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A Master Class in Prototype Making
In response to John Baglio’s search for a series of prototyping videos he’d run across, Talon Chandler immediately responded with:
“He’s probably talking aboutDan Gelbart. Dan is a local legend among engineers in Vancouver, BC. He founded Creo, a printing technology company that sold to Kodak circa 2005, and several other companies including Kardium, a growing healthcare company. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Dan once (I interned at Kardium close to 10 years ago), although I haven’t had the pleasure of visiting his extraordinary shop.”
Others also messaged me and told stories about the impact of Dan’s videos on them. They are amazing. I haven’t found a treasure trove like this since discovering TubalCain/MrPete222 some 15 years ago. Anyone interested in precision machining, prototyping, water jet cutting, and a wealth of general machine shop wisdom should check out this channel.
Expanding the Usefulness of 1-2-3 Blocks with a Hardware Kit
I’ve long been a fan of 1-2-3 blocks and always have them handy when doing a host of different projects. They’re great for quick measuring, aligning, holding parts together for gluing/ fastening, as shop weights, and countless other applications. One of the features that few people outside of machining use are the holes drilled into the blocks. These are not just there to keep the overall weight down. They are threaded and non-threaded holes designed for attaching the blocks in various configurations (such as for making right-angle or T-shaped jigs).
In this Stumpy Nubs video, James introduces a clever little hardware kit for easily attaching blocks – and attaching them with nothing proud of the surfaces. As he points out, you can source these screws and through-hole fasteners yourself, but why not support the guy who came up with the idea for this kit? That guy, Mike Taylor, sells a kit of 6 hex-head screws, sized for 1″, 2″, and 3″ attachment, 4 threaded through-hole dowels, a hex key, and a slotted driver head – all housed in a handy little plastic box. I immediately bought a kit (only $10) and I love it. Mike also makes really high-quality blocks at an affordable price ($20/pair). I snagged a pair of those, too. It always feels good to support a maker small business.
Using Finger Pressure to Match Hex Head to Wrench
On the Twitter account of software engineer Roach, he posted this clever way of matching a hex head to a hex wrench. Pressing your finger into the head will leave a dimple that you can use to size the appropriate wrench.
A Prompt Book for Better AI Art Generation
If you’ve spent any time on social media lately, you’ve likely seen some of your acquaintances go down the rabbit hole of artificial intelligence image generators like Midjourney, DALL-E, and Google’s Imagen. These programs take descriptions that you feed them and return AI- generated art interpretations of that input. It’s very addictive and fun and has huge disruptive potential. My wife Angela and I were joking a few weeks ago that in the future, art will be nothing more than the ability to input the most fulsome description of what you want. And then, just a few days later, Recomendo shared a link to The Prompt Book, a free PDF of instructions, examples, and tips for refining your input commands. It’s directed at the DALL-E program, but its ideas can be applied to any of these art generators. In the future, art will be incantation.
Making a Shop Paper Roll Dispenser
Poking around on the ‘Tubes, I came across a series of DIY videos, called Try, that Kevin Kelly did on Cool Tools in 2020-21. How did I miss these? Here’s one on building a kraft paper roll cutter for your shop and a really charming one about the sign that he made for the Kelly compound in Pacifica, CA.I hope he gets inspired to do more of these.
Maker Slang
Jargon, slang, and tech terms from the many realms of making.
FEP – (Fluorinated Ethylene Propylene) A tough, no-stick plastic material commonly found in the bottoms of resin vat 3D printers. Its translucence allows the light source beneath it to shine through the vat, curing the resin onto the build plate.
Holidays – A term used by professional painters and gilders/gold leafers to refer to gaps in coverage. It derives from the joke that a painter must have taken some time off, a little holiday, by not covering an area they should have. [Hat tip to gilder Michael Kramer]
Minimal viable product – A phrase used by Italian maker and product developer, Giaco Whatever. In creating a product, you want to pare your idea down to its minimum possible components. See also: KISS (keep it simple, stupid)
Real job – A project that’s a series of tasks and challenges that imply significant time and effort – as opposed to a task which can be quickly accomplished. “That’s a real job. I need to set aside an afternoon for that.”
Resilient idiot – A self-deprecating admission that sometimes knowledge and skills seemingly won’t stick, not matter how hard you try and learn them. Coined by Donald Bell. Not to be confused with Andy Birkey’s similar: actual moron.
“This is a very common tool for locksmiths when dealing with vehicle lockouts. The inflatable pry bar can generally create enough space for the locksmith to drop a loop down to grab the lock pin from the interior of the door frame and gain entry without having to damage or possibly ruin the actual lockset on the car door. But don’t underestimate their power. I used one on an old car when I locked my keys in and it bent the door to the point that it never fully aligned to the door frame gasket again.”
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Cool tools really work.
A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, hardware, material, or website that is tried and true. All reviews on this site are written by readers who have actually used the tool and others like it. Items can be either old or new as long as they are wonderful. We post things we like and ignore the rest. Suggestions for tools much better than what is recommended here are always wanted.
How did I go so long without one of these simple hex key T-handles? I’ve known about them for years and thought about them every time I was cursing my way through assembling flat-pack furniture, I finally got some, and they’re great. I got a pack of three cheap, chunky plastic ones and the size is perfect for confident gripping with arthritic hands. The handles are made to accept a variety of common hex sizes, and they’re designed to be used either in a T- or L-handle configuration. At under $2 each, you definitely want some of these around your home and shop.
