The Paint Thickness Tester is a cheap keychain device that promises to help you avoid bringing home a lemon from the lot of your local sleazy used car Guido by telling you when a car has well-hidden touch-ups in its paint job:

Place the test probe on the car roof, for example. By pressing a button, the paint thickness tester will store this paint thickness as a reference value. Now, by placing the test probe on any part of the vehicle body, you can compare it with this value. You will immediately determine whether parts of the body have been replaces or repainted and if the purchase price is suitable.

I've never owned a car, so maybe someone can fill me in: if a paint job has been touched up skillfully and it's not visible to the naked eye, why does it matter if it isn't all the original coat? It seems pointless to me. Still, I guess $20 is a cheap enough price to give you some empirical proof of your used car not being worth the sticker price when you're brought into the negotiating room.

Update: Uh. Yeah. Duh. Peter S. Conrad explains why this is important in a way that makes sense even to a committed, non-license-carrying pedestrian like myself: "Well, for example, a car that has the same thickness paint all over has probably never been in a crash, probably doesn't have big rust holes filled in with Bondo, etc."

Paint Thickness Tester [Official Site via OhGizmo!]

Look no further than the frat house to see how standards of measurement fluctuated when trousers are dropped and rulers brandished. Do you measure when flaccid or aroused? Do you only measure what can be plausibly crammed into an orifice, or is it okay to start one-inch past the o-ring? And, if the latter, why not take the lymphatic system into account while you're at it to gain another few precious yards?

Yes, until the International Metric Consortium finally releases their contentious, long-promised standardization of phallus measuring protocols, the size of one's genitalia will always be nebulous. But until that day comes, The Final Say Penis Measuring Kit aims to settle all disputes, marketing itself as "the world’s first and only kit with the patent pending PHALLUMEASURE inside."

Expect to see our intensive hands-on video review on BBG in the coming weeks. Also, that classy "TPS" icon on their site needs to be turned into an embeddable widget, stat.

The Final Say Penis Measuring Kit [Size of a Man]

The "W-Cut" thread design from GRK Fasteners — available on all their screws — adds small teeth to the first few threads of a screw, making it possible to forgoe pre-drilling a hole entirely. Think of it as a tiny drill bit on the tip of each screw. These won't replace drywall anchors, probably the most common household drill-and-screw process, but for bigger construction projects they could save a lot of hassle, especially if you only have one driver, forcing you to keep switching bits.

Company Page [GRKFasteners.com via Core77]

Dixon Tape & Rule Co. make a variety of tape measures set in lovely wooden cases, including models with inlaid patterns and hand-painted birds. For some reason, however, they don't include the little brake that will lock an extended metal tape measure in place, making them far less practical than the standard tape measure on the belts of nearly every contractor walking the planks today. Of course, they only extend to six feet, so the brake is perhaps not that essential.

Prices range from about $35 to $70, depending on materials and fanciness.

Product Page [DixonRules.com via Toolmonger]

The "Universal Nut Sheller" is a device designed to make shelling peanuts less onerous for those who rely on the legumes for a large portion of their food needs. The simple device is a concrete cone inside a larger concrete cone, with a gap large enough to let shelled peanuts through whole while still removing the shells. The nuts and crushed shells are then sorted by hand.

The UNS was invented by American Jock Brandis, who according to AfriGadget, "was on a trip to Mali and saw some women who had been shelling peanuts leaving them with bleeding hands."

Fighting Hunger, One Village at a Time [Afrigadget.com]

Buck, from Form-A-Funnel, writes about his product, which actually looks pretty great from the video:

"Form-A-Funnel" is a clever new invention that's utterly simple, yet truly useful. It's a formable, flexible shape that can be made into various types of funnels, drains, channels, or other shapes. It firmly holds its shape, and holds onto surrounding structures, which makes it great for working on machinery of all kinds.  Unlike conventional funnels, it's easy to clean and stores almost anywhere. It has hundreds of other uses, too, many of which can be seen on the manufacturer's website.

The coolest thing to me is how you can squeeze it around the outlets of ports coming out the sides of engines and it'll hold itself in place. Not revolutionary, but potentially useful at $25. I'd love to hear from someone who has one of these in their garage whether it's as handy as it appears to be or is all hype.

Product Page [Formafunnel.com]

Reader Philip has politely raised his polymer-clad index finger to make us aware of "Tippi Micro Gel Grips," ridged finger sleeves designed to make tedious office tasks like flipping through papers or counting out stacks of cocaine-sodden hundred dollar bills a breeze. The Micro Gel Grips are available in a variety of sizes and colors at Office Max, although I can't find the price. One can, however, pick up the traditional rubber finger tips at just 12 for a dollar.

