Paul Boswell, Educational Toy Maker

Cool Tools Show 279: Paul Boswell

Our guest this week is Paul Boswell. Paul is co-founder of Turing Tumble. He’s been an analytical chemist, a software engineer, a professor at the University of Minnesota, and a healthcare researcher. Four years ago, he progressed to the next obvious step in his career: becoming a toymaker. His Kickstarter for Spintronics, a puzzle game where players discover electronics in a tangible way, using the first physical representation of electronic circuits, launches on May 20.

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Show notes:

Best chemistry demonstration to whip out: Magnesium burning in dry ice
This is a cool chemistry experiment that anyone can understand, and it’s a blast to watch. You can whip it out for a birthday party or whatever, and it’s really fun to watch. Magnesium metal is a very light, sturdy metal, and it really, really likes oxygen. It wants to bind to it very badly. And you can light it on fire, and it just rips oxygen out of the air and binds to it. It burns super hot and super bright at 3,000 degrees, and at the end, you’re just left with this hunk of white material that’s magnesium oxide. People normally buy magnesium to start campfires. You can get it on Amazon. So here’s what you do. You take two slabs of dry ice — you can get the dry ice from your local grocery store. You drill a little hole in the bottom slab of dry ice. So you have two slabs, and you have one on the bottom, one on the top. And you drill this hole, and maybe it’s like two inches diameter, and you put magnesium shavings in the hole. You don’t fill it to the top. You leave a little empty space on the top, and then you make sure that the second slab of dry ice fits over the top slab and the hole before you continue. Then you take the top slab off. You light the magnesium on fire, and maybe you need to use a propane torch to get it hot enough. And then you quickly cover it again. Dry ice is made of frozen carbon dioxide. And carbon dioxide, if you don’t know, is made of a molecule with one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. It’s a stable molecule, and it doesn’t react with hardly anything. Now, the magnesium wants to burn, and it wants to pull oxygen off of something, but there’s no oxygen there when it’s inside this carbon dioxide block. So how does the magnesium burn? The way it does it is it binds with the oxygen that’s in the carbon dioxide. So it actually rips the oxygen out of the carbon dioxide, and what’s left is carbon. So the magnesium burns inside the dry ice until it all burns out. And then you open it up, and you see this nugget of burnt magnesium. And you crack open the nugget, and it’s just black inside because all that’s left is carbon from the carbon dioxide. It glows brightly while it’s burning.(image taken from thought.co)

Elmer’s Wood Repair System
If for whatever reason you happen to have little burned holes in your wood flooring or table or whatever, you can actually repair a lot of problems in your wood flooring without having to refinish or replace anything. So we were trying to figure out how to replace or how to fix these little black marks in our wooden floor. And we stumbled across this guy who fixes wood floors for a living, and he came by, and he had this tackle box just full of different types of paint. And the first thing he did is he got this wood repair epoxy, like Elmer’s Wood Repair. First, he filled the hole with the epoxy and let it get hard. And then the next thing he did is he painted the grain of wood very carefully with acrylic paint. It turns out the guy was actually an art major who just got really good at painting wood grain and went into doing this full time. So he filled the holes. He painted the grain that was missing. And when he was done, we couldn’t even see where the holes had been. So the first half of this you can buy, which is the Elmer’s Wood Repair System. The painting is going to be up to you.

Ultimaker 3
I’m an educational toy maker now, and the type of toys that I make are very mechanical in nature. When I make prototype parts, I use this machine constantly. I’ve tried a lot of 3D printers. The Ultimaker 3 is by far the most reliable machine I’ve used. I can send files to print and they work 9 times out of 10. The dual extrusion lets me print virtually any object and then I can dissolve and wash away the supports with water. It’s expensive and it’s slow, but the time I don’t have to spend troubleshooting problems and the ability to wash away supports makes it totally worth it to me.

PocketNC
Pocket NC is kind of a miniature CNC mill. CNC stands for computer numerical control. And basically, what it means is that you have a mill, which is just like a router blade spinning really fast on the end of a tool. One way to think about it would be a router blade on a robotic arm that goes around and cuts material out of some block. Whereas 3D printing, you’re adding material to build something, with a CNC mill, you’re actually subtracting material. You’re cutting it away from a block of that material. So most CNC mills are three axis. That means you have like a blade that’s spinning, and it can move forward, backward, left, or right, or up and down. And that’s great if you have a flat surface, and you’re cutting or engraving something from it. But a five-axis CNC mill, like the PocketNC, can not only move forward, backwards, side to side, up or down. It can also rotate along two axis. So you can cut out pretty much anything you want out of a block of material, as long as the blade can get to it to cut out that spot. Usually, these machines are very expensive. They run for well over $100,000. But this little PocketNC is only $6,000, and it’s shockingly precise. It only does small objects, so maybe a six inch by six inch by six inch, probably even a little smaller than that. Maybe five by five by five. But it’s pretty incredible.

About Spintronics:

Spintronics! It’s the world’s first mechanical equivalent of electronics. Ever wonder what technology world would look like if electricity was never discovered? Would there even be computers and smartphones? Yes there would. And they would be fabulous and steampunk and the world would be way more awesome.

Spintronics lets you build mechanical circuits that run just like electronic ones. Electronic circuits are invisible and abstract, but spintronic circuits are tangible. It finally lets you feel the voltage and see the current flow. You can use your fingers to mess with a circuit and watch what happens. As you build circuits to solve a series of puzzles, you develop an intuition for electronics without getting tangled up in the math. Even kids can understand university-level concepts.

