Product Review – The ExhaustNotes Blog

ExNotes Product Review: Harbor Freight 30-Inch, 5-Drawer Mechanic’s Cart

By Joe Gresh

The Harbor Freight/US General 5-drawer tool cart has been on my radar for many years. It always seemed like a pretty good deal at $189 and if you bought the thing when it wasn’t on sale (every few weeks) the price would go up to $269. Paying full price at Harbor Freight is to be avoided at all costs and HF’s unrelenting cycle of blowouts, parking lot sales and clearances has trained their customers to wait them out. This particular mechanic’s cart sale was a Black Friday thing and I debated picking one up but managed to tamp down the urge.

I thought I was in the clear until HF declared an extension to Black Friday, at which point I gave in and went down to their store to pick up one of the damn things. This wasn’t a spur of the moment deal. I have a homemade rollaway box full of tools I rarely use but can’t get rid of and another really cheap top and bottom combination setup also filled with odd bits and lathe tools.

My previous mechanic’s cart is a cut down rolling file cabinet, the type used in offices by the type of secretary born sometime in the 1950s. The file cabinet thing was never great, but it made a good workbench to repair the Husqvarna’s transmission. After that transmission job the cart slowly became covered in tools making it hard to dig through the junk to find a 10mm socket. It became a poorly organized catchall.

The US General 5-drawer cart comes to you mostly assembled. You have to put together the wheels and the lower shelf, along with the uprights and some corners for the top box. The instructions are good enough except for the part about lifting the box up onto the legs. The manual says to not attempt this alone. I’m always alone and the box was heavy and too bulky. I got the thing off the ground but accuracy was suffering and I was worried about scratching the paint or pinching my fingers.

Taking the drawers out to lighten the box was one option. Plan B was to lay the box on its side and slide the frame into position as the frame weighed much less than the box. Now I had the cart on the ground, so I lifted the thing upright pivoting on the wheels. It was still a strain but easier than lifting the entire box. You get a lot of steel for $189 at HF. After the thing was upright, I tightened all the bolts that hold it together.

The 5-drawer box is really nice. The paint (five colors to choose from; I got KTM orange) looks thick and applied well. The box comes with drawer liners in each drawer and in the bottom shelf.

The wheels appear heavy duty and are probably overkill. HF included a nice, extra-mile feature by providing the swivel casters with grease fittings for the ball bearings in the swivel part. Also included on the two casters are brakes so if you’re working on an incline the box won’t roll away.

The drawers use two methods to secure them from sliding open under transport. The first is a latch on the front of each drawer that you must slide to the side in order to open the drawer. I’m not sure I like these latches. I want the drawers to open without the added finger motions. I may disable these latches.

The second method of drawer retention includes two, spring-loaded lock bars that slide down onto the backside of the drawers when the top of the box is closed. The box comes with four round-Coke-machine type keys so you can lock your stuff if you work in a shop full of shifty characters.

For such a low price the 5-drawer box doesn’t seem cheap at all. I think it’s Harbor Freight’s best toolbox value. Two gas charged struts are used to hold the top in the open position and the unit came with a handy side shelf to store your unguents and the various toxic chemicals that mechanics use in their daily course of events.

My particular 5-drawer had a slight flaw: one of the drawer slides was not in its track correctly and was binding. I had to remove the drawer and slot the slide into the track after which the drawer worked fine. I’m not sure that I didn’t cause the problem when I set the box on the side and lifted the cart upright with all the bolts loose. Maybe it flexed and popped out. With everything tight the box feels sturdy without any wobble.

I give the US General 5-drawer mechanic’s cart high marks and can recommend it if its size suits your needs. Now I’ve got to sort out that mess of jumbled tools and organize my new toolbox, a process that has already begun.

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ExNotes Product Review: Vevor Welding Table

By Joe Gresh

I’ve gotten an undeserved reputation as a China booster. Some Internet wags think I work for China and must be getting a cut from the sales of products I test. Any time you guys want to get serious and ban all products from China let me know. I’m with you, man. I wish I got a cut from the sale of Chinese imports but the truth is, many times Chinese stuff is the only stuff I can afford. Take this Vevor welding table I bought on Amazon. At $62 including shipping it was even cheaper than the Harbor Freight welding table that looks like the exact same unit.

For fun I tried to find a similar sized, made-in-USA, welding table and the cheapest one I could find was from a company called Siegmund. The Siegmund table is way, way nicer than the Vevor and it comes with a bunch of clamping accessories included. The Siegmund costs $2569.00 plus shipping. For me, the choice isn’t made-in-USA vs made-in-China: the choice is a cheap welding table or no welding table at all.

