Ikea's free tack-hammer assistant
On Cool Tools, Zarko Vujovic talks about Ikea's adjunct to a tack-hammer, a free gizmo that does the trick:
Ikea Nail-Driving UtensilI am an engineer, so I admire the way Ikea consistently uses a small set of fastening systems, all suitable for untrained labor. Ikea has even invented this tiny plastic device to protect customers from smashing their fingers with tack hammers.
A pinch of the clever friction-grips opens a small crevice in this utensil, and it neatly grips any small nail. Place it against a wall, tap the nailhead, and the nail goes in quite straight. Remove it and you are ready to safely hang a picture. The ergonomics are brilliant, the understanding of process is good, the operative results are excellent, and many innocent fingers go unsmashed. A real triumph of Swedish design!
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I wish someone would invent a simple way of ensuring the little tacks used to hold on the back board to a wardrobe(or similar)do not miss the chipboard. You know, you put the main part together, flip it over, place the back panel/s to let it be tacked, hit the tack and it rips the side out of an interior board. Darned annoying...
If you tap the hardboard with the hammer you can ususally 'sense' when you're over the chipboard and not thin air...
Having explored further, this tool is designed EXACTLY for what I was bitching about... as for tapping the hardboard... sounds great until you realise there is only about three-five mm of support on a board that is two metres long!...
Yes, but is it...alive?
That is interesting. It functions basically like the old screw holders from the early 20th century.
Back then, power tools were wildly overpriced, so if the common man wanted to drive a screw into something, he might tap with a brace & bit drill first (or maybe not), then he had to hold the screw firmly in place while he pressed and twisted the screwdriver (in the early days, it would have been a spade-tip only; Phillips heads didn't exist yet). Imagine slipping with a spade-tip screwdriver and your soft hand is right there in the way.
So they came up with little metal, springy devices very similar to Ikea's tool here, for holding the screws in place. The difference was that you would squeeze the handles of the old one and it would open a hole or slot in the end instead of the side. You would feed your screw into the end hole, so that the point faced outward, then release the handles and it would firmly hold the screw. In back of the device was another hole, to stick the screwdriver through. Then, once you got everything lined-up, you could hold the screw holder with your hand and not risk the screwdriver slipping and perforating you.
Actually, positioning the nails properly is exactly what this tool is for. If you flip it over from the orientation shown in the picture, you can see that the clip is designed to hold the nail a precise distance from the edge of a board.
This post is making me hungry for meatballs...
I don't know... I think the true feat of engineering has to be two of my Ikea dressers falling apart the very same week, seemingly out of the blue. Can you say "planned obsolescence"?
Meanwhile, my great-aunt Jean's carved wood and marble masterpiece from the 1920's sits and scoffs from the side, knicked, solid, stuffed.
Ah - I think everyone here is missing the real reason why Ikea is providing this brilliant little tool. Sure, it holds a nail. It also does something even more important when assembling Ikea furniture: It is a guide that lines up the nails exactly where they need to be when tacking in the thin boards on the back of the furniture. (Exactly what #1 was asking for.)
Problem is, the pic is showing the tool upside down. Turn the tool over, and the edge of the handle is placed directly against the side of the bookshelf (or similar) that you're building. Otherwise works as described in the post.
One of these came with a set of shelves I built a few months ago, and it made the tacking step trivially easy.
I wish I were an engineer so that I could admire the way that ikea consistently uses a small set of fastening systems. I'm just a regular guy, I can only dream.
I am a huge Ikea fan. Some people complain, but for Americans, furniture is either vintage, shit, self-made, or Ikea. I choose self-made and Ikea.
I've been calling their Groggy wine-opener a precision wine opening instrument. At $3, it is cheaper and more functional than any other tool out there.
@#10
I have a Malm platform bed and the laminate that they cover that thing with has a cool texture and a nice pattern, but it's just the same plasticky shit that is on every other piece of cheap furniture out there.
I think that you should change your list to vintage, pre-fabbed shit, or self-made. Ikea exists in that spectrum. And I mean, it's not bad, because they seem to have some really hip styles, it's just, I don't know, cheap.
The device is neat, but I'm not a fan of tools/accessories that come with the thing you're supposed to use them on. Like the six-foot cord that comes with every telephone, answering machine, fax machine, modem, etc. I must have 20 of those sitting around, and 19 of them--all except the one attached to my phone--are nothing but a waste of human and natural resources.
This is all very interesting, but the real question is: Will it blend?
or you can do as builders without engineering degrees have done all along: use a comb to hold the tack or nail.
Yeah, what #8 IslandFunKen said - I put my Ikea wardrobe together and used this very tool to line up all the pin-nails in the right place. Two (unhammered) thumbs up.
#4 It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.
I am constantly amazed by the Ikea attachment methods. The ingenuity is great! It never fails to fascinate me when I see that something that is built to tolerate a lot of error in the manufacturing process, yet go together like clockwork. And they somehow still make it easy to put together without screwing up!
Looks like it could also be a bitchin' doorstop.
one thing wrong with this- and it does seem like a cool tool- but if you put your nails in strait for a picture, they're a lot more likely to fall off. A nail with an angle pointing up will hold a lot better.
I'm always startled at the amount of IKEA hate that's out there.
What kind of quality do you people expect when you're buying a $75 dresser?
Where are these mythical stores where you can find higher quality new furniture at the same prices as IKEA stuff?
We don't have an IKEA so...
2" X 1" piece of cardboard with a 1/2" long slit in one of the short sides FTW. Or, as THEGREENHOUSE mentioned above, a comb.
@11,12-Why the gratuitous bashing of American furniture makers? There's plenty of good furniture to be had, you just have to be willing to pay for quality.
Old-timers trick is to hold a small nail or tack in a man's pocket hair comb. I put one in my wife's tool box. They usually have two sizes of 'teeth' with different gaps between them too, which let you pick for the size of nail. (Remove any nails before re-using the comb)
pah!, you have the apprentice hold the nail.
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=1&p=57073&cat=1,43411,43417
I've used one of these before, but I am sure that was with furniture bought at Argos, not Ikea. (UK shop.) Very useful though.
#20. I think these are just for putting the pins in the back of self-assembly furniture, not for all nail guiding purposes.