
I bought the Chinese one and the Schröeder 8.5 incher. The Chinese one is as well made as any genuine Yankee I've seen. It has a plastic handle which some people might see as a shortcoming but I think it's better than wood. The length can make it somewhat unwieldy but this would also apply to the long Schröeder. Because of this I use the Schröeder the most. When building a computer I pretty much only use the Phillips #2 bit which stays in the chuck so the limited bit choices aren't that important. If I ever need to use some of the other bits I have a genuine Yankee and an adapter, although I suppose I could use the adapter with the Schröeder.
They do make drill bits for these, which makes sense they are also know as push drills. I've never used them as drills so I don't know how well they work as such and the only bit size that seems to be available is for drywall screws.
The fact that these don't need electricity to work and can tighten and remove screws quickly means that this is something you're definitely going to want during and after the Zombie Apocalypse.
*I don't approve of possessive apostrophes and I'm not using them unless the noun is plural and pluralized with an "s".
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