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Comparing Circular Saw Blades
In this Project Farm video, Todd tests 15 different circular saw blades to find out which ones are the best. He tested blades for performance in ripping 2×4 lumber (before and after striking nails) and compared for performance while cutting through oak and ripping an 8’ pressure-treated 4×4. Bottom line? The Makita blade ($10) was best overall. The Spyder also performed surprisingly well for its $5 price tag (at time of testing), although that price is currently over $12 each, so look for it on sale. Doing a web search, I see it’s available at some e-tailers for under $7.
Cutlist Optimizer
Speaking of cutting things. If you have a woodworking project that involves a fairly complicated cut list, there is a free app called Cutlist Optimizer. It allows you to both organize your cut list to better keep track of all of your pieces and allows you to optimize the parts you can get from your sheet goods.
How to Calculate 555 Timer Frequency and Duration
Ah, the venerable 555 chip. One of the most useful and popular ICs in electronics history. Invented in 1971, released in 72, it remains a go-to solution for a myriad of timer, delay, pulse, and oscillation applications. In this Digi-Key video, they cover the steps for calculating the necessary resistor and capacitor values needed to achieve the frequency and signal duration that you’re after in your project.
The Power of Great Reference Books and Knowing the Names of Things
As both a maker and a word nerd (I edited Wired’s “Jargon Watch” column for 13 years), I’ve always tried to impress upon people the power in knowing what something is called. Knowing the proper name for something allows you to look it up, learn about it, track it down (if it’s a tangible object). In this Adam Savage video, he harps on the same thing. He does so while extolling the virtues of a book he recently discovered and loves, the Backstage Handbook. This visual technical reference is for stagecraft, but most of its contents–divided into tools, hardware, materials, shop math, electrics, and architecture–can be applied to all manner of making. You you get to learn the proper names for all of the tools, hardware, and materials it covers. Magic!
TOYS! StylusReach Flexible Flashlight
Cool Tools has launched a new newsletter called Tools for Possibilities. Every week, subscribers get sent a page from the CT book: Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. I was tickled to see that the first page I was sent had a review that I wrote on the StylusReach flashlight. The Cool Tools catalog was released in 2013. Nine years later and I still have, use, and love this flashlight. Good tools do that.
Newsletter reader Paco Hidalgo sent this in response to the piece in the last issue on water and baking soda as a CA glue accelerator.
“I first tried the Zip Kicker CA accelerator and found its smell very disagreeable, nauseating, and the spray bottle made it very difficult to apply just a small drop. I later leaned that cyanoacrylate glues “set” (polymerize) by the mere presence of trace amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere. This infographic explains.
“So, I concluded that if that is the case, then liquid water would certainly accelerate the polymerization. I found that just a drop of water from a toothpick or needle onto a blob of the glue does indeed accelerate the setting process. I never heard of using baking soda but that would add a foreign material to the bond. Why do that? [See comment below] There would be no reason to mix baking soda with water since water alone does a good job.
“BTW: A ‘secret’ that I learned from the guy at the counter of a mall hobby shop, is that CA glues will keep indefinitely in the freezer. I think the dry environment prevents the glue from polymerizing. The manufacturers don’t want you to know that so they tell you not to freeze their glues. I keep partial bottles of different types of CA glue, including LOCTITE, sealed inside a ziploc bag in the freezer that are at least 10 years old. I can take a bottle and use it immediately without waiting for it to come to room temp. It is liquid and works just as fast. I wipe the tip with acetone after each use and keep a common pin in the narrow opening so it doesn’t clog.
“I keep all my solvent glues, including Lexel, E6000, and Goop in the freezer too, with the same result. I think the cold environment keeps the solvent from evaporating and escaping from the imperfect seal that normally shortens the shelf life. I keep epoxy glues in the refrigerator. This is enough to prevent them from self-polymerizing.”
[Just to clarify: Baking soda is commonly used by itself as an accelerator, especially in the hobby/modeling communities. Besides being an accelerator, it adds more structure to the join. Large amounts of baking soda can be added to CA glue to create a very hard material. This soda and CA combo as a structural material is common among luthiers repairing bridges and fret boards. It can be sanded, drilled, etc.]
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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.
Boyd Linney, also known as the Cow Boy, is a 10-year old bounty hunter. Armed with a custom pop gun in the shape of a hobby horse, he roams the West in search of wanted criminals. Unfortunately, they just happen to be his relatives.
A cinematic western about a 10-year-old bounty hunter, Cow Boy: A Boy And His Horse is action-packed, kid-friendly, and surprisingly gritty. Light on dialogue, where guttural utterances and highfalutin’ 25-cent words like dadgummit, tarnation, and goldarnt are sprinkled amidst desert landscapes and frontier saloon interiors, each colorful panel dramatizes a simple Wild West story of a boy in search of his wayward, outlaw family, and he’ll find them at any cost.
Breaking up the storyline are brief, humorous vignettes, one of a gunslinger with no underpants, a laser gun showdown with enormous steampunk robots, a woman who walks miles through the desert to accept a marriage proposal from an outlaw, and a gun-toting heroine with a penguin as a sidekick.
Propelled by Peanuts-like drawings that evoke a Sergio Leone-esque, widescreen atmosphere, this graphic novel features a compelling tale that touches on themes of family, loneliness, slavery, abuse, and gumption that never feels heavy-handed. Appropriate for all ages, Cow Boy: A Boy And His Horse is an entertaining page-turner that gallops along. – S.Deathrage
THE ART OF CHARLIE CHAN HOCK CHYE – BUT JUST WHO IS THIS GREAT SINGAPOREAN COMIC ARTIST?
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye by Pantheon Graphic Novels Pantheon 2016, 320 pages, 7 x 1.2 x 10.4 inches (hardcover)
The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye is one of the most intricate and impressive graphic novels I’ve ever read. It’s a biography of the great Singaporean comic artist Charlie Chan Hock Chye, and traces the evolution of Chan’s career by showing the wide array of artistic styles he experimented with. These range from Marvel-style superhero comics to celebrity caricatures, cartoonish science fiction, manga, noir, and more. All this is complemented by explanations and annotations of Chan’s work, which are also presented in graphic form.
The work is complex not only in style, but also in content. A driving theme throughout Chan’s career has been uncompromising political satire. Thus the survey of Chan’s work is also a dense and dizzying tour of 20th-century Singaporean history. The comics depict the complex Singaporean identity following independence from Britain, as the tiny nation-state struggled to define itself ethnically, politically, and economically.
While this is a weighty topic, there’s an ever-present humor in Chan’s comics. For instance, his superhero parody is called Roachman. Roachman worked as a human waste collector in Singapore’s pre-plumbing period, and gained his powers from the bite of a cockroach. His transformation into a superhero allows for commentary on the social ills of the day, as well as providing a snapshot of a country just before rapid urbanization and development.
The big conceit in all this is that Chan isn’t real. He’s a fictional character invented by Sonny Liew to take readers through a simultaneous history of Singapore and of 20th-century comics. One lasting impression from this book is that it must have been so fun to create: inventing not only an artist, but also his works, and the additional meta-layer of being a faux biographer/art historian. Only someone with an enduring love of comics could have produced this work. – Christine Ro
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.
