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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.
Project I’m working on:How Hobbies Change Lives [For over 20 years, I've been fascinated by people who do wonderfully unexpected things in their free time. The deeper I go, the more convinced I become that hobbies, taken seriously, are one of the most underrated forces shaping our lives. And, hey, if you have one (the weirder, the better), I'd love to hear about it!]
PHYSICAL
Piper Warrior plane canvas created froma photo I took: Aviation has a strange way of simplifying life. Up there, excuses disappear, priorities become obvious, and physics remains wonderfully indifferent to your feelings. This canvas, which graces my office wall, reminds me daily that perspective changes everything. Sometimes the solution is not to work harder on a problem, but to gain a little altitude.
Mini Pelican Pin:multicolor and very cheerful, the best companion for any blazer. It was love at first sight. Bold, slightly ridiculous, and impossible to take too seriously, this pin has it all. The wiser I become, the more convinced I become that professionalism and playfulness go hand in hand. Some days a mini pelican on a blazer does more for my motivation than an entire productivity system.
Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés: This is one of those books people recommend for years before you finally pick it up and wonder why you waited so long. Thankfully, it found me in my twenties. It is part mythology, part psychology, and part permission slip to trust your instincts more and more and more. And hey, despite the first word in the title, it works remarkably well for all genders.
DIGITAL
TED talk "How Cities Come to Life": It has always amazed me how many people think cities happen by accident. They never do. Every city is a constellation of decisions made by people, for people, or, well, against people. I’ll be honest: I did not want to give this talk. But I eventually realized I couldn’t not give it, especially considering how the pain of poorly designed cities entered my own life. So I went all in and explored why cities shape far more than skylines, what becomes possible when we design them intentionally, and how they can teach us to live better. It still amazes me that I actually did it, so yes, it’s very much in my NOW.
Dear Derek’s new website: I love Derek Sivers’ ability to make complex ideas feel simple. His new website is a reminder that the internet doesn’t have to be noisy, addictive, or poisonous. It can still be thoughtful, personal, and useful. Way back when, he inspired me to make my own website as simple as they make them. Maybe he’ll inspire you, too.
INVISIBLE
Genius is the opposite of expectation.
I wrote this one down at least twelve years ago and haven’t stopped thinking about it since. We tend to associate genius with intelligence, talent, credentials, or achievement. Increasingly, I suspect genius is the ability to see what everyone else overlooks because they are busy looking where they were told to look. It hit me when I realized that some of the most interesting people I know are also the least constrained by expectation.
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