Product Page [TippiBrand.com]

These "WorkTunes" hearing-protection muffs from AO Safety have a built in AM/FM radio. It's like the headphone Walkmen Sports all over again, complete with black-and-yellow design. Listen to talk radio while you jackhammer.

You can pick up a pair of WorkTunes for around $60.

Groove To WorkTunes [Toolmonger]

Update: I removed the embedded video since it was autoplaying. Sorry about that!

Harry Sawyers at This Old House's "Hardware Aisle" wants to know about the As-Seen-On-TV product "Mighty Putty," as sold by the screaming monotone of well-groomed Billy Mays, actually works.

Well, does it?

Mighty Putty: Does it work? [Hardware Aisle]

Lexan knuckledusters—brass knuckles made not of brass but of plastic—are the latest fodder for a hilarious local television news report, wherein a pasty take-no-guff reporter punches cabbages then stares down the viewer growling, "Cole slaw."

Watch as local officials recoil in horror at the thought that they might be perceived to be soft on violence! Shout as not a single adult finds themselves capable of shrugging their shoulders at the potential crimes of imagined hoodlums! Gasp in legitimate grief for a schoolteacher who was punched in the head! Resist the urge to punch the reporter in his sanctimonious flap face with a pair of lexan knuckles easily made at home!

[via Crime Scene KC]

Core77 details the "Longarm," an ingeniously simple contraption designed by a pig farming woman who found herself in charge of 3,000 stubborn hogs. It's just a retractable swath of red cloth, but something about it causes pigs to shy away from it, making it easy to guide them from pen to pen—and easy to clean, something I can attest from my occasional weekends on an uncle's pig farm is a critical feature.

Canadian pig farmer Mary Haugh had a problem; multiple heart attacks put her husband out of commission, and she alone had to somehow control and herd their 3,000 hogs through the barn. Traditional methods of getting pigs to move are to use a stick, an electric prod or a "chase board," a length of wood the farmer wields horizontally to angle the pigs in a particular direction.
The stick and the prod, in addition to being inhumane, are simply not practical solutions for a single man/woman vs. 3,000 pigs, and for that many animals Haugh would need an impossibly long board that no human could reasonably lift and wield.

Brilliant industrial design from a pig farmer with her back to the wall [Core77.com]

Eschewing the form-over-function tendency of most concept designs, Bongkun Shin's "SmartGuide" drill features a nesting, retracting guide that ensures perfectly perpendicular holes. While there are certainly times when the guide would get in the way, a simple clip to keep the guide out of the way would be enough to make this useful in all situations. I wouldn't be surprised to see this on a retail product at some point in the near future.

Training Wheels For Your Drill [Yanko Design]

The Leatherman Skeletool was near the top of most of my admittedly-multi-tool-obsessed friends' wish lists this Christmas. Too bad it still hasn't made it to market. (Amazon is currently projecting a mid-March release.)

Now Leatherman is showing off an even lighter riff on the same idea with a couple of minor changes. Called the "Freestyle," the new multi-tool replaces the Skeletool's removable bit driver socket with a combination Phillips/flathead driver that uses some sort of slightly twisted end to make it work with both types of screw heads. (I don't understand how that works, exactly, but the Toolmonger boys seem to get it so I'll just trust them.)

The other difference is a nylon plastic handle which should shed even more weight from the already less-than-husky Skeletool. I presume that plastic handle is also cheaper than the carbon fiber or aluminum of the Skeletool models, since the projected price of the Freestyle is just $50.

Having burnt their customers with a slow launch previously, Leatherman is currently planning to release the Freestyle in December of this year, giving themselves plenty of time to build up Christmas stock.

Preview: Leatherman Freestyle [Toolmonger]

Red sent in this brief recommendation for the Fenix P3d Cree Q5 Premium flashlight:

I'm not a shill...just a geek that over-researches every purchase.

I just received my Fenix P3d Cree Q5 Premium flashlight. I don't know what more to say than it is tiny, crazy bright, and feels very durable. It's a 4.5-inch flashlight that is as bright or brighter than the huge, police-style Mag Lights.

I like the hex grip on the barrel.

The P3d Q5 has six different modes, including several levels of brightness and a strobe. Strangely enough, I cannot find out how to order one from their website, nor the price. As with all these vanity super-torches, I'd expect it to be fairly expensive.

Product Page [FenixLight.com]

Blogoscoped reviews a set of colored pencils:

You will notice several obvious features missing from the list. For instance, color pencil devices do not come with a clip arts library of any sorts. On the upside, the color pens do have a full support for advanced international character sets; this allowed me to enter Chinese characters as well. It is rare for devices today – including your average keyboard – to handle these characters with such ease.

The different fonts however, like Arial or Times New Roman, came out rather quirky, as the photo illustrates. Vector graphic quality was leaving a lot to be desired as well; lines were often not straight, aligned, or perfectly round as known from other utilities.

