Pick up Bosch's new Litheon PS20-2 10.8-volt lithium-ion Pocket Driver and you'll immediately start looking for ways to use it–or should I say, excuses. From the way this compact driver form-fits into your hand to the soft-grip handle and its perfect balance, this tool will quickly earn its way...
If you read Tools on a regular basis, you know that for years we've been pushing the tool industry to establish performance-based testing and reporting standards that would provide tool buyers with a consistent means of comparing manufacturers' performance claims. While this hope is still a speck...
With all the important things you have to manage growing your contracting company, taking time to keep up with new products, tools, and equipment can easily seem like a luxury. And with changes coming so fast CNN would have trouble covering them, it's no wonder you might fall behind on your...
Construction codes often can be a source of frustration when they're so complex that implementing them causes hassles that delay work or, worse yet, halt it indefinitely and needlessly. And specifically, residential concrete construction has been handcuffed by needless complexity and...
In the South of France near the city of Nîmes, a mythical structure has existed since the Romans erected it during the first century A.D. The Pont du Gard, or 'bridge over the Gardon River,' was built solely to transport water from a distant spring over the Gardon through a channel atop the span as...
Whenever adding any type of dormer, it's essential to determine the roof load and design the load path transfer to the existing floor joists or roof rafters. Then you can ensure adequate bearing points, or add framing and install beams to carry the loads through the walls down to the foundation. It...
If Steve Phipps can't find a tool from his collection to use in building custom cabinets, doors, and windows, he'll make one. When I'm looking for a special radius jamb and entry door or a houseful of bifold windows and doors, or the sweetest hardwood kitchen, Phipps is the guy I turn to first. He...
As contractors in New York City, my crew spends most of its time pouring, cutting, drilling, and anchoring in concrete. For some framing and all mechanical and electrical work, we use rotary hammers on a daily basis to attach virtually anything to concrete, and the tool we reach for most is a...
Some bars are bred for wrecking, scraping, demolishing, stripping, razing, and smashing (my favorite part of construction), which some now call 'deconstruction.' Others are born with a gentler side, excelling at salvaging, de-nailing, pulling, lifting, and dismantling. While you may lump all these...