Gar’s Tips & Tools – Issue #182

Access to tools, techniques, and shop tales from the diverse worlds of DIY

Gar’s Tips, Tools, and Shop Tales is published by Cool Tools Lab. To receive the newsletter a week early, sign up here.

Buying/Selling Vintage Toolboxes

Continuing the vintage tools theme from our previous issue, I ran into this video on YouTube about buying old toolboxes full of tools at yard and estate sales and reselling the contents for a profit. In the video, Chris from the Ultimate Recycler buys two boxes, one for AUS$20 and one for $40. The $20 box looks like it’s mainly cheap and exhausted tools, but he still manages, after some cleaning, to get over $100. He estimates that the $40 toolbox will get at least $150. He concludes that, even with a not-so-great collection, you’re still likely to return 4-5 times what you paid. This would be a fun side hustle/hobby for those of us who like trading in “old iron.”

Understanding Over-Center Mechanisms

Over-center mechanisms are a type of bistable mechanism, meaning they have two stable states—think of your bicycle kickstand or a cupboard latch. Toggle clamps, anyone? In This Old Tony video, the always good for a laugh and a great education, Tony looks at the physics, construction, and application of these useful and ubiquitous mechanisms. I certainly knew of a number of these devices and how they worked, but didn’t know the name for this category of mechanism and the physical science behind their function. Great stuff!

Sharpening Wheels on Tube Cutters

In this See Jane Drill video, Leah Bolden shows how easy it is to replace the cutting wheel on a tube cutter and how to keep the cutting wheel you have by sharpening it on a leather strop.

Removing Sticky “Soft Touch” Coating

It’s called “soft touch,” “premium textured feel,” and “rubberized finish.” It’s that coating found on some consumer products like flashlights, binoculars, kitchen items, and personal electronics. No-slip grip. It feels good. For a while. Over time, it starts to break down and the object gets sticky and unpleasant to the touch. As someone explains in the comments of this video, “the gummy material is created when the polymer [in the coating] reacts with ozone and UV and re-links. It happens faster when oils are present.” The solution? In the video, they found that gasoline is one of the few things that removes it. Someone in the comments says Naptha works well and is safer. Naptha-based Coleman fuel also works.

Must-See Maker TV

I’ve written about The Practical Engineer here before, but these videos are so good, you deserve a reminder. Each episode is a crash course in… well… practical engineering. Here is everything you never knew about the leaning tower of Pisa. Like, did you know that it had already started to lean during its multi-century construction and subsequent builders had to correct for the lean as they added stories? The tower is curved, not straight. Channel host Grady Hillhouse is an amazing and effective educator. He uses great graphics, in-shop experiments, and history to drive each episode home. You’re always smarter coming out than going in. As someone comments on this video: “There’s just something extremely joyful about a guy being able to say ‘recreational geology’ with a straight face and a genuine smile.”

Shop Talk

Readers offer their feedback, tips, tales, and tool recommendations.

My old friend and colleague, Mike Colombo, wrote in response to the Stanley Workmaster screwdriver piece in the last issue:

I inherited a few Stanley Workmaster screwdrivers from my father. When I watched Adam’s video, I grabbed the tools out of the box and had a newfound appreciation for their ergonomic qualities. And these were probably manufactured before the word “ergonomic” was even in the zeitgeist!  Anyway, just another “thank you” for continuing to send out these newsletters. Cheers!

Long-time reader Paul Cryan:

Fantastic stuff as usual! It seems that fishing tools from the trash/thrift stores/estate-sale-miscellaneous-jumble boxes and giving them new life is my raison d’etre. And you’re one of my most influential influencers in that regard. Thank you. Just this weekend, I spent a good bit of my leisure time cleaning up a $2 pair of Truecraft pliers I found at Goodwill. The purchase was really just an excuse to try the Tub-o-Towels you put on my radar. OMG…they’ve got lanolin.

