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I got a phenomenal response to my request for input on this newsletter. Thanks to all who messaged me. Turns out, an overwhelming number of you like the newsletter the way it is and simply offered encouragement. I also got several excellent suggestions for new features which I’ll be rolling out in the coming weeks. Keep those cards and letters coming!
How to Restore Yellowed Clear Plastic
In this quick Tested video, Adam Savage sets out to restore the lid of a gorgeous vintage Nagra IV-S audio recorder he recently acquired. The machine is in surprisingly good condition, but the clear plastic cover was scratched and badly yellowed. Doing research, he found many recommendations for using 12% hydrogen peroxide. He tried it with partial success. He discovered that finishing it up with plastic polishing compound returned it to something close it is original glory.
Making a Cheap, Simple Air Cleaner for a Small Shop
In this I Build It video, John shows how he made a simple and inexpensive air cleaner for his small woodshop. The air cleaner was made from little more than a small fan, a piece of duct piping, some scrap ply, and a several shop vac air filters. I love the way it can be expanded (with additional filters) via a threaded rod that holds the filters in place.
IKEA Wrenches on Your Pegboard
I just discovered a use for all of those hex wrenches that come with IKEA and other flat-pack furniture. They make perfect pegboard pegs!
Oil Can!
The tin man in dire need of maintenance.
The other day, while oiling a squeaky hinge with some lithium grease, I flashed on my granddad. A consummate tinkerer and inventor, Gramps was obsessed with maintenance. He frequently had his spring-bottom oiler in hand, blue shop rag tangling from his back pocket, going around the house, the yard, his backyard workshop, the car, lovingly maintaining the machinery of his life. I decided in that moment to try and be better at doing the same. Moments later, on Twitter, I saw this Kurt Vonnegut quote: “Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.” Exactly. OIL CAN!
Maker Slang
Slang, jargon, and technical terms for the realms of making things.
Crown pulley – A pulley designwhere the center has a larger diameter than the outer edges, thus a “crown.” Perhaps counter-intuitively, the belt on the pulley will always seek the area of highest tension, returning it to the crown. Via Maker Update.
Promptcrafting – In AI art, it’s all about the quality of the prompts you craft. The better your invocation, the better the magic that gets returned.
Rewilding your attention – Writer Clive Thompson has been promoting the creative benefits of exposing yourself to the novel, the offbeat, the serendipitous. Look beyond what the online algorithms feed you – rewild your attention!
Shop Talk
As stated in the intro, I received many fabulous emails from you, dear readers. Here is one from Paul Cryan. Look for some tips from Paul in a coming issue!
“Thanks for doing all you do. Your tip books [Ed: Vol 1, Vol 2.] are great and I’m really enjoying the newsletter. I bought and devoured both of your books, in Kindle and PDF formats. I refer to them often and having the search function (via either the Kindle app or iBooks, respectively) is really handy. Every few days, I find myself looking at objects in new ways and going back to your references. This past Friday, I didn’t have a clamp within getting-up-from-my-chair distance at my office desk, so I ended up using a pair of pliers and a rubber band to hold together a plastic part I was gluing. Thanks for putting that seed in my head.
“The only problem I have with the weekly newsletter is that it gives me way too many things to think about and try per unit of time!
“With your tips books, I’ve got months to read through them and try things out. This week, I experimented with the lanolin mineral oil mixture to rustproof tools out of your latest tips book and it seems to hold much more promise than Johnson’s Paste Wax for keeping my old restored Shopsmiths looking and working great. I still need to test whether the stickiness can be buffed sufficiently off the power-tool surfaces to avoid particles grabbing, but so far so good. And who doesn’t like that faint smell of ungulates on their metal? 😉
“With the newsletter, I’m interested in just about everything you cover, which leads me to a weekly frenzy of investigation and implementation. Within the past month I’ve upgraded our broken sink strainers to the OXO type (love them), picked up a Williams ratcheting screwdriver (my new favorite ‘good enough’ tool), and bought Fat Boy pencils and FastCap markers that have me wondering how I didn’t know about these things before. And now I’m browsing saw blades!”
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This little pocket book packs a big punch full of tiki culture with flamboyant images and a fun history. The author Sven A. Kirsten is the go-to guy for everything tiki. He’s the author of the Book of Tiki, which this bite-sized edition pulls from. The book takes you through the origins of tiki in the South Pacific, explains how this island culture worked its way into mainstream Americana, and highlights some of the legends like Don the Beachcomber and Trader Vic.
There’s something about Tikidom that’s just fun. The mugs, the artwork, the cocktails – it’s easy to get wrapped up in the tropical fantasy. Maybe it was growing up in grey and rainy Seattle that made me a sucker for tiki, but I can’t get enough and this book delivers. It’s filled cover to cover with photographs, illustrations, and incredible island imagery. So grab your favorite ceramic mug, pour yourself a Mai-Tai and enjoy this fantastic look at the stylish world of tiki. – JP LeRoux
Note: If you already have The Book of Tiki there won’t be anything new for you here, but I’d highly recommend picking up any of Sven’s other tiki books if you want to learn even more about the culture.
SATIRIST PAUL THOMAS MIXES FICTION WITH FACTS IN AN UNRELIABLE HISTORY OF TATTOOS
An Unreliable History of Tattoos by Paul Thomas Nobrow Press 2016, 96 pages, 7.9 x 10.6 x 0.7 inches (hardcover)
A minor celebrity/reality star, whose name I can’t remember, said in a recent interview that she thinks of people without tattoos as being “unicorns” because they are so rare. It’s true that today tattoos are much more popular than when I was a kid. In my day, only sailors or criminals had dye permanently etched into their bodies, but according to the graphic novel, An Unreliable History of Tattoos, inking people has been around since Day 1 (think Adam and Eve).
In his first book, award-winning British political cartoonist Paul Thomas loosely traces the origins of body art. There’s definitely a focus on European (and specifically British) history in this book, but Thomas also pokes fun at a few famous Americans. Mixing fiction with facts, (honestly sometimes it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s made up) this book is interesting, humorous, and very unusual!
I don’t know if the Upper Paleolithic man really punctured his skin with blunt twigs, nor do I know if King Harold II had his wife Edith’s name tattooed on his chest way back in 1066. Should I believe Anne Boleyn’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, had her knuckles tattooed? Was Kings Charles II’s chest covered in permanent ink with names of all his many bedroom conquests? According to this parody, Queen Victoria, Sir Winston Churchill, and even President Obama love body art too. An Unreliable History of Tattoos also touches on Japanese, Greek, Roman and Viking ink. If any, or all, or some of the fun facts in An Unreliable History of Tattoos are true, the thorny roses, tribal arm sleeves, and Mickey Mouse heads that show up on today’s bodies are nothing compared to what came before them. – Carole Rosner
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.
The tin man in dire need of maintenance.
