Nail guns can be handy but also bulky and awkward, not to mention: limited by the presence of batteries or electrical outlets. A new tool for the kit comes from product designer Michael David Young: the automatic nail-dispensing hammer.

Strips of nails are loaded into the device, a tap sets the nail in place and readies it to be hammered home, speeding up the process while also reducing the risk of injury.

After years of drawing and testing, explains Young, “I finally got it to work after many many prototypes, got my provisional patent and shipped it around to the big tool companies.” He says major brands have expressed interest in his creation.

Beyond this single application, Young’s process shows the potential for rapid prototyping using digital design tools and 3D printers — versions can be modeled, printed, tested, scrapped and iterated upon in succession all for little upfront cost.

We all want to make a good first impression then leave a mark when we’re done, particularly when it comes to a labor of love, and what better way than with this custom-designed hammer?

This device turned an off-the-shelf hammer into a lovely gift for that special someone by “using the industrial mold-making technique of electro-erosion (EDM),” explains its creator, Dog Ganchrov (images by Moti Fishbain).

The “steel hammering head has been reshaped into a heart, and the hammer has been transformed into a tool for leaving a mark” when you’re hard (or heart?) at work.

“Anything struck by it will now have a signature ‘heart’ shape indented on it,” he explains, “be it a tree, wall or hood of an ex-lovers car. The hammer is a tool for constructing but it can also destroy.”

And anyone who has worked with a hammer knows that even the best and most experienced folks can mess up from time to time, missing the mark or slipping off the head of a nail — but it usually just leaves a semi-circle.

This so-called Love/Hate Thing evolved from the idle musings of its maker: “Is the urge to leave a mark a curse or blessing? How much of a mark? How much of [our] selves? How much of a mark on the ecological system, cultural trend, design students, human well-being?” It is on display at the Periscope Gallery in Tel-Aviv.

It looks more like an optical illusion or photo edit than a real dwelling, but this hundred-year-old halved townhouse really stands (out) on the streets of Toronto.

54 1/2 St. Patrick was built in the early 1890s as part of a set of six homes with shared walls. Starting in the 1950s, owners of the neighboring units started to crumble under pressure from a developer, slowly selling their domiciles one at a time.

As a result, each of the other structures was torn down with surgical precision. When the occupant of the final house in the row refused to sell at any price, they cleaved off the other half of the building and the shared structural wall running down the middle was reinforced and covered in concrete.

The neighboring Village by the Grange opened in the mid-1970s. According to author and photographer Chris Bateman, “54 1/2 St. Patrick is currently vacant. No-one answered when I knocked at the door and the front room has been stripped to the floorboards. Perhaps it’s being spruced up, it would surely be worth it. The current assessment on file with the city lists the value at $648,000.”

China is full of strange stories of so-called ‘nail houses’ – homes of people who refuse to move to make way for a large development project. Still, this one was particularly unique: its owners held out while a whole major motorway was constructed on all sides.

Situated in Wenling, its owner Luo Baogen refused the compensation deal offered to him and the owners of over 400 nearby properties.  After a full year of waiting with his wife as they were hemmed in by highway, they finally accepted an improved offer from the government and moved.

In another similar situation, owner and occupant Wu Ping refused an offer (one out of nearly 250 in that case) to move, and found herself surrounded by a sunken pit as shopping mall developers began excavating prior to constructing a new shopping center. Structures in this situation are dubbed ‘nail houses’  because, like a nail wedged deep into a board, they can be stubborn and difficult to remove.