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Last week, I forgot to include a link to the oscillating multi-tool tips video I included. Thanks to those of you who kindly pointed out the omission. In the future, if this happens, you can always go to the channel I mention, search on the subject, and find the video. My apologies for the hiccup.
Tips Busters: Amazingly Stupid Tape Tricks
Months back, I proposed the idea of doing a “Tips Busters” section where I deputize readers to try out a tip, any tip they see that appears too good to be true, to determine whether it works, doesn’t work, sorta works. I’m still hoping to put such a series together. If you want to bust a tip or have a tip to bust, message me. In the meantime, I’m going to start running pieces from others who are testing and evaluating tips. On this episode of Stumpy Nubs, James looks at a number of dubious (at best) painter’s tape “hacks” as found on YouTube. There are many such tips. As James points out, lots of them are just plain silly.
Understanding Tolerances for 3D Design and Printing
Via Maker Update comes this gem of a video on Practical Alchemy about understanding parts tolerances when designing in Fusion 360 (and other CAD programs) and how to ensure that your 3D designed parts will properly fit when sent to a 3D printer. They also show you how to create a 3D printed “Fit Guide” to better understand and accommodate tolerances for your particular printer.
A User’s Guide to H-Bridge Motor Drivers
Anyone with even a casual familiarity with hobby electronics is likely familiar with H-bridge motor drivers. So named for the H-like configuration of the circuit schematic, with its 4 switching elements, these drivers allow you to control DC motors for speed and moving forwards, backwards, left, and right. In this DroneBot Workshop, they look at a number of popular H-bridge drivers (e.g. L298N, DRV8871, and the MX1508) and the types of DC motors they can control. At over 1-hour, this is a useful crash course in understanding and using this common drive train controller.
Animations of 75 Different Knots
Via the Tools for Possibilities newsletter comes this amazingly useful resource. Knot-tying is a fundamental maker skill. But learning to tie them from a text, or looking at still images, can make them seem unnecessarily confusing and complicated. I don’t know about you, but seeing these knot animations immediately makes me want to grab a rope and go to lashing school.
Maker Slang
Slang, jargon, and technical terms for the many realms of making things.
Surface profile – The 3-dimensional tolerance zone around the surface of an object, often one that’s a complex curve or shape. This profile requires that every point along the surface lies within a specified tolerance range.
Slush casting – A form of casting where material is “slushed around” inside of a mold, creating a thin layer on the outer walls of the casting. This technique is most often used to create a lightweight, hollow castings. It can also be done as the first pour in a highly-detailed mold, with a second pour finishing a solid cast.
The Rule of Cool – In making anything from realms of the imagination (e.g. sci-fi, fantasy, other fiction), the overriding of realism, the laws of physics, and practicality in the service of sheer cool factor.
Shop Talk
In response to my piece on toilet floats and valve reseating tools, I got an interesting message from a reader. He was taken aback by the fact that doing this sort of basic household plumbing was even a question for me. He assumed that any maker/handyperson would do this type of maintenance/repair work without even thinking about it. This led him to ask: “Is there anything you look at and think: ‘I cannot fix THAT!’ I’ve never once thought that. Am I in the majority or minority?”
My situation might be somewhat unique in this regard. I have severe spinal arthritis. So, many maintenance, repair, and DIY projects are outside my reach. Even to replace the float tank, I couldn’t reach down and shut off the very frozen water intake valve on the toilet. I had to get a friend to come over and do that for me.
But even for the more physically able, I’m sure there are preferences. I know plenty of people who loathe house painting, and others who would never think about doing electrical work. And I know plenty of electronics nerds who build robots, microcontroller projects, and all sorts of other high-tech makery who wouldn’t think about doing traditional shopcraft (woodworking, metalwork, etc). And vice versa.
Different strokes for different folks. And so on and so on and scooby dooby dooby.
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The White Rose (1929) is a novel by B. Traven, the mysterious author of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. An American oil tycoon wants a Mexican family’s hacienda because it sits on an ocean of oil, and the owner won’t sell at any price. It hasn’t been in English print for decades, so I made a new translation from the German.
This is the fourth Deep Cut Book Club Edition. Paying subscribers can download the free ebook using the button at the bottom of this issue.
About The White Rose
The novel moves back and forth between Jacinto Yáñez, a farm owner in Mexico, and Chaney Collins, the president of an American oil company who wants Yáñez’s property because it sits on an underground ocean of oil. Yáñez refuses to sell, even for millions of dollars. The hacienda is called the Rosa Blanca, and it has been passed down to him through a long line of ancestors. He feels he has no right to sell the land, and he believes the farm is worth more than any amount of money the oil company could offer. It is literally priceless. Yáñez feels responsible for the many interrelated families who live on the hacienda and make a living growing crops and raising livestock. He thinks it’s ludicrous to trade a food-producing homestead for a sack of gold coins.
Collins is enormously rich but spends a fortune on four mistresses, and he thinks Yáñez is just holding out for a higher price. When Yáñez keeps refusing to sell, Collins sends one of his henchmen to Mexico to bring Yáñez to San Francisco, where Collins believes he’ll have a better chance of making him see why he ought to take the deal. I won’t spoil what happens next.
Collins is widely considered a stand-in for the oil tycoon Edward L. Doheny, who in 1921 sent $100,000 in cash to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, in what became the Teapot Dome scandal. Doheny’s son delivered it in a black bag. (That’s about $1.8 million in today’s money.) Fall then leased Doheny the Elk Hills naval oil reserve in California without competitive bidding. Fall went to prison for taking the bribe. Doheny was acquitted of paying it.
Who was B. Traven?
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is one of my favorite novels, and John Huston’s 1948 movie, starring Humphrey Bogart, won three Academy Awards. A few years after reading it, I read Traven’s The Death Ship (1926), about an American sailor who loses his ship and his papers in Antwerp and gets deported from one country to the next until he ends up shoveling coal on a rotting smuggling ship. After that, I wanted to know who Traven was. The more I tried to find out, the more confused I became.
He used multiple pseudonyms, including Hal Croves, Traven Torsvan, and Ret Marut. Most Travenophiles agree that he was a German actor and anarchist who fled Germany in 1919 after he was accused of helping establish the Bavarian Soviet Republic and threatened with execution. When British police questioned him in 1923, he said he was Hermann Otto Albert Maximilian Feige. When Huston tried to meet him before filming The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Traven showed up claiming to be Traven’s agent, a man named Hal Croves, and worked on the set as a consultant.
Traven didn’t think his identity should matter to anyone. “The creative person should have no other biography than his works,” he said.
The Mexican director Roberto Gavaldón made the novel into a film, Rosa Blanca, in 1961. The Mexican government decided its oil politics were too touchy and kept it out of theaters for eleven years. It wasn’t released until 1972.
About this translation
The White Rose wasn’t translated into English until 1979, 50 years after it was first published in Germany. Cedric Belfrage's translation is now out of print. I found a copy of the German edition at Project Gutenberg, and as an experiment I used Claude to translate it into English. I told it to stay close to the German and avoid smoothing it into idiomatic English, and to build a glossary so the names stayed consistent. I was surprised by how well it did the translation. It’s a hell of a good read.
Download the Book Freak Edition
This is the fourth book in the Deep Cuts Reading Club, a benefit for paid subscribers. Every month, I take an interesting and obscure public-domain book and turn it into an ebook in EPUB and PDF formats, with a short introduction.
You can access a copy ofThe White Rosebelow.
If you’re reading this as a free subscriber, the club is part of a paid subscription ($5/month or $45/year). Join the club here. And if money is tight, email me at editor@cool-tools.org, and I’ll comp you...