The lovely and talented Steven Roberts writes:

I hardly know where to begin! I have a few favorites I need to photograph for you. This one just caught my eye this morning on the way out of the boat… Fabulously dense little hammer with a very useful pair of additional utilities. I don’t even know its proper name, but it’s always been in my tool cabinet. I’ll try to get some more for you. Inherited a lot from my father, a mechanical engineer from Swarthmore… Even a favorite old ice pick with a wood handle that’s right up there with newer scribes. Something about that old steel. 

Consider a Paid Subscription

Gar’s Tips & Tools is always free. But if you if you find ir truly useful to you, consider a paid subscription ($8/month). This keeps me in coffee and potato chips while I’m working on this labor of love. If you really want to show your patronage, consider becoming a Hero of the Realm. I will send custom packages of goodies (books, tools, zines, and more) to all my Heroes.

Thanks to all those who have already subscribed. You are the Kapton tape on my 3D print bed.

Aishwarya Khanduja, social and health-tech innovator

Show and Tell #405: Aishwarya Khanduja

Aishwarya Khanduja is the founder of a stealth entity working to solve wicked problems through lenses of complexity, markets, and power. She’s spent the majority of her career thus far being a founder or supporting founders. Her companies span biotech, ed-tech, and the future of work. She writes a weekly letter, essays, technical primers, and other musings on aishwaryadoingthings.com.

TOOLS:
0:00 – Intro
1:08 – Hero 329 pen
8:48 – bamboo book stand
11:06 – tetr app
16:30 – vestoj: the journal of sartorial matters
24:20 – The Analogue

To sign up to be a guest on the show, please fill out this form: https://forms.gle/qc496XB6bGbrAEKK7

Volaris Pass/Free Airline Wi-Fi/Best Loyalty Programs

Nomadico Issue #118

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

The Volaris Annual Pass: My Review

Last August, my wife and I both took advantage of an introductory offer and bought an annual pass from Mexican budget airline Volaris. (Now it’s around $500.) The promise is that you can fly as much as you want for one price, but the list of restrictions and drawbacks is a long one. To evaluate whether this makes sense for you if you’re near an airport they serve or you will travel a lot within Mexico, here’s my update on how it went for us and how the math added up in the end. (Bare-bones airline Frontier offers a similar program, sometimes as low as $299.)

Best Travel Rewards Programs

How fast does it pay off to be loyal to a specific hotel chain or airline? US News & World Report ranked the big programs on a variety of factors, including the time it takes to get something free in return and what kinds of perks you earn. Wyndham’s program came out on top for lodging (they have the simplest redemption tiers by far) and Alaska Airlines came out on top for carriers.

Adidas Makes Sunglasses?

I’ve worn a lot of travel clothing items from Adidas over the years and the behemoth brand makes everything from Tae Kwon Do uniforms to tennis shirts. In addition to thousands of shoes. They also make sunglasses though and I recently spent 2.5 months traveling with their SP0070 polarized model, which lists for $120 but goes for far less at the Adidas store or on Amazon. That’s a sporty pair that worked in multiple situations for me, including beaches and boats, but they also make more fashionable options that are high quality but are usually in the range of $50 to $90. See the whole range here.

Free Wi-Fi on Delta Airlines

Delta announced this week that it was the first carrier to be rolling out free cabin Wi-Fi to all its customers. You can use it now on most domestic flights but in the next few months it will be coming to 15 European countries and 5 in South America. Big bodies of water are the tricky part, but they’re working on implementing satellite solutions for that in the longer term. Check this page on their website if you’ve got a Delta flight coming up.

What’s in my NOW? — Greg Maass

issue #183

Sign up here to get What’s in my NOW? a week early in your inbox.

Greg Maass is a computer programmer, musician, and photographer living in Seattle. Soon he will stop being a computer programer and is looking forward to using that part of his brain for other things that are yet to be determined.

PHYSICAL

• Aroma Season Heated Eye Mask. I read a lot and my eyes get very dry. 10 minutes with this on my eyes makes me feel like I’ve had a 45 minute nap. Easy to travel with, too.
• Stainless steel thermos. I tend to linger over my morning coffee, and it stays the perfect temperature all morning. No more reheating in the microwave. Also great for cold stuff, but you probably want a separate one that doesn’t taste like coffee.
• Darn Tough socks from Vermont. Very expensive for a pair of socks, but I’ve had several pairs for many years and they still are in great shape and super comfortable. Heartbreaking when I lose one of a pair, though.

