**Favorite Tools and Materials: A Year in Review**
As we approach the end of 2021, I wanted to share with you my favorite tools and materials that I discovered while working on various projects this year. Whether it's a new type of saw blade or a unique material for miniature landscaping, these are the things that caught my attention and have since become staples in my workshop.
**Flush Cut Saws: A Game-Changer for Woodworkers**
One of the first items on my list is kind of a fun uh model making material that I discovered this year when I was working on uh this miniature haunted house kit. Creating sort of a landscape a scene for it to live in, I found this sort of grass mat check this stuff out so it comes in sheets it's got kind of like a mesh layer on the back and then some dirt flocking on the top which makes it look really realistic and then this tiny little grass which if you're working at miniature scale I found it's pretty hard to find the right the right scale of foliage that fits with the scene but this actually feels like the grass blades and the uh the little flocking feel like the right scale to work for miniatures. They have a couple of different uh background sort of colors you can get like a darker dirt you can get like a lighter sort of sandier colored dirt and a couple different uh you know sort of sparse or dense uh spreads of grass and it works really well on top of something like this.
**Creating Realistic Landscapes with Miniature Flocking**
So, if you wanted to sort of create a scene you could get some foam kind of carve this and sculpt it into your shape and then place the grass over top of it and you get these really convincing uh sort of landscape um you know scenes for your miniatures so this I just found on amazon um and you can you can get a couple different colors and sizes. Definitely check that out for all of your model making and miniatures projects.
**Girls Garage: A Maker Space That's Changing Lives**
My last item is this book called Girls Garage how to use any tool tackle any project and build the world you want to see so this book is a discovery by kind of a local maker space so I was looking online one day and I saw this picture of a bunch of like little nine-year-old girls welding and I thought where in the world does this place exist and it turns out it's right here in the bay area it's in Berkeley, it's a maker space called Girls Garage and it's for teen and pre-teen girls to learn about all types of fabrications they learn woodworking and welding all sorts of shop skills how to get comfortable with tools and a lot of that information is sort of encapsulated in this book which was written by the founder of Girls Garage.
**A Comprehensive Guide to Shop Skills**
The book includes tons of information that is useful to kind of get acclimated to a shop, sort of an encyclopedia of different tools things like the different cuts of lumber but it also includes just really useful stuff like how to change a tire, how to fix a leaky sink um all sorts of uh projects that you can do. It's got interviews with a couple of different local builders some of their instructors Kerry Byron is featured in the book as well so there's lots of really useful information and if you have any young makers in your life that want to get sort of handy and you know get into the shop this is a really great gift, I wish that something like this was around when I was when I was growing up a space like this or a book like this and the proceeds from the book also go to help support the maker space so uh you can feel extra good about purchasing this. Definitely a great gift if you have a young maker in your life.
**Conclusion**
Well, that's it for my 2021 favorite things these are all uh tools and things that I discovered while working on projects this year hopefully some of those are useful gift ideas for someone in your life or for your own shop. Have a good holiday season and we'll see you next time
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey it's jennifer tested here to share my favorite things from this year i've got a couple new tools and a few things that i discovered while working on projects so the first thing i want to tell you about is this little device which has been super useful in my electronics kit this is a soldering fume extractor made by a company called kado and it's pretty compact little device but what i like about it is it's got this adjustable neck so you can position the hood exactly where you want over your work area i tend to like to work pretty close to my face instead of having to bend down at my work so i've got the helping hand set up nice and tall here and that makes it difficult to position a sort of tabletop theme extractor where i need it so this comes in handy because i can move the neck exactly where i want get it right over where the smoke is going to come out and it has a couple different fan settings you can raise the speed if you want to i'm not going to turn it on now because it is a bit loud but it also comes with a couple different filter options so you've got your standard charcoal uh that fits in there this comes with two in the in the kit but you can also get a hepa filter upgrades this cute little hepa filter which also has the charcoal in the back if you want to upgrade your filtration super compact doesn't take up a lot of space on your workbench but i found it super convenient especially if i'm doing a lot of soldering work and i don't want to be breathing in those fumes so this has been a big help to me this year the next thing is a tiny little tool this is called a weeding ring so if you've ever done vinyl graphics or any type of sort of peeling of tape or things like that you can use a weeding tool which is this sort of needle tip a little pick and what this does is to peel off your material so if you've got like this has transfer paper on it um on these little laser-cut parts and so i'm peeling these off but after a while you start to accumulate all these little pieces of tape or the offcuts of your vinyl all over the table they get stuck to you they get stuck to your clothes so enter the weeding ring this has um two little grips for your fingers so you just wear that like a ring and the top here this little cross section while you're peeling the pieces off uh you just poke the end of the tool into this little silicone cross section and it catches all of the pieces so if i were to have a lot of weeding to do which which i often do if i'm doing a really detailed vinyl graphic or a part that has a lot of little pieces on it i can really quickly remove the paper and one by one just poke them into this little weeding ring it's very it's very convenient the weeding part itself is actually uh is actually a little bit more involved but once you start to get these pieces off um it'll just make quick work of that uh that tape and you don't have to worry about the pieces getting stuck all over to everything on your workbench so super simple very convenient um there's a couple different versions of this you can get the ring version there's