As I began sorting all of the tips I gathered, I came across ones that I knew I wanted to include, but they didn’t seem to fit into any category. Little did I know they would fit perfectly . . . into a chapter called “Miscellaneous.” Fancy that!

Encouraging Others

In a makers group on Facebook, maker madman Izzy Swan posted a challenge for everyone: Reach out to other makers, one a day, to offer them encouragement and praise. I love stuff like this. Even when we don’t care to admit it, I believe we all crave high fives, pats on the back, and shiny gold stars on our homework. Sure, we spend half our days thumbing the Likes on social media until our actual thumbs hurt. And while that may give us all a tiny little ego-tickle (in a rat-in-a-maze, press-bar-get-treat kind of way), nothing beats genuine heartfelt praise, thoughtful nudging, and the showing of some earnest admiration and love. And yes, it can be a little awkward sometimes to express the warm and fuzzy, and even hard to receive positive feedback and praise. Get over it! The world could use a few pats on the back right now. Make someone’s day. Tell them how and why they inspire you. [IS]

Pick up Things with a Dart Gun

Need something to pick up small and flat objects and parts? Try using the suction cup from a toy dart. [NDB]

Get Thee a “Craft Mat”!

For too long, I took the “self-healing” billing of my cutting mat far too literally, subjecting it to paints, glues, epoxies, clay, heat, and all sorts of other indignities from which it does not heal. My decades-old cutting mat looks like the surface of the moon. Besides cutting, every other crafting, hobby, or art activity should happen on some other surface, and that surface for me is a heavy-duty PTFE (Teflon) sheet. These sheets are branded as “craft mats,” and sold for as much as US$18 for a 15″ × 18″ sheet. But if you search for “PTFE Teflon sheet” at your favorite e-tailer, you can get a box of five 16″ × 24″ sheets for only US$10. These Teflon sheets first seem rather fragile and insubstantial, but they’re virtually indestructible. Almost nothing sticks to them. And besides the mat acting as a protective surface, you can also use it for techniques like low-brow paper marbling (mix some paints on the sheet and swirl paper through it). To clean the sheet, you simply wipe with a rag—good as new.

Employing Magnets around the Shop

YouTube maker Tim Sway shared this tip in one of his videos. Tim does a lot of upcycled woodworking and other reuse projects. When tearing down old speakers and stereo equipment, he keeps all of the speaker magnets and places some of them around his shop to become magnetic tool holders. He even leaves some in their conical metal housings to become magnetized bowls into which he can toss metal tools and objects. [TS2]

Using Magnets as Metal Detectors

Tim Sway also uses a magnet as a nail and staple detector for scanning recycled lumber before cutting or planing. He also shares another great tip: instead of keeping all of your hammers in one drawer, drivers in another, and so on, keep sets of these basic tools stashed all over the shop, near the stations where you use them. [TS]

Find Great Tools at an Estate Sale

Estate sales are a great place to find quality tools (often vintage) and materials at very affordable prices. [HitD]

Hanging Pictures the Poor Man’s Way

Need to hang a picture but don’t have proper hardware? Use a beer or soda pull tab or two as your hooks.

Fill Screw Holes with MatchSticks

You’ve likely seen this little hack before (a Pinterest favorite), but it’s worth mentioning in case you haven’t. The idea is simple: to fix loose screw holes, jam a matchstick into the hole and then re-sink the screw. You can use wooden matches or toothpicks, and use multiples as needed. You can even add some wood glue (especially if it’s a hole that requires more than one sliver of wood).

Fabricate Pour Spouts for the Shop

Save the tops of cardboard salt boxes (the type that have a recloseable spout). You can cut them out and use them inside the metal rings of canning jars to create reusable pour spouts.

Fashioning a Tool for Prying Open Consumer Electronics

Using screwdrivers and other metal tools to open the case on a piece of consumer electronics will quickly mar and scratch its surface. If you need to pry open a case, cut a defunct credit, rewards, or gift card at a 45-degree angle to create a more forgiving opening tool.

