Pivoting Nutcracker Jig
A two-board jig on a single nail pivot: a bored hole holds the nut for the hammer, and swinging the top board dumps the shell into a bucket.
Bury Your Thumb First to Get a Thin Work Glove On
Instead of feeding four fingers down a glove that keeps folding back on itself, push your thumb fully into the thumb stall with the glove bunched in your palm, stretch the cuff, and rotate your hand into it — the fingers land in their stalls in one motion.
gloves stick to sweaty hands, can't get nitrile gloves on, glove finger folds over, putting on tight gloves
The Problem
Thin nitrile and latex gloves — the disposable blues and blacks — grip skin instead of sliding over it, especially on hands that are damp or already dirty. Feeding your fingers in one at a time, the glove rolls up ahead of them, a fingertip misses its stall and doubles under, and you end up peeling the whole thing back off to start again.
The Technique
The thumb goes in first and everything else follows it.
- Hold the glove by the cuff with your other hand, fingers of the glove pointing down.
- Push your thumb all the way into the thumb stall — right to the tip, not partway. The body of the glove ends up bunched in your palm, so that closing your hand would enclose the whole glove.
- Stretch the cuff open with your free hand.
- Rotate your gloved hand around inside the glove until the finger stalls line up with your fingers.
- Push your fingers straight in. They run into open stalls rather than collapsed ones.
Pro tip: What this reliably prevents is the doubled-under fingertip, which is the failure that costs a whole glove. Whether it's faster than working your fingers in the usual way depends on the glove and the hand.
Pro tip: No hand technique works on genuinely wet skin. Dry your hands first, or buy gloves with a powdered or chlorinated interior, which are treated at the factory to slide on damp.
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