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A User’s Guide to Screws and Tap & Die
In these two clickclackclunk tutorials on Instructables, he offers an excellent beginner’s class on screws and tapping of screws. Knowing how to tap threads for fasteners gives you a new kind of superpower for your projects. It’s one of those skills that seems complicated and intimidating, until you do it. With a few specialty tools, some lubrication, and few important techniques, and you’re in like Flynn.
Making a Camera Tracking Shot Slider from a Measuring Tape
Via Maker Update comes this very clever project to 3D print a housing for a measuring tape and some ball bearing wheels so that you can use it as a non-motorized camera slider for creating linear tracking shots with your phonecam. You can even adjust the speed of the tracking by adjusting the pressure on the tape measure.
Which Rattle Can Paint is the Best?
In this Project Farm test (which took a year to complete), Todd tested rattle can paints that cost from $1 to $15. The paints were tested on a vehicle hood and on metal panels kept outside for a year and then compared for chip resistance, paint fade over a year, scratch resistance, and rust blocking. In the end, the winners were Rust-Oleum Pro ($6 at time of testing), Valspar ($10 at time of testing), and Seymour ($11 at time of testing). The big loser was the most expensive of the lot, Sherman-Williams ($15 at time of testing).
How to Create a Steam Box for Wood Bending
Xyla Foxlin recently made a cool bass guitar that used steam-bent wood in its construction. In this video, she shows how she created the steam box.
TOYS! DiResta Ice Pick
I’ve written about Jimmy DiResta’s ice pick before, but I can’t believe I’ve never recommended it as a tool. I use mine almost daily and am always surprised at the different uses I discover for it. There’s even an Instagram tag to document them. Sure, it’s not cheap, and yes, part of the allure is the hip maker cred, but buying one supports an indie tool maker and they’re beautifully made and hand-crafted by Jimmy and his crew. I’ve given several as Christmas presents and my recipients enjoy them as much as I do.
Maker’s Muse
A Roman “Swiss Army Knife,” some 1700 years old. Complete with three-pronged fork, spatula, pick, spike, and knife. Probably something of a luxury item, made of silver, and likely used by the wealthy Roman on the go.
Shop Talk
In response to a question in the last issue about ready-made racks for portable storage cases, specifically Stanley cases, I got a lot of responses sharing projects on how to build them. The person asking the question wanted to buy vs. build, saving him time for more pressing projects. I swear I saw a project years ago to quickly modify baker’s racks to use for this purpose. If anyone knows a link to such a project, please share.
In the meantime, for those looking to build a rack, here are a few projects that reader Craig shared:
Making a Small Parts Storage Rack
Making a Rack for Small Parts Storage with Stanley SortMasters
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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.
I get all kinds of wacky product pitches I ignore but when someone from Forme got in touch saying their golf shirt would improve my posture—received while I was hunched over my laptop reading 100 e-mails—I was intrigued. I’ve worn it around a bunch now, including on two travel trips, and it really does work. This polo shirt is constructed in a way that it pulls back on your shoulders, kind of like those strap devices you can buy but it’s fabric and built in. They also make sports bras and T-shirts. See more (and they’ve got a 20% sale going on this week) at Forme.science.
Free Domestic Flights in Japan (From Europe)
This offer has more than a few strings attached, but if you can get to the finish line, there’s a way to get free domestic flights within Japan this winter if you fly there from Europe on All Nippon Airways (ANA). The flight must originate in Europe and must be in economy, headed to Tokyo first, where you can stay for 24 hours max before taking off to a smaller city. These can be open-jaw tickets, meaning you could fly to one city, take a train, then return to Tokyo via another. If you manage to make this happen, let me know how you navigated it on their website!
Epic and Ikon Head to Europe
Sorry non-skiers, but another one about snow this week because it’s big news. The annual multi-resort Epic Pass and Ikon Pass are both cashing in on Americans waking up to the fact that it’s a much better value to ski in Europe than the USA and have added a bunch of resorts in the Alps. So if you have one of those passes, you’re not restricted to North America anymore. The Epic Pass now includes 34 resorts in Europe, with 6 new ones this year. The Ikon Pass has 23 in the Alps. They also have 11 and 9 in Asia, respectively, as well—mostly in Japan. If you’re ready to buy a pass to become an international flashpacker ski bum, see the details here. (And a quick reminder on the subject: this is the last week to join my trip to the mountains of Slovakia in late February.)
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.