Exploring Weird Tools Concepts and the Infimaker 5-Axis Desktop CNC
While this Laura Kampf video is basically a promotion for the forthcoming Infimaker 5-Axis Desktop CNC, it uses that opportunity to explore an “Is this crazy or clever?” idea. Laura wants to know if there’s any real value in a disk-shaped measuring tool that you keep in your pocket and roll across surfaces and material for rough measuring. She uses the Infimaker to go down the rabbit hole of the idea to see if it’s worth pursuing. Moving quickly (and cheaply) from idea to prototype is a real superpower in developing product ideas, so you can definitely see how a machine like this could be a serious asset. The Infimaker had a successful $4.7 million crowdfunding campaign in Sept. The machines are allegedly shipping in early 2027.
Marveling at Cheap Flat-Pack
My wife recently bought a “baker’s rack” to use as a microwave and coffee stand in her art studio. As soon as I saw it on our doorstep, I knew I had a job ahead of me. The heavy box (for a 21.7” x 14.6” x 49.4” shelving unit) was disturbingly small. I knew it was going to be filled with a TinkerToy collection of short box-tubing components and a big-ass bag o’ hardware. It was.
It took me two nights of after-dinner work to get it all put together. And those hours also became a kind of meditation on the mad genius of international consumer manufacturing and trade.
I don’t mean that as a hymn to global consumer capitalism. There are plenty of uncomfortable questions buried inside cheap imported goods: labor, environmental costs, shipping, disposability. But I couldn’t help marveling at the amount of mostly invisible intelligence embodied in this mundane under-$50 object.
Somebody had to design a nearly 50-inch-tall rack with four shelves, a built-in power strip, and enough strength to hold a microwave, coffee maker, etc. And design it so that it would fit into that alarmingly small shipping box.
Then there’s the manufacturing. There must have been 25 or 30 main components, plus a heavy sack of hardware. The tubing was nicely powder-coated, the shelves were decent, and dozens of holes drilled into dozens of different parts somehow had to line up perfectly. As I worked, I could imagine this deft balancing act of trade-offs around engineering, materials, and precision manufacturing, all within the reality of razor-thin margins.
Somebody designed it. Somebody sourced the tubing, shelving lumber, fasteners, electrical components, and packaging. Somebody worked out the manufacturing, assembly sequence, and instructions. Somebody figured out how to pack it into that tiny carton. Then it entered the vast global Rube Goldberg machinery of factories, warehouses, container ships, ports, trucks, and delivery networks before landing on our porch.
Again, you can’t help but feel like $49 is too cheap, and image the real costs are simply showing up somewhere else. But after two nights of cursing the thing, I found myself admiring it and the processes by which it had come to me. Human beings on the other side of the world had been handed a nearly absurd set of constraints: Make it sturdy. Make it useful. Make it decent-looking. Make all the holes line up. Make it fit into a tiny box. Ship it halfway around the world. And price the damned thing under fifty bucks. How the hell do they do that?
Still Sweet on It
Tools That Remain Favorites
Three years ago, when I got a new remote job that I knew would require a lot of weekly Zoom meetings, I knew I needed decent video lighting for my office. Not knowing what sorts of lights I would ultimately require, I went onto Amazon and ordered a cheap set of LED panel lights on adjustable stands to tide me over until I could figure out what a really needed. Three years later, and I still have the same lights and see no reason to upgrade. When I bought these UBessize lights on stands, they were only $30. Today, they’re even lower, at $25! The stands are a bit rickety, and everything smacks of cost-cutting and minimal amounts of material. But the lights work great, there are four brightness levels, and the stands are adjustable. They even come with five color filters. Honestly, when these eventually die, I’ll likely just get the same ones again. For my needs, they’re perfect. I even sometimes pair them with a USB power brick so I can move them around for close-up photography lighting.
Workshop Setup
Donald Kinnaman packs the contents of an entire workshop into a 90-sq. ft. metal shed next to his Phoenix, Arizona, home. He rolls the machines he needs out onto the covered patio behind his house and goes to work.
In a recent Tools for Possibility on Cool Tools, the subject was workshop setup. There are a lot of really great ideas here, from creating a simple tabletop spray booth from a box and a fan, using PVC pipes for tool storage, and shopping carts as mobile workstations.
Turning a Broken Caulking Gun into a Vise
In this Taku Woodcraft Instagram video, Takurou shows how he cleverly constructed a useful bench top cutting vise using a discarded caulking gun mechanism.
Thanks to All My Subscribers!
I now have well over 10,000 subscribers to this humble little newsletter. And 50 paid subscribers. A million thanks to all of you. Doing this newsletters is a true joy for me and I especially like feeling like I’m connected to a community of fellow makers. Thanks to everyone who’s sent me an email, made a comment, shared a tip or tool. Let’s keep the ball rolling for another 200 issues!
If you want to financially support this work, please consider a paid subscription. It helps keep me in PB Swiss. I appreciate you.
A very special thanks to Hero of the Realm subscribers: Moses Hawk, Jim Coraci, Donobster, Peter Sugarman, and Will Phillips for your generous support.
