Tips of the Week: Glue and Screw, Mini Lathes, Wheelie Clamps, and Using Nail Clippers on Component Leads

Source: Make: DIY Projects and Ideas for Makers

Tips of the Week is our weekly peek at some of the best making tips, tricks, and recommendations we’ve discovered in our travels. Check in every Friday to see what we’ve discovered. And we want to hear from you. Please share your tips, shortcuts, best practices, and tall shop tales in the comments below and we might use your tip in a future column.

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Ever since I was a model-making teen, I have been tempted by ads for cheap desktop “mini lathes.” Are they worth it? In this video on This Old Tony, Tony runs through the strengths and weaknesses of such a machine and how you can get the most out of one.

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, the brilliant hardware engineer, Mohit Bhoite, shares this little tip on yet another use for the lowly hotel room keycard. He uses them for spreading solder paste for surface-mount soldering. As I point out in my book, Tips and Tales from the Workshop, you can also use a cut key (or old credit) card (cut on the diagonal) as a non-marring prying tool for use on the seams of plastic consumer hardware cases (or other prying functions around the shop). If you haven’t seen Mohit’s work, you have to check it out. He has raised freeform soldering to an artform.