I am holding off on publishing the design for MICHAEL’S DEATH MACHINE for a few reasons. Firstly, I am still getting the safety systems for the prototype and secondly because I am not sure I should be responsible for the death of millions of bloggers. It would be a bit pointless having a blog taking the piss out of them if they were all dead and self-parody is so very 1990’s.

Anyway, I figure I owe you something so this week I will present How to Hack a Stanley Yankee Screwdriver in glorious digital kodachrome. The Stanley Yankee is one of those screwdrivers that you push in and it twists itself in the direction that you set; they are useful for doing things without people hearing you, unlike those pesky noisy electric things and they are just generally cool things. One of the problems with the Yankee though is that the bits are expensive and as far as I know there is no interchangeable tip system so – I made one.

The standard flathead bit looked like a good start since it already had a taper in the shaft which would save a little bit of cutting. The aim was to create a tapered 1/4 inch square drive on the end so that a bit changer could be fitted.

Case hardened steel is no match for my Dremel and a sodding great vice! Anyway, it needs cutting off at the neck.

Eventually, with time and some effort, it’ll fall off. Happens to us all in the end. You need to keep this bit in case you were wondering:

You need to taper the end now – Luckily two sides are already done as part of the flathead so just match these up on the other side to make a nice square.

With luck, the 1/4 inch bit will fit onto the end nicely – A bloody big hammer makes it fit better though.

And just to prove it still looks cute – Here’s the end product.

There. Now don’t say I don’t occasionally post something useful!