Reviews & Features – The Garage Journal

I was in the shop this morning, putting shit away where shit goes, and somewhere between the third coffee and a mild argument with a stubborn drawer that wouldn’t close, I started thinking: what are the real MVPs here? Not the obvious stuff. Not wrenches and sockets and the basic artillery that any functioning human being needs to get work done. I mean the things that changed the game. The things you didn’t know you needed until you had them, and now life without them seems barbaric. So I made a list. I thought about it for a few more …

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I’ve been preaching the gospel of the EDC utility knife for years now. Not because it’s trendy or tactical or whatever the hell people are calling it this week, but because it works. Disposable blades just make more sense for the way I work and live. And over the last decade, I’ve probably burned through 20 or 30 different setups chasing something that didn’t annoy me. For the past five years, that something has been the Chaves Knives C.H.U.B. flipper, the black G10 bruiser sitting up top in the photos. It’s been flawless. Not “pretty good.” Flawless. It opens, it cuts, it …

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A few months back I gave a pretty glowing review of the Mileseey S50. Shortly after, they sent over their latest contraption, the $240 XTAPE1. I was supposed to get this write-up done months ago, but life did what life does and kicked the can down the road. Silver lining though, I’ve had a lot more time to live with the thing. So… what do I think? If there’s one thing that matters above all else with any measuring device, it’s trust. If you don’t trust it, it doesn’t matter how many features it has, your work is going to …

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I wandered into a friend’s shop today, a man deep in the guts of some vintage travel trailer, chasing wires through wall cavities like a man possessed. Electricity is pure voodoo to me, so I kept my distance and watched him wrestle a high-tech inverter, a bank of solar panels, and various other contraptions that demanded cable so thick it looked like it belonged on a suspension bridge. Then I noticed the shears. Tiny, almost dainty little Knipex bastards, barely bigger than what your grandmother uses at her sewing machine. The man was running them through wire after wire, fat …

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A few months back, my mom hit me with a request that made my blood run cold… She wanted a garage door opener she could control from her phone. I had visions of midnight tech support calls and FaceTime sessions filled with “it’s not working again.” But hell, she’s my mom, so I dove in. I don’t run a full-blown Smart Home because, frankly, I like my house dumb. Just about every “convenience” I’ve added over the years has turned into some kind of digital tantrum when the Wi-Fi farts. So I needed something simple, reliable, and most importantly – …

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