also a tabletop version but go check out weeding ring for vinyl graphics my next item is something that is not necessarily new but i found a new brand that i really like and i'll tell you why so this is ca glue cyanoacrylate you probably heard of it or seen it used in model making all sorts of projects but i have used a brand in the past which i like just fine but i was looking for a kind of a more economical version to buy online and i found this brand called bond they make the ca glue in thick medium and thin they also have the accelerator but what i like about this is it comes with a whole variety of little accessories which i would normally buy separately but they all come in the box when you buy one bottle so normally it comes with a little cap on the top so it would come you know sealed like this and in the kit you get two separate nozzles so you've got a nozzle with a cap you also have a whole bunch of these little tiny needle tip applicators which are really useful for very precise work so you don't get glue oozing out all over the place that needle tip will let you get right into the air into the area that you need to and that will just attach onto the end here and it comes with a whole bunch of them so you've got like half a dozen here so as these get clogged up you can switch out for a new one the other thing which i love is there is this little tiny cap and it has a pin built into the cap so that when you go to put this away you can put the pin in the top of the nozzle it keeps the glue from clogging up in there and extends the life of this so if you've ever worked with ca glue for a while the nozzle will eventually start to jam up and you have to keep cutting off the end so you end up getting a wider and wider and wider applicator as you go but having this little pin will keep that from happening and you get a nice fresh tip basically every time so yeah starbond super glue uh this is a new one for me just in terms of finding a kit that i really like and it works great for all of your model making and building needs this next tool is a little saw a little japanese flush cut saw by a company called suizan or suzanne they are based in japan and they make a whole line of different japanese pole saws this tiny one is really useful for making cuts that have to be flush with your material so the teeth are very skinny um and they're smooth on the surface so the the tooth itself the cutting edge is actually thinner than the thickness of the blade so as you are running this along your material when you're sliding back and forth to make your cut it's not going to mar the surface of your material material at all and you can get a almost perfectly flush surface so when i go to cut this dowel what you'll see is that the back ends up being just as smooth as the top you can use this for cutting you know if i wanted to cut two pieces so that they were flush with one another basically you're resting the saw on one of the faces and it cuts on the pull not the push the cutting edge of the teeth is on the back so as you pull through the material that stroke is what's making the cut this is a very inexpensive tool the blade is not replaceable on this one they do make a slightly more expensive version where you can actually change out the blade but you do have a side for hardwood and soft wood and it actually holds up really well i've been using this a bunch this year and doesn't seem to be declining at all in uh function so check this out from sweden and also they have a whole bunch of other flush cut saws if you're interested in this the style of woodworking tool the next thing is kind of a fun uh model making material that i discovered this year when i was working on uh this miniature haunted house kit creating sort of a landscape a scene for it to live in and i found this sort of grass mat check this stuff out so it comes in sheets it's got kind of like a mesh layer on the back and then some dirt flocking on the top which makes it look really realistic and then this tiny little grass which if you're working at miniature scale i found it's pretty hard to find the right the right scale of foliage that fits with the scene but this actually feels like the grass blades and the uh the little flocking feel like the right scale to work for miniatures um they have a couple of different uh background sort of colors you can get like a darker dirt you can get like a lighter sort of sandier colored dirt and a couple different uh you know sort of sparse or dense uh spreads of grass and it works really well on top of something like this so if you wanted to sort of create a scene you could get some foam kind of carve this and sculpt it into your shape and then place the grass over top of it and you get these really convincing uh sort of landscape um you know scenes for your miniatures so this i just found on amazon um and you can you can get a couple different um colors and sizes so definitely check that out for all of your model making and miniatures all right my last item is this book called girls garage how to use any tool tackle any project and build the world you want to see so this book is a discovery by kind of a local maker space so i was looking online one day and i saw this picture of a bunch of like little nine-year-old girls welding and i thought where in the world does this place exist and it turns out it's right here in the bay area it's in berkeley it's a maker space called girls garage and it's for teen and pre-teen girls to learn about all types of fabrications they learn woodworking and welding all sorts of shop skills how to get comfortable with tools and a lot of that information is sort of encapsulated in this book which was written by the founder of girls garage and she included tons of information that is useful to kind of get acclimated to a shop sort of an encyclopedia of different tools things like the different cuts of lumber but it also includes just really useful stuff like how to change a tire how to fix a leaky sink um all sorts of uh projects that you can do like small projects that you can build at home and it just includes lots of different sort of inspirational stories as well so it's got interviews with a couple of different local builders some of their instructors kerry byron is featured in the book as well so there's lots of really useful information and if you have any young makers in your life that want to get sort of handy and you know get into the shop this is a really great gift i wish that something like this was around when i was when i was growing up a space like this or a book like this and the proceeds from the book also go to help support the maker space so uh you can feel extra good about purchasing this definitely a great gift if you have a young maker in your life so check out girls garage well that's it for my 2021 favorite things these are all uh tools and things that i discovered while working on projects this year hopefully some of those are useful gift ideas for someone in your life or for your own shop have a good holiday season and we'll see you next timeyou\n"