Maybe if I ran a welding shop I’d bite the bullet and get the Siegmund, but that’s not exactly true. If I ran a welding shop I’d probably make my own welding table. It doesn’t matter for this product review because I don’t run a welding shop and I never will.

My previous welding table was a small, outdoor side table made from expanded metal mesh. It was too low and I was on my knees to do the welding. Everyone knows you have to be in a comfortable position to lay down a steady bead, more so when you can’t weld very well in the first place.

The Vevor welding table is one of those generic designs that are manufactured by many different factories in China. It has a tilting feature that I don’t foresee using but you never know. Out of the box the table comes complete with all the nuts, bolts, and screws needed for assembly. It’s easy to put together. It took me only 45 minutes and I’m a slow learner.

As delivered, the table worked fine, but there were several tiny modifications that made the thing much better. The tilting arc has two wing nuts and two plastic knobs on each side to lock the table in position. It’s almost impossible to get these fasteners tight enough to prevent the table from slipping when you push on the edge. It’s probably not a problem for welding but I replaced the factory hardware with acorn nuts. Once the acorn nuts are tightened with a wrench the table no longer slips.

I like my welding table high so that I have a better chance of seeing what I’m doing. The Vevor comes with two pins that allow height adjustability but even in the highest setting it was too low. If you weld from a chair it would be ok. I extended the table another inch and drilled the upright for a bolt/screw. To lower the table, I’ll have to remove the bolt but it will only take a moment.

I added two side braces to take a little side to side wobble out of the table. It’s relatively stable now.

The Vevor table folds for storage and came with wheels to roll the thing around. I didn’t use the wheels as the table is not very heavy and you can lift it easily.

The feet on the Vevor are an odd setup. Four plastic pieces fit into the ends of the legs and two crossbars with rubber tips snap into the plastic pieces. The crossbars fall out of the plastic easily so I drilled and added 4 screws to hold them in place.

Once I modded the Vevor welding table it felt sturdy. There are a few neat and not so neat features. The tabletop has slots for clamps but is not very thick metal (it’s about 2.4mm). It racks pretty easy until you flatten it out and tighten the tilt nuts. For electric welding it will probably be okay; gas welding may warp the top. On the sides are fences that you can raise beyond the tabletop to provide a handy place to clamp your work. Lowered, the fences are out of the way and razor sharp so watch your elbows. The lower cross brace on the Vevor comes with several size holes for tool/clamp storage and a couple loops to hang whatever you want to hang.

For a measly $62 you get a lot of welding table from Vevor. I’m satisfied with the thing and as soon as I clear out all the flammable stuff lying around the shed I’m going to test the table under real life conditions. Watch this space for a follow up report.

ExNotes Review: Texas

By Joe Berk

I’ve been on a James Michener kick lately. You read my recent review of The Source. After reading that wonderful novel I wanted more Michener, but I wanted one I had not read yet. I read Alaska a few years ago and loved it. I set my sights on Michener’s Texas, and it was stunning. I used to live in Texas (El Paso and Fort Worth) in an earlier life and I thought I knew a little bit about that state’s glorious history. It turns out I was right…what I knew was just a little bit. Michener’s rich historical novel paints a much more enlightening picture.

At 1,419 pages, Texas is not a trivial read. It took me a good three weeks to get through it. I recently had a weeklong teaching gig at a company in Wyoming; I took Texas with me and read it at lunch, at night, and in the hotel fitness center while riding the stationary bike. I did the same thing at the gym here in California before and after I went to Wyoming. You could say Michener helped me get in shape. Before I realized it nearly every night I’d spent an hour on that bike. Texas is that good.

Michener’s approach in both The Source and Texas is to create a setting that taps into the present, and then he jumps historically with fictional characters and stories based on what actually occurred. In The Source, Michener’s temporal stretch extends to prehistoric times and the beginnings of religion. In Texas, the rearward time jump is shorter (about four centuries). The based-on-real-history fiction starts with the Spanish conquering Mexico, and then progresses through 21 generations. Each generation is a story detailing events and personalities, with richly-textured and believable characters.

The context for the group that ties all the above together is a five-person panel appointed by the Texas governor. The panel is charged with defining the history curriculum for Texas schools. What emerges is that the panelists are descendants of the people described in each of the novel’s historical tales. It really is a masterful approach.

Parts of Texas reminded me of Larry McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove (another wonderful novel and a personal favorite I’ve read six or seven times already). The stories in Texas and the way Michener ties them together from one generation to the next is nothing short of, well, I’ll use the word again: Masterful.

