A Collection Of Special Purpose Tools

Yes, yes I know, there is a nail file on my Swiss army knife.  But I never use it.  I’ll admit, it is heavy duty and could probably last for hundreds of years of shaping my nails, but the more I read about nail health the more I realize I have to take more care when  looking after my nails.

The main problem with metal nail files is that they are too harsh for the nail.  Rather than gliding over the nail tip a metal file can easily tear the nail, roughening it up and causing it to splinter and crack.

Ugly yellow toenails

The only time I can imagine wanting a metal nail file is if I was undergoing nail fungus treatment for my nasty looking, thick yellow toenails with a topical nail treatment such as Funginix. In this situation I would want to open up the nail layers as much as possible by passing the file back and forth over the horizontal nail surface to allow the antifungal treatment to soak in and eliminate the fungus.  But that process has nothing to do with having beautifully shaped nails.

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Yes, I want a robotic vacuum cleaner on my army knife and I don’t care that it doesn’t fit…

I have a smallish swimming pool that I love. But what I don’t like is the weekly cleaning routine that goes along with owning a pool. I followed some of the guidance over at poolshock.net but still found it a pain every Sunday night to vacuum the pool using my pressure-side cleaner.

But everything changed when I bought my Blue Pearl Robotic Cleaner.

All I do now is plug it in, switch it on, drop it into the water and return a few hours later to a sparkling pool. It’s completely hands free and I don’t have to mess about with long hoses or ambiguous attachments. I also don’t have to worry that I’m overloading my pool filter which is nice as that’s an expensive piece of equipment right there.

I find it unbelievable that manufactures refer to their suction side and pressure side vacuum cleaners as “automatic.” They need far more supervision than my pool robot and the installation is convoluted. I strongly believe that as soon as a pool owner tries a pool robot, there is no going back to other types of cleaner. Really, they are that good. Read more »

Also known as a folding knife or jack-knife, the key characteristic of a pocket knife is that it should be highly portable and able to fit in, wait for it, yes a pocket. When closed they can be carried around safely.  Its a generic term that groups together a couple of different pocket knife types which we describe in more detail below.

But before we get started if there is one feature to look for in a folding pocket knife, it’s a good quality locking mechanisms.  Using a pocket knife without one is dangerous, even for the experienced knife handler.  Locking mechanisms normally fall into two categories: (1) locking-liner (linerlocks) which have a spring loaded locking bar behind the rear tang of the blade when opened and (2) the functional lock-back which positions a stop bar parallel to the blade. Read more »

There are hundreds of different survival knives on the market: spear points, trailing swage, double edged, drop point, tanto blade, deep belly, hollow grind.  Whatever knife you decide to choose, there are a number of quality characteristics you should look for.

We asked wilderness survival experts for the top 7 things they look for in a survival knife.  We advised them that they should assume that they only had a single knife that needed to be used for all purposes.  The following is what they came back with. Read more »