Color Pencils Reviewed [Blogoscoped.com] (Thanks, eriktown!)

There's a new Zippo in town—and it's quite ugly. The "Zippo BLU" takes the original windproof design and tweaks it, switching the fuel from liquid to butane to produce a jet blast of flame. You know, just like those $5 lighters you can get down at the gas station.

It's a strange product for the company. It may be more windproof and add less of a gassy taste to your smokes, but you'll be paying a lot of scratch for the brand name when something generic will serve you just as well. Even worse, it appears that Zippo's flint-based sparker is not user serviceable, meaning you'll have to send it back in every time the flint is worn out. (Most of those gas station lighters use an electronic igniter instead of a flint.)

Zippo lighters are one of those timeless designs that shouldn't be fussed with. If the company wants to extend the brand, adding twenty-year-old technology to their line-up probably isn't the right move. Or does this mean that Zippo now considers crack lighters an American icon?

Product Page [Flash with music] [ZippoBlu.com via Uncrate]

Kirk writes:

Today I wrote about these fantastic items: "Cinch It anchor bands are rubber band with anchors. It sounds dumb but I've never found anything better for wrapping small wires, like iPod headphones."

The thing is I have no idea how to find these online! I first ran into them at the sadly-just-now-defunct (and very boingboingish) shop at Harvard Square "The Museum of Useful Things." Luckily their parent shop "Black Ink" still had some. I can't Google them anywhere, even "Shepard Medical Products" is mum about this lovely bit of elastic brilliance!

So I wouldn't mind enlisting boingboingers help in explaining where these come from, and if I need to stockpile more.

I found a place in Europe that sells them in a variety of sizes. Won't be cheap to import, I imagine, but you have an option, at least!

Rubber bands of the moment [Kisreal.com]

The "Rebore-Zit" is a very specialized piece of equipment, designed for enlarging holes through which wires are drawn without losing the wire itself. (No big deal on a stud as shown, but a royal pain if it happens inside a wall. You pull the wire through the wall, attach it to an eyelet on the end of the bit that doesn't rotate, then jam the whole thing back into the wall until you've gotten the size you wanted. Good for precision work, but if it were just drywall, I'd probably just pull the wire through and rough out a sloppy hole.

I'm sure there are almost none of you guys out there that actually need this bit, but I find these kind of specialized tools fascinating.

Enlarge Holes Without Removing The Wire [Toolmonger]

The "Byrdrench" is a crazy multitool from Spyderco with slip joint pliers, a crescent wrench, and a screwdriver built into one side, with a full-sized, detachable pocket knife built into another, And it even has a place inside the tool to hold extra bits for the screwdriver, which seems like a better system than the way Leatherman does it. (I never wear the extra pouch full of bits unless I think I'm going to be away from civilization for a while.)

Street prices start around $55.

Product Page [Spyderco via Toolmonger]

The "Fourteener Knotting Tool" is a simple little piece of hardware designed as an aid to learn knot tying, offering 14 different simulated pieces of hardware. It even comes with a nylon strap that can be used to secure the Fourteener to something—your leg, for instance—to give it proper resistance.

Sure, you could learn all these knots without a special tool, but I think it's a pretty neat little gewgaw for fifteen bucks. And the inventor, Darryl Lusk, also throws in a length of cord and a booklet of knots to get you started.

Product Page [14erKnottingTool.com via Toolmonger]

These "Painter's Pyramids" are designed to let you paint, stain, or seal one side of a piece of wood while the other dries. The plastic used is supposed to resist paints and varnishes, while the rounded tip isn't supposed to gouge into the wood. I'm a little dubious, but Toolmonger's Stuart Deutsch said he found "much truth in [the] claim" that they work as well as the company says.

I know I do hate finishing wood, which is why all my wood projects end up with streaks and globs born of my impatience. A pack of ten runs $7ish.

Painter’s Pyramid [Toolmonger]

Dug North writes:

I got one of these little beauties for Christmas and it is now the single coolest thing I own.

The knife is cleverly held in a custom belt buckle chassis with a magnet. The knife can be your hand and open in moments -- even without practice. There is video on the site of the creator using the knife.  He HAS practiced and it is unbelievable. Butterfly knives, switchblades, and all other knives can't even compete.

They even do custom engraving. I went for nice scroll engraved pattern and the belt buckle looks great with a pair of jeans.

"Looks great" is subjective, I know, but even the knives that aren't engraved with eagles and flames and Abraham Lincoln sodomizing Khrushchev with Paul Revere's horse are pretty ugly. But on the upside, the belt buckle knives are not on the FBI's list of dangerous concealed weapons and are "accessible even when wearing chaps."