While reading Texas, a friend mentioned that there also a DVD (Texas became a movie). I bought the Texas DVD, but I haven’t watched it yet. I don’t see how it can possibly be as good as the book (the book was that good). Trust me on this: Pick up a copy of Texas. It is a hell of a story.

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ExNotes Review: The Source

By Joe Berk

Did you ever read a book twice? I’ve done so a few times, but never with as long a time between readings as James Michener’s The Source. I first read it when I was 14 years old. And then I read it again last month. That’s a gap of nearly six decades. What surprised me enormously was that I remembered a lot of it from my first reading.

You might wonder: Why would a 14-year-old kid, a gearhead even then, read The Source? I had been to Israel with my Dad a year earlier, which was quite an opportunity back in those days. Dad was a trapshooter, and he was on the US Olympic team to Israel’s Maccabiah Games. It was quite a trip, and seeing the places I had only heard about in Sunday school was a real adventure. The Source cemented a lot of what I had seen in Israel in my mind. It brought my visit into focus. Normally, I would have had my nose buried in Cycle magazine, but that trip to Israel broadened my horizons. Our most recent trip to Spain and seeing cities and places where the Spanish Inquisition (which figured prominently in The Source) rekindled my interest, so I bought a new copy of The Source on Amazon and I read it again.

The only difference I could discern between the book I read 58 years ago and the one I read last month was the price and the cover photo. Today’s The Source cover photo features the Dome of the Rock, one of Islam’s holiest sites. Back in the day, the cover featured a Jewish menorah (a candelabra), which figures prominently in our faith.

The Source is a novel with an historical context. It’s the story of an archeological dig set in Israel just before Israel’s War of Independence in 1947-1948, but the dig and its characters provide the framework for a series of stories as the tell is excavated. A tell is a mound created by succeeding civilizations building one on top of another, and in The Source, the generations stretch all the way back to prehistoric times.

At 1,080 pages The Source is not a light read, although Michener does a great job morphing from one story into the next. If you enjoy a good read, if you are interested in Israel, and if you want to know more about the beginnings and evolution of the world’s three great religions, you might want to pick up a copy of The Source.

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The Buck Stopped Here

Some time ago I wrote about ordering a custom Buck folding knife. I’m not a knife guy (many of my friends are). The hook for me was an ad that floated into my inbox. I have a regular Buck 110 (an anniversary edition I bought on sale; it’s the other knife you see in the photo above), but I am the guy that marketing types dream about: Offer a custom feature or two, hit me with an email, and I’m in.

As promised, the lead time was a few weeks. When it arrived, all was not well. All priced out, I was into the custom Buck (complete with elk horn grips) for a little under $200. I liked the look of the elk horn grips, but on my knife the interface between the elk horn natural bark and the bolsters was not good. Some of the undulations in the horn butted up against the bolsters and it looked cheap. I realize the grips are a natural material, but I still didn’t like the fit.

I wrote to Buck, expecting to hear the above as an explanation (i.e., that the grips are natural material), but that wasn’t the case at all. Buck responded the next day. Send the knife back, they said, and we’ll make it right. I did, I had a new knife in about two weeks, and it was perfect. Buck selected a set of grips that had no bark interfacing with the bolsters, and the intersection was line-to-line everywhere on the knife. It is a thing of great beauty.

My custom Buck features included a mirror-polished blade, nickel (instead of brass) bolsters, and the elk horn grips I mentioned. And that blade…wow, it is razor sharp. The first time I closed it, when the blade completed its arc into the handle the tip caught my finger. It was so sharp I didn’t even realize it had cut me. The cut was so clean it healed in only a few days.

There’s more good news to the story. When you get a custom knife like this from Buck, you also get an official-looking certificate of authenticity, a knife case, and a holster. Somehow when I returned the knife for the new grips, I accidentally put all that stuff into the trash (which I only realized after Buck returned my knife). I called Buck and told them what I had done. I wanted the complete Buck custom knife experience, I told the nice lady on the phone, and she told me “no problem.” She shipped another set and it arrived a couple of days later, all at no charge.

All the above notwithstanding, like I said above, I’m not really a knife guy. Even though I have the two Bucks shown in the photos above, I don’t carry either one of them. I have a cheap Chinese copy (and its little brother) I bought at Lowe’s that is the same size and looks almost exactly like the standard Buck 110 folder. Sacrilege, I know.

The Sheffield name is laser engraved on the Chinese copies, but trust me, they are not from England. I think I paid $20 for both of them in a bubble-wrap package a few years ago. Once in a great while I’ll put the smaller one it in my pocket and carry it (even though the package included leather holsters for both), but I can’t remember a single time when I needed it and it was in my pocket. The big one? Its primary duty is opening letters.