Using the Graphite Transfer Method

If you need to transfer an image but don’t have any sort of typical transfer media, simply rub the graphite from your pencil onto one side of a piece of paper to create one. Flip the paper over onto your workpiece, draw your image while pressing down fairly hard, and the graphite on the underside of the paper will transfer onto the workpiece. [JD]

Using Steel Weights in the Shop

Big chunks of off-cut steel, in bricks, plates, or discs, make indispensable shop assistants. You can use them to hold workpieces down for cutting, gluing, dry-fitting, and more. You can buy commercial shop weights, but you can also get them from any metal supply place or your friendly neighborhood machine shop. These shops usually have off-cut pieces they will gladly sell you or, if they’re really friendly, even give you for free. [JD]

Give Old Tools Away

Want to make someone’s day and make yourself feel good in the process? If you have old tools that you no longer need, give them away. Give them to a school, library, homeless shelter, or a local makerspace. Or give them to a friend or neighbor who needs them. As Jimmy DiResta said in one of his vlogs on YouTube, it’s a great way to give back, to make new friends, and to lighten your load. And trust me, it will make you feel good to do so. [JD]

Digging Holes with a Shop Vac

You may never have thought of this, but Jake von Slatt excitedly posted a little video on his Instagram account when he realized that you could actually use a powerful shop vac to effectively dig post holes. Who knew? [JvS]

Using Wood Glue for Screen Printing

German maker Laura Kampf shared this tip in one of her YouTube videos (“Laura´s Emergency Screen Printing”). Instead of using photo emulsion to create a stencil for screen printing, she uses wood glue. As she points out, it’s not perfect, and you can’t really reuse the screen, but for a quick screen printing job, it does the trick.

Find Treasures with the “Grandfather’s” Search Term

James Wright of the YouTube channel Wood by Wright shared this clever tip for searching for wood on Craigslist. He set up a search string notification for “grandfather’s” (possessive). That way, things like “I’m cleaning out my grandfather’s workshop” will get messaged to him. Years ago, this notification returned: “I’ve purchased my grandfather’s barn and now I need to clear out all of the lumber. I’m selling it all for US$0.50 a board foot.” James went to check it out and it turned out to be 20,000 feet of white oak, air dried for 15 years. He bought as much as he could cram into his van and he’s still pulling from that stock today. As he points out, this search term will also help you scoop up tools and other great, granddaddy goodness. This reminds me of a similar tip I used years ago to get some amazing deals on eBay: search on misspellings of your desired items. Those listings get far less traffic due to the spelling error. [JW]

Create a Freezer Power-Loss Indicator

To help determine whether your freezer thawed (or partially thawed) during a power outage, try this little trick. Freeze a cup of water, place a quarter on it, and place it in the freezer. After the storm, when the power is restored, check the cup. If the quarter is unmoved, the freezer is safe. If the quarter is partially submerged, you had some thawing, but the freezer contents may still be safe. If the quarter is at the bottom, you had a significant failure and the contents of your freezer are likely spoiled. I plan to just keep such a cup in the freezer from now on. And, by the way, if you do end up with a fridge or freezer full of spoiled food, check your homeowner’s insurance policy. Spoiled food is usually covered (if it’s not the result of flooding).

Devise Some Poor maker’s Shrink Film Plastic

On an episode of Barb Makes Things, she shared something I was unaware of about how to use plastic shrink film. You can use Type 6 plastic (common in food packaging) as shrink film. It’s not quite as uniform and consistent as commercial shrink film, but for many applications, it should be just fine. She has some other great tips in her video, like sanding the plastic to get a frosted effect (and to hold more marker pigment) and using baking parchment on the heating tray to allow you to quickly swap out pieces you’re heating from the oven (and to prevent sticking). [BN]

Photo-Document Projects in Reverse

Make: contributor and technical writer James Floyd Kelly shares this trick, which I have also used, for documenting a project build: “While taking apart an item, I shoot a photo of each step. If I remove a screw, I take a photo. If I take spring slides off a pin, I take a photo. Once the object is fully disassembled, you simply have to reverse the order of the photos and you have a visual representation of how to put the thing back together. And it helps to make sure you write the steps accurately, because every step has been visually documented.” [JFK]