The heavier (but no less fantastic) counterweight to the Cloud Lamp is the Tresor coin chandelier.
Designed by Terzani, another luxury lighting company from Italy, the Tresor is made from 3,900 metal coins.
Each little Doubloon is individually hand-welded together and finished in either gold or silver leaf, so that the globes simply exude precious and skilled craftsmanship.
Take a behind-the-scenes look at the artisans at work, after the jump.
The Bad Dog Biter would have been enough pay dirt for one booth at the International Builders' Show, but we thought the company's flexible drill bits deserved a mention as well.
Take a look at the shimmying shank of the bit in the video above. It's bad, dog.
Suspended by nearly invisible wire, the soft fluffiness is actually practical, washable fabric.
While the light would be pushing the creativity meter with just that, there is (of course) more.
Inside the hanging ball of white are four mechanical arms and an internal engine to make sure the cloud "softly undulates" as its fluorescents light up the room.
Can you see elephants or sailing ships or any of those crazy cumulus shapes?
When Baltimore Toolworks set out to build a safer chisel, they took an ingenious (if cynical) approach to the problem: They started by studying insurance claims.
Turns out, creating a larger striking surface reduced the risk of glancing hammer blows becoming knuckle busters.
By replacing the normal cold chisel's metal head with a polymer cap, the company also reduced the risk of "mushrooming" the head, which eventually can cause flying metal fragments during impact.
Who thought smacking a metal chisel with a metal hammer ever made sense, anyway?
The benefits to BT's Hard Cap chisels go on and on.
My favorite detail about these crash-landed alien garden ornaments is that the female alien is so clearly thinned out with her male traveling companion.
Should've asked for directions back at the Crab Nebula, pal.
Immigration issues about illegal aliens aside, would you grace your garden with these interplanetary interlopers, or just play it safe and stick with the native gnomes?
Duluth Trading recently told me that they'd "torture-tested" their new Crash Test Tote Bag by dragging it behind a pickup truck for a few miles.
The bag was banged up after the ride, they admitted, but its 1.2-mm-thick "seat belt" polyester was still able to hoist a 250-pound V-8 engine.
Skeptical, I said I'll believe it when I see it, and may have even rolled my eyes.
Well, well. Click play on the clip above, and excuse me while I torture-test my foot into my mouth.
Tool companies, take heed: Give me irrefutable evidence your product performs as you claim it will, and you'll have one less cynical journalist copping an attitude about your latest invention.
My wife cashed in a honey-do list coupon for some crown molding work next weekend.
Before she picks out her favorite profile we discuss and choose a profile, I know I have to upgrade the stock blade in my 12-inch compound miter saw. I'm making neat miter or scarf joints, here, not chopping 2x4s.
So I asked TOH general contractor Tom Silva, and he clued me into his favorite miter saw blade, the Tenryu.
But this thing goes for 90 bucks. $90! Is it worth it?
I've really come to despise looking at electronics. Now, don't get me wrong, I love all of my techno goodies with the kind of adoration most people reserve for their pets.
But for all the glorious sound and images that come out of entertainment systems, they just don't gel all that well with Victorian-inspired wallpaper or reproduction art tiles.
So what I love about Infinity Systems' new line of Classia speakers is that their slim, streamlined profiles can be tucked into a corner or mounted on a wall with little visual squawking.
At a remodeling job several years ago, I met a pro painter who gave me some valuable advice—always buy the most expensive paintbrushes I could afford, and clean them properly after each use.
If I did that, he said, the brushes would last me a lifetime.
Well, up until then I used to buy cheap paintbrushes, use them a few times, then toss them out.
I tried cleaning them, but no matter what I did, the bristles always ended up as stiff as ping-pong paddles.
When I mentioned this to the painter, he introduced me to the brush comb.
He may have had the most spore-free tongue of anybody at the International Builders' Show.
Mike from Mold Control, who seemed ready to eat his product all day if he had to, proved his non-toxicity point once again for TOH's Mark Powers by licking the stuff from his palm.
One point the video above omits: You can use a machine to safely "fog" a moldy room with Mold Control, and the sodium bicarbonate-based product is much less noxious than the typical "fog-and-run" treatments his competitors manufacture.