If you’re thinking of getting a Buck knife, Amazon is a good place to go. If you’re thinking of an inexpensive Chinese copy, check out Lowe’s.

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ExNotes Book Review: The Devil’s Hand

As airport bookstore thrillers go, it doesn’t get too much better than Jack Carr’s The Devil’s Hand. Yeah, it’s a bit formulaic, and yeah, the ending is predictable (spoiler alert: the good guys win), but the plot basics are timely and a bit unusual. Instead of just plain old bad guys, rogue nations, and Middle Eastern terrorists, this one involves unleashing a bioweapon on US soil. The good guy, James Reece (why do they always have such WASPy names?), manages to thwart the effort and limit the death toll to about 5000 people. The parallels between the plot’s Marburg U virus variant and Covid 19 (and the riots and insurrections that follow) are eerily similar to what the world has gone through in the last two years.

Reece checks all the airport bookstore thriller main character boxes: Former special forces operator on a revenge mission, the US president’s personal assassin, martial arts expert, handgun expert, rifle expert, shotgun expert, knife expert, tomahawk expert, and on and on it goes. That’s the formulaic part. The plot basics are where the story diverges from what you might expect, and that makes The Devil’s Hand interesting enough to be worth a read. At 576 pages, you probably won’t get through it on a single flight, but that’s okay. You can finish it on the return leg.

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Downfall: The Case Against Boeing

In a previous life I managed operations that sold aircraft components to Boeing. And I’ve taught related courses to Boeing companies and Boeing suppliers. Boeing’s emphasis on quality assurance, safety, and reliability was extreme and Boeing went far beyond what any other organization required. That’s why I was so surprised a few years ago when facts began to emerge detailing how Boeing concealed flight control augmentation systems information on their new 737 Max aircraft.

When I returned home from another secret mission a couple of nights ago and we tuned into Netflix, a documentary on Boeing’s 737 Max failures popped up when Netflix opened. Downfall: The Case Against Boeing had just been released that day.

Downfall: The Case Against Boeing is an inside look at the events surrounding the two crashes that occurred shortly after the 737 Max began flying. It’s about the 737 Max, its two crashes, Boeing’s resistance to revealing MCAS (that’s Boeing’s acronym for Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), the aircraft’s susceptibility to a single-point failure, Boeing’s prioritizing sales over safety, the Federal Aviation Agency’s inadequate response, and more.

I thought Downfall: The Case Against Boeing was extremely well done. If you get a chance, this is a show worth viewing.

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Book Review: The Director

As a kid growing up in the 50s and 60s I only heard good stuff about J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. One example is a classic movie most folks my age have seen called The FBI Story. It starred Jimmy Stewart and featured a cameo appearance by J. Edgar Hoover:

Then the 1970s came and with it the protest era. Everything that was good was now bad, and there were a string of books (mostly written by disgruntled former FBI execs) about J. Edgar Hoover. I’ve read them all, and I pretty much dismissed them as the whinings of guys who had an agenda. After college and the Army, I spent a few years in the US defense industry, and the security manager in one of the companies was a retired FBI agent. I asked him if all the negative J. Edgar Hoover stuff had any truth to it and his answer was an emphatic no. “J. Edgar Hoover was a charismatic guy and a real gentleman,” he said. “We all thought the world of him.”

When I saw a Wall Street Journal review of The Director (written by Paul Letersky, who was a personal assistant to J. Edgar Hoover), I knew I wanted to read it. I bought The Director on Amazon and thoroughly enjoyed the book. It countered the propaganda previously published about Hoover (and what motivated the urchins who wrote those lies) and told an interesting story. Some things I found fascinating included:

- Hoover didn’t carry a gun. I thought that was interesting. I knew that Hoover received one of the very first Smith and Wesson .357 Magnum revolvers in the 1930s, but he didn’t personally carry a gun.
- Hoover was never big on personal security. He didn’t keep a security contingent at his home, he dined out nearly every day, and he frequently went for walks around his neighborhood on his own.
- Contrary to what most folks think, Hoover deplored wiretaps and worked hard to minimize them. He knew they could backfire, and his principal concern was avoiding anything that could embarass the FBI.
- Hoover didn’t “blackmail” U.S. Presidents. The story about Hoover informing John F. Kennedy that the FBI knew about his affair with a Mafia kingpin’s mistress is true, but Hoover did it to protect Kennedy (who broke off the affair the next day). Hoover never used that information to his advantage, nor did he ever reveal it.

