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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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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.
The great Moon colonization project was a failure. The few diehards who remain in their prefab pod-like houses are going back to Earth. That leaves the unnamed lunar police officer with barely anything to do as operations wind down. Author/illustrator Tom Gauld is in top form with his just-released Mooncop, telling a simple story with a deep layer of existential pathos that even we Earth-dwellers can relate to. – Mark Frauenfelder
SUPER GRAPHIC: A VISUAL GUIDE TO THE COMIC BOOK UNIVERSE
Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe by Tim Leong Chronicle Books 2013, 196 pages, 7.4 x 9.4 x 0.6 inches (softcover)
How has Superman’s logo changed shape since it was first created in 1938? How long do comic book characters tend to stay dead? How do the populations of fictional cities compare to New York City or London? Tim Leong’s Super Graphic: A Visual Guide to the Comic Book Universe uses bright maps, word webs, graphs, and flowcharts to answer questions like these and illustrate correlations among different comic book characters. Most of his information comes from the usual Marvel and DC superhero comic books, but he also analyzes information from such classics as Tin-Tin, Peanuts, and Archie comics.
The smartest graphs show Leong’s skill for bringing together information into succinct visuals, such as the charts showing that superheroes tend to wear primary colors while supervillains tend to wear secondary colors. Other spreads draw information from the comic book business or affiliated merchandise. For example, some infographics discuss which demographics reads comic books, which characters won most often in Marvel Universe Trading Card Series, and which comic book writers are the most prolific. Still other pages use the graphs to make sight-gags without providing any insight or trivia. These pages, such as the graph entitled “A Personal History of Saying ‘Good Grief’” which is drawn as the pattern on Charlie Brown’s shirt, are briefly amusing but not the pages to study. Instead, take your time exploring Scrooge McDuck’s family tree, the character web of Sin City, and the pie charts of every weird pizza the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have eaten. You never know when that information might be useful. – Megan Hippler
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.