The knives start around $70 unadorned and go up to around $110 with extra fanciness. Even if you don't want one, seeing the repeating animated GIF of a man whipping a lens-flared knife out of his crotch is worth one captivating visit to their site.

Product Page [Belt-Buckle-Knife.com]

The "Tite-Tie" is a little metal widget that lets you create a simulacrum of the famous "Trucker's Knot" tie-down without actually knowing how to tie a knot. It was originally only available in Australia, but is now supposedly available in America at Home Depot.

Chris Howard, the Tite-Tie's inventor, wrote this description on Toolmonger earlier this year:

The Tite-Tie is made from heat treated steel (not plastic) and is rated for 1985lbs. The reason why I invented this product is because there are 9 different way to tie a trucker’s knot and more and more people are becoming confused or not bothering to learn but still try to secure cargo with ropes. The Tite-Tie gives a super strong tie down with no knot tying, and the one size fits small to large ropes, you can even use webbing straps.

Toolmonger wasn't able to confirm if they're actually available yet in Home Depot, so if you spot one bop over there and let the 'mongers know. It should cost around $10 or so.

Tite-Tie Now Available In The US — Or So We Hear [Toolmonger]

The Crank Brothers Multi-19 is a tiny multi-tool for cyclists and looks chock-a-block with handy tools in a no-snag flask case.

From Cool Tools:

It has the same chain tool as the previously-reviewed Multi-17. The two are nearly identical, except the Multi-19 has double the number of screwdrivers (two flat, two Phillips). Plus, in addition to the following hex keys (2, 2.5, 3, 5, 6 and 8), there's also a 4m, which just so happens to be the size needed to adjust my rear derailer's pulley bolts (can't imagine I'll ever need to do that -- let alone on the road -- but it's comforting to know I'm carrying a hex that's pretty much suited to every inch of my bike).

It's only twenty bucks.

Crank Brothers Multi-19 [Cool Tools]

While still reticent to discuss hammers after the last time I made fun of one for being expensive, I am compelled to pass on these attractive models from Douglas Hammers, which feature a "Head-Handle Interface Technology," a fancy way to say that the head is attached to the hilt with pins instead of being jammer through the top of the head and held in place with a spreader. I make no claims to their efficiency; they just look neat.

Many weights are available, starting at $60 and going up to $70. Replacement handles are around $20.

Product PageUncrate]

I'm not much for single-purpose tools, especially ones that can be obviated by a pair of sharp scissors held firmly half-open, but this "Precision Wrapping Paper Slitter" would be the perfect present to buy for a grandmother before Christmas, enticing her to wrap more presents than usual to maximize its full potential. It's $9 at X-Treme Geek, plus shipping.

Catalog Page [X-Treme Geek via Coolest-Gadgets]

What you see is what you get with this Schroeder hand drill: a simple, manual quarter-inch drill with an easily-maintained exposed metal drive. One of Cool Tools readers is a bit ga-ga over his:

used Fiskars hand drills for years but their inner gears are made of plastic and will strip out if you apply too much torque. They also can't be opened up for repair either, so once that happens it goes straight to the landfill, which is really disheartening. With the Schroeder, the solid, single gear is right there in the open. You have to hold it in your hands to appreciate it. Like the engineering in a 1970's Beemer or a piece of Shaker furniture, it's logical and simple, direct and pure.

I don't use tools enough to necessitate an upgrade from my Magical Box of Dewalt, but I love the intersection of modern materials and design when applied to ancient tools. Are there any other modern, hand-powered tools out there I should know about? (Don't say "hammer.")

Oh, you can pick up the Schroeder for $20-30.

Schroeder Hand Drill [Cool Tools]

These "Lite Cylinders" are made from fiberglass, making them both easier to toss around and safer. Unlike standard propane tanks, the Lite Cylinders won't corrode, are translucent making checking gas levels easy, and don't explode when exposed to fire. (Or so they claim. It'd be fun to prove them wrong.)

Unlike the steel tanks you can rent from the hardware store, the Lite Cylinders are $100 a pop.

A Propane Tank With a Clear Difference [Toolmonger]

Red writes:

If you're looking for a knife sharpener, you'd be hard pressed to do better than the Spyderco Triangle Sharpmaker.  It will get your knife (or screwdriver, fish hook, or anything else with an edge) scary sharp.  You can even sharpen serrated blades with it.  I have even heard that you can use the Sharpmaker to sharpen the serrations out of a serrated knife!  Spyderco is also a great company that really makes fantastic knives and stands by their products.

I'd say he sounds like a shill, except that's pretty much the same thing I keep hearing about the Spyderco sharpener from other sources, too. The Triange Sharpmaker is $75 available directly from the company.

Product Page [SpyderCo.com]