There’s a lot more, but I don’t want to spoil it for you. Trust me on this…if you want a good read, pick up a copy of The Director.

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Product Review: Turn and Washington’s Spies

Sue and I are Netflix junkies, and an evening in front of the big screen watching a Netflix series is a typical night here at the suburban version of Tinfiny Ranch. We recently watched Turn. It’s the story of Washington’s spy ring during the Revolutionary War, and folks, it was good. It’s four seasons long and each season has 10 episodes. The first season was a bit slow, but we’d heard good things so we stuck it out and we’re glad we did. The action picked up dramatically in the second season and it continued nonstop thereafter.

The Turn story occurred mostly in and around New York, New Jersey, and Long Island. Although filmed in Virginia, the terrain looks exactly like my old stomping grounds (central Jersey, where many American Revolution events occurred). The battle that turned the war happened 10 miles from my home, and every time I’m back there I take in a bit more.

Turn is based on the Alexander Rose book, Washington’s Spies. I enjoyed the Netflix series so much I read the book. Like the television series, Washington’s Spies started slowly and then the action accelerated rapidly.

Trust me on this: You won’t go wrong with either Turn or Washington’s Spies. Jump into either and you can thank me later.

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Book and Movie Review: Charlie Wilson’s War

I met Charlie Wilson a couple of times when I was an engineer in the munitions business, so Charlie Wilson’s War had a special attraction for me when it was first published. Charlie Wilson was a US Congressman from Texas, and to say he was larger than life would be a huge understatement. Tall, good-looking, a booming voice, a warm personality, and his trademark navy blue suits, white shirts, and suspenders made Mr. Wilson both awe-inspiring and approachable. Larger than life, as I’ve already said. Charlie Wilson was someone who was instantly likeable. I’ve never met anyone like him.

We made ammunition, mines, and cluster bombs in those days, and in the 1980s our business was (if you’ll pardon the pun) booming. My specialties were cluster bombs and mines; we had a sister division that designed and manufactured 30mm A-10 and 25mm Bushmaster ammo. Congressman Wilson’s interest in us was in the ammo side of the business, and as a relatively high-rolling young dude I was able to attend the meetings when he was in town. Charlie’s efforts were focused on arming the Afghan rebels trying to kick the Russians out of Afghanistan and back to the Motherland, and what they desparately needed was something that could knock down the Hind helicopter. That’s where we came in. The Hind was an armored helicopter (a flying tank, essentially), and we made 30mm ammo that could knock out Soviet tanks (which it did in droves during Operation Desert Storm, our war that would follow a decade later).

President Reagan didn’t want to give the Afghan rebels the shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stinger missile, as he was concerned about those weapons falling into the wrong hands. But he was okay with providing purpose-built, shoulder-fired weapons that would use A-10 ammo. Now, I know what you are probably thinking: The A-10 30mm round has more muzzle energy than a World War II 75mm Howitzer round, and there’s no way anyone could fire one of those from the shoulder.

Well, hold that thought. The 30mm anti-Hind rifle was shoulder fired, but not in the sense we would ordinarily think of a shoulder-fired weapon. The deal was you backed up to a rock or a tree, put the butt of the rifle against it, and then sort of got underneath it. Like I said above, that’s where we came in. We provided the ammo.

Ultimately, the program outlined above was cancelled and President Reagan okayed selling Stingers to the Afghan rebels. Before the Russian chopper pilots could learn (but instantly and intrinsically came to understand) the words to Patsy Cline’s hit tune, Stingers were doing what they were designed to do. The Stingers were astonishingly effective, and within a few days of their arrival, the Soviets realized they were in Deep Geshitski (as they say back in Mother Russia). It wasn’t too long before they rolled back across the bridge to the Soviet Union. Come to think of it, not too long after that the entire Evil Empire collapsed. Charlie Wilson was one of the guys who made it happen.

I don’t mind telling you that I was in awe of Charlie Wilson, and when the book (Charlie Wilson’s War) came out, I bought and read it immediately. Then it was made into a movie with the same name (Charlie Wilson’s War), and we similarly saw it immediately. Tom Hanks (one of the all time greats, in my opinion) was good in the lead role, but as Lloyd Benson might say, he was no Charlie Wilson. Mr. Wilson could have played himself. He had the right kind of personality and magnetism for it.

The good news is that Charlie Wilson’s War is still in print (it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read), and the even better news is that if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, Charlie Wilson’s War is running on that platform right now. Trust me on this: It’s one you want to see.

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Learn about The Gatling Gun, from its civil war inception right through to current applications in modern weapon systems!