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Five Best Sites for Finding Deals Online [Hive Five]

Did your holiday gift budget shrink considerably this year? Your friends and family need never be the wiser: You just need to know where to find the best deals. Photo by ginnerobot.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite sites for finding great deals online, and now we're back with the five most popular answers. Let's take a closer look at the best sites on the internet designed to help you stretch your dollar further this holiday season and beyond.

Slickdeals

Slickdeals.net is a comprehensive deal-finding web site with an active user community dedicated to scouring the web for great deals. Slickdeals posts deals in a blog-like format, providing a uncategorized and steady stream of deals on their home page covering the gamut from tech to toys and clothing to appliances. Avid users emphasize that while you should certainly come to Slickdeals for the front page deals, you should stick around for the thriving and thrift-conscious forums.

DealsPlus

Relative newcomer DealsPlus is much like the other popular deal finders listed but with a twist: It integrates social bookmarking features à la Digg or Delicious to help the most popular deals rise to the top. DealsPlus users submit deals and vote on the submitted deals they like; popular deals make the DealsPlus home page. If you're nuts about deals and user-driven content, DealsPlus may be right up your alley.

Dealnews

Dealnews is a popular deal finder "where every day is Black Friday." In contrast to the blog-like style of Slickdeals, the Dealnews front page organizes deals by category. While Dealnews has a clear emphasis on tech, it's no slouch when it comes to covering other categories, like clothing, home, and toys. It's friendly interface—complete with large pictures of featured product deals—makes it a fun and easy scan for the casual deal-searcher.

FatWallet

FatWallet is a popular deal-finding web site that aims to help you maintain a healthily plump wallet. Probably best known for it's active community of prudent spenders, FatWallet is an excellent resource for saving money online and off. As deal finders go, FatWallet doesn't do the same front page style as sites like Dealnews or Slickdeals, but if you do a little digging, you can find plenty of great deal streams—like in their Hot Deals forum.

PriceGrabber

Unlike the rest of the competition in this Hive Five, PriceGrabber is a comparison shopping web site that searches and compares prices from popular online retailers to bring you the lowest price available price. Apart from the simple search, PriceGrabber supports Price Alerts and rates products based on expert and user reviews.

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Now that you've seen the best, it's time to vote for your favorite.
Which Is the Best Site for Finding Deals Online?
( surveys)
This week's honorable mentions go out to the always-popular Amazon (not strictly a deal-finder, but it certainly has consistently competitive prices), Ben's Bargains, and Craigslist. Whether or not your favorite made the short list, tell us more about what makes it so great in the comments.

339 Workbenches with Chris Schwarz at WIA

The Holiday Season is here again!  To make it easier for you to find the perfect gift for that woodworker on your list, use these links to head to your favorite online store while also helping support this show.  Thanks!

I still have a lot more footage and some great topic ideas from my time at the Woodworking in America conference last month.  One of the things I wanted to share with you is this great footage from a class with Chris Schwarz on...what else?...the workbench.

Hendrik is back in December and our discussion will be "Advice for Beginner Woodworkers" so send in you questions about machinery and tool selection, shop set-up (electrical, lighting, shop heat).  Recommended projects, etc.  Send those along with your comments, questions or schwag entries to mattsbasementworkshop@gmail.com,  or leave a voicemail at 231 354-2338.

Don't miss out on the next "Wood Talk Online Live".  This Wednesday December 17th at 9:00PM EST over at www.thewoodwhisperer.com , see you there!

Help Support Matt's Basement Workshop by visiting our sponsors!

To download directly to your computer Right Click on direct download, choose "Save Target as"

What Should You Do When You’ve Been Laid Off? [Ask The Readers]

In the midst of the financiapocalypse, layoffs are an inevitability. Just this morning, in fact, a close friend lost her job to the insatiable beast that is our current financial meltdown—leaving her with all kinds of questions about what she should do next. Since we're all likely to be touched in some way or another by the far-reaching and widespread layoffs, we're wondering: Even if you've been doing your best to recession-proof your career, what steps should you take toward recovery if worst comes to worst and you've been laid off? Let's hear your strategies—whether you've been there before or you just like to be prepared—in the comments. Photo by conorwithonen.

Benchcrafted Vise Hardware Now on the Roubo

When I first built my Roubo-style workbench, I wanted to see if I could work without an end vise. So for the first year or so I used my planing stop, holdfasts, battens and geometry to steady my work as I planed it.

But I got tired of the whack-whack, shuffle-shuffle necessary whenever I needed to plane across the grain of panels (called traversing) or plane diagonally on any size board.

So I started futzing around with wagon vises, which I first spotted in an early 20th-century French tool catalog. My first attempt was rather "agricultural" – let's call it the "Early Cletus Period." I built one using a veneer press screw, some wooden runners, chewing gum and a fancy French-style escutcheon plate.

I soon left the Cletacious period and designed an evolved wagon vise that used a bigger acme vise screw, which is on the English-style workbench in my book on workbenches.

But today I am walking fully upright, leaving my sloping forehead ways behind me. My Roubo workbench is now outfitted with the ultimate wagon vise by Benchcrafted.

In the interest of full disclosure, I paid full price for this vise and spent my own money – Le Roubo is my workbench. (The prospect of my company moving all my stuff out of the office is probably one of the reasons I've never been downsized. It would take weeks.)

The Benchcrafted is a nice piece of work. After installing dozens of poorly made vises (and a few good ones), I was impressed to see how well cast and machined every component was as I took it out of its box.

The vise's installation instructions are thorough, well-illustrated and to-the-point. Benchcrafted also includes full-size templates that make laying out all your cuts and holes a snap.

For me, installing the Benchcrafted was a retrofit. So it was a little more involved than if you were installing this vise on a new bench under construction. The vise requires a cavernous cavity on the underside of your benchtop to house all its finely machined guts. So I spent some serious time hogging out waste with a router and a mortise chisel.

Then you need a beefy end cap on your bench to hold the vise screw. My cap is about 3" thick and is lag-bolted to the benchtop. A new bench could easily incorporate dovetails into the design or some sort of breadboard construction.

With the cavity and end cap complete, the rest of the job was precision boring and fitting. Use a drill press to install the vise screw. The templates and the hardware are made to tolerances that are too tight to hit with a brace and bit.

And use a router to install the runners. The runners guide the sliding dog. If the runners are out of line, the vise will bind up. Precision is paramount.

Then it's just a matter of fitting the sliding wooden dog and lining the interior faces of the jaws with leather (I used some scraps I found at Michael's craft store and yellow glue).

How does it work? Like a dream. The dog moves quickly and smoothly back and forth. And the wheel on the end doesn't interfere with the soles of my planes (like on the Cletacious vise). It is, without a doubt, completely worth the $350.

And though my co-workers laugh when I say it, I think this is the last end vise for the Roubo.

— Christopher Schwarz