DIGITAL

• Patriot, season 1 on Prime Video. Simply the best show that nobody has heard of. Brilliant, unique, amazing cinematography, dark, and hilarious, with a great cast. Season 2 is really good too.
• Castro podcast app for iPhone. Everyone has a specific way of triaging and listening to podcasts if they have a lot of subscriptions. If Castro works for you, it will really work for you.

INVISIBLE

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Your brain is a machine for making suggestions, and being able to intercept and modify dysfunctional thinking is a skill that can enhance everyone’s lives.

The World of Edena / When David Invented Bowie

Books That Belong On Paper Issue No. 28

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

MŒBIUS LIBRARY: THE WORLD OF EDENA

Mœbius Library: The World of Edena
by Mœbius
Dark Horse Books
2016, 176 pages, 8.7 x 1.1 x 11.1 inches, Hardcover

Buy on Amazon

I have been wanting to read Mœbius’ comics for years, but until recently they’ve been fairly expensive to acquire. Thankfully, Dark Horse is reprinting his work as part of the Mœbius Library. While I’d never read any of his comics, I was very aware of the impact he’s had on Sci-fi and pop culture. Jean Giraud or his pseudonym Mœbius is a French artist who has helped design movies like Dune, Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element, and The Abyss, just to name a few. The World of Edena was a great introduction to his work, and definitely left me wanting more.

The story mixes sci-fi adventure, with deeper philosophical exploration. After crash landing and finding their way to an alien ship, highly evolved A-sexual beings Stel and Atan find themselves in a Garden of Eden like world. They quickly start to experience new feelings like hunger, pain, and sexual urges. What’s incredible is that this story started as an ad for the Citroën car company, you’d be hard pressed to find a car company still making anything remotely close to this.

The artwork’s fantastic, you can definitely see how modern filmmakers were influenced by this style. This collection also includes the final chapter in the story, printed in English for the first time. If you’re already a fan of Mœbius and haven’t read this yet, or are as curious about his work as I was, this is definitely a great book to pick up.

– JP LeRoux

HADDON HALL: WHEN DAVID INVENTED BOWIE — A GRAPHIC NOVEL ABOUT THE CREATIVITY STRUGGLE IN THE LATE 60S

Haddon Hall: When David Invented Bowie
by Néjib
SelfMadeHero
2017, 144 pages, 7.5 x 0.8 x 10 inches, Hardcover

Buy on Amazon

It’s hard not to use a word like “groovy” when it comes to describing Haddon Hall: When David Invented Bowie. There’s the setting: a crumbling estate in swinging London, where David Bowie, his wife Angie, and assorted others are living and creating in the late ‘60s. There’s the loose, freewheeling quality to both the lettering and drawings, which use simple outlines and pops of color. And there’s the sly humor, which comes through in both the dialogue and breaks from the main story (which show us how to be a music snob, how to be a fashionista, etc.)

One of the joys of this book is seeing the time period come to life. People like producer Tony Visconti, T. Rex frontman Marc Bolan, original Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett, and dissatisfied Beatle John Lennon pass through these pages. They worry about their music, experiment with sexual identities, and try to fend off feelings of creative envy. And, if they’re Bowie, they develop their most iconic persona (Ziggy Stardust) while dealing with poignant family issues (the hospitalization of his schizophrenic brother Terry).

This book is a delight. I learned plenty about Bowie despite having already read a biography, but Haddon Hall doesn’t feel educational. It shows in its not-too-serious way that creativity can be a grind, and that none of us — not even David Bowie — was born a fully formed artist.

– Christine Ro

Bird Behavior

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 100

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

Best tree guide

The Sibley Guide to Trees

Naturalist David Sibley, like Tory Peterson before him, made his reputation painting and annotating birds before expanding to other biological realms. Sibley’s guides to birds and bird behavior (recommended this page) are the best all-around guides to the birds of North America. Sibley’s beats out Peterson’s, and the dozens of others published today. Sibley’s newest book, also written and illustrated by him, is the best all-around guide to the trees of North America, again displacing the many other field guides to trees in print.

