About TailSpin Tools
Myko ~ Inventor of TailSpin Tools
Hello, I’m Myko. I grew up encouraged to try.
TailSpin Calibrated Collinear Marking Tools are the latest step in a quest to make woodworking easier. A worthy cause if ever there was one!
A Little Background…
Influenced by my parents. My Mom and Pop rebuilt the house around us. Repairs or improvements were expensive, so my parents were DIY animals. Pop learned to hang sheet rock, Mom learned to tape seams. We grew up watching a florist and a bookkeeper tear pipes from the walls to reinvent our home.
No project was out of reach. Way before Youtube, they just dove in and figured it out. By 14 I was helping a neighbor renovate HIS home.
My Start in woodworking
A birthday gift when I was about 10 changed my life. Opened it, confused to find a block of wood. Now, we were not wealthy…but a block of wood? Really?? Another gift followed, the wooden box of an Exacto carving set. Carved that block of balsa into a treasured keepsake. My right hand has been trying to murder my left hand ever since.
The early lesson was that work provided what you could imagine, instead of what you could buy. The problem solving and tool skills served me well through a 35-year commercial photography career in Manhattan, building out 4 studios along the way. I hold 2 prior US patents, and a bootstrapped background in product development, earned bringing a product for large-format digital photography to market around 2010.
As tools outgrew storage a shop got built in the basement, skills improved and work grew more refined, I confronted the question that haunts us all: “Pins first, or tails first?“
Determined to get it right, the boxes that covered shop surfaces were chopped up or given away. Bought Euro and Japanese backsaws and learned that my chisels weren’t really sharp. Building other people’s jigs, and watching endless videos of experts contradicting each other. Every jig, trick, and hint aimed at the same thing: The Transfer.
In 2015 I tried to eliminate the transfer. With patents filed, rounds of prototypes and tests began. The videos and work-arounds proved the problem was pervasive; not just mine. Fast-forward 5+ years to Calibrated Collinear Marking Tools.
The first small run was CNC machined in brass and stainless. The plan was metal production. That changed when two of my test dummies (Thanks guys!!) reported the brass didn’t hold up to their marking knives. Decided to go composite. Covid nixed a video re-shoot.
Now they’re lighter, easier to use, and less likely to take or dish damage from bench to floor & back. Cheaper to produce also, the original price was projected at $150/set!
So there you have it. Peace in our time. The Pins vs. Tails feud is over! You’re welcome.