Sibley’s illustrations are clear, crisp, and accurate. He manages to maintain distinctions in tree types where species get fuzzy, like in the oaks, or firs. His maps are specific. He includes more parts of the tree than most guides — buds, bark, branches, seeds, silhouettes, flowers, cones, etc. — which really help in identification. And he includes not only native trees but many feral varieties, and even widely planted ornamentals. One detail I appreciate: he lists alternative common names to trees, since trees seem to have local names.

With Sibley’s guide I’ve been able to identify more trees than with other guides. However the book is big, not at all pocketable, or the kind of thing you are likely to take with you into the field on a hike. Perhaps future editions might remedy this. I use this quality softcover edition (a delight to browse) by taking samples and photos outside and returning home to identify. — KK

How to see birds

Sibley’s Birding Basics

Our contemporary Audubon, David Sibley, will mentor you in how to see birds. This is not one of his legendary field guides; instead it’s a masterful course on how birds work, distilled into a small compact book, and illustrated with his impeccable drawings. Even if you’ve been birding all your life, every page will illuminate the art of seeing them. How can you tell just from a flitting glance in the dark that was a white-throated sparrow? Sibley the grand master tells how he does it. It will be a very long time before anyone else understands and communicates this hard-won knowledge better. —KK

Western Sandpiper in fresh (left) and worn (right) alternate plumage, with representative scapular feathers from each, showing the striking changes that take place gradually, over a period of about four months, with no molt. Most field guides can show only one example of each plumage, so they illustrate an “average” bird, somewhere between these extremes.

• The making of hissing, shushing, and squeaking noises (known among birders as “pishing”) is done in imitation of the scolding calls of certain small songbirds. It is often combined with imitations of the calls of a small owl in order to simulate the sound of an owl that has been discovered by songbirds. Birds approach to see what’s going on and to join in scolding the predator. Pishing is most effective when you are somewhat concealed within vegetation. The birds need to be able to get close to you without leaving their cover, and ideally there should be an open spot for them to sit when they do reach you. Curiosity will bring the birds in and then draw them to a perch where they can take a clear look at you.

Identifying bird technology

Western Birds’ Nests + Eastern Birds’ Nests

The baskets and fabrics made by birds are as admirable as their feathers. For years I’ve collected bird nests (a few in the image above) without knowing much about them. It took one obsessive Hal Harrison to find and photograph all of the nests and eggs of the birds in North America before I could begin to identify them.

Unfortunately, there is no real taxonomy for nest types, so identification is still a somewhat trial and error visual match. Environmental context — where a nest is found — is a bigger ID factor. But with some sleuthing in this book (two volumes, east and west) I’ve begun to identify species of nests. That has enlarged my appreciation of birds.

Oh, and these catalogs of many hundreds of nests also serves as splendid inspiration for human weavers. — KK

• The site at which the nest is located is often diagnostic. While some species will choose a variety of sites, many are highly specialized, and this is important in identification. Water Pipits nest on the ground in tundras; Chimney Swifts nest in chimneys, and White-throated Swifts nest in steep cliffs; all wood-peckers nest in tree cavities and so do Prothonotary Warblers; storm-petrels, kingfishers, and Bank Swallows nest in burrows; MacGillivray’s Warblers nest in low bushes while Olive, Hermit, and Townsend’s Warblers nest high in conifers; orioles build beautiful hanging baskets but Poor-wills build no nest at all.
• The nest itself is described in detail. Material used will vary with availability. For some species this has been noted, but readers should bear in mind that Spanish Moss would be no more available to a bird in Montana than spruce needles would be to a bird in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. The basic structure of the next of most species is so uniformly true to type that even though the materials used may vary, the format generally does not. An American Robin’s nest in Washington or Oregon with mosses built into it still looks very much like a Robin’s nest in Arkansas with mud and grasses predominating.

What’s in my NOW? — Greg Maass