The Kickstarters launches on May 20.

05/21/21

Great Walking Cities/United Partnerships/Lifetime Park Pass

Nomadico issue #161

We hit 20,000 subscribers last week, so thanks to all of you for joining us! If you want to support our work and get access to quarterly info calls, please become a paid subscriber.

Top Walking Cities

This list from Guru Walks is not comprehensive since it only has data on destinations where that company operates, but if you’re looking for good walking cities, it’ll give you plenty of ideas. All of the top 30 are in Europe except for Marrakech, but then comes more variety with New York City, Tokyo, Mexico City, Medellin, Hanoi, Cartagena, Buenos Aires, and Cusco making a showing.

Historical Tech Tree

Want to find out when something was invented and what else arrived around the same time? Check out the Historical Tech Tree that lays it all out on a timeline. In case you were wondering, sunglasses have been around since 1750, wristwatches since 1810, and flashlights since 1899. (Suitcases and backpacks not listed, though the upright rollaboard suitcase didn’t appear until 1987.)

United Partners With JetBlue and Spotify

If you’re sitting on a lot of JetBlue points, you may want to hold onto them for a while because United and JetBlue are partnering up. Dates are fuzzy but at some point you’ll be able to use JetBlue miles to book a United flight and vice-versa. It’ll also mean more slots for United planes at JFK. Also, the United flight I was just on had some Spotify podcasts and the choices are going to expand to music and audiobooks under a new agreement.

Lifetime National Park Pass for Seniors

I visited Joshua Tree National Park last week and would highly recommend a visit if you’re anywhere near there. When I’m old enough I plan to pick up one of the greatest travel bargains on the planet: a lifetime U.S. National Parks pass for only $80. If you’re a citizen or legal resident 62 or older, buy it online here and wave it at entrance gates for the rest of your life.

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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.

06/26/25

What’s in my NOW? — Eric Maierson

issue #216

I am a freelance editor, writer, and producer and two-time Emmy winner. I love making interesting work with good people. I also love books and dogs. I run a newsletter that offers 5 great links every week. You can subscribe here:Fave 5 and my website is www.ericmaierson.com.

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PHYSICAL

• Uniball Vision Elite Rollerball Pens – This is a great pen. It feels almost like painting. Its just a tiny bit messy at times, but so is life.
• Field Notes Brand Heavy Duty Edition – I adore Field Notes. They have a new styled notebook every quarter. You can subscribe and get a discount but I buy them thinking I won’t need the next one. I’m always wrong. I use the pocket notebooks for logging my day and the larger ones for gathering my thoughts.
• NuPhy Air96 V2 keyboard – I used the standard Mac keyboard forever. I didn’t realize how much I missed the tactile clacks. And its retro looks are so stylish.

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DIGITAL

• Clean Shot X – supercharges the mac’s screen capture tool. Clean Shot makes it easy to annotate your screenshots, too. So helpful for drawing someone’s attention to areas of a website.
• Text Sniper – Extract text from images. Why is this tool not built in? You see text in an image and rather than having to retype, Text Sniper allows you take essentially an invisible screenshot, that loads the image’s text into your clipboard. Very accurate.

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INVISIBLE

“I am searching for that which is real of my heart, and which when completed I can stand humble to one side of and say: ‘This is it, this is how I feel, this is my honest interpretation of the world; this is not influenced by money, or trickery, or pressure…except the pressure of my soul.’” — W. Eugene Smith

06/25/25

Craft for the Soul / The Coloring Book for Goths

Issue No. 72

CRAFT FOR THE SOUL SHOWS US HOW TO CONSTANTLY GENERATE IDEAS AND CREATE COOL STUFF

Craft for the Soul: How to Get the Most Out of Your Creative Life
by Pip Lincolne (author)
Penguin Books Australia
2016, 216 pages, 6 x 9 x 0.9 inches (hardcover)

Buy on Amazon

When it comes to dishing out all there is to know about living a creative life, Pip Lincolne is certainly your go-to woman. She’s the author of several creative titles and the talent behind popular blog Meet Me at Mike’s. She is also the founder of multiple inspiring projects, including worldwide craft group Brown Owls and the eMag series The Good Stuff Guide.

For some, stumbling upon Pip Lincolne’s book, Craft for the Soul, might seem a bit like discovering a rare gem. Sure, there are plenty of books about creativity, as well as numerous books filled with cute craft projects, but Lincolne has seamlessly blended the two to produce a book that is bursting with all things creative. Nestled among her down-to-earth advice about morning rituals, keeping active for creativity’s sake, and how to constantly generate ideas (among plenty of other topics), you’ll also find her favorite delicious recipes, along with adorable illustrations, inspiring quotes, and crafty DIY projects.

The author stresses that each and every one of us are capable of filling our day-to-day lives with more creativity, happiness, and fun. And for those of you thinking you don’t have a creative bone in your bodies – the pang of inspiration you feel every time you turn a page will certainly have you thinking otherwise! – Melanie Doncas

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THE COLORING BOOK FOR GOTHS: THE WORLD’S MOST DEPRESSING BOOK

The Coloring Book for Goths: The World’s Most Depressing Book
by Tom Devonald
Atria Books
2016, 96 pages, 5.5 x 7.5 x 0.4 inches (paperback)

Buy on Amazon

I wasn’t a big fan of high school, and my high school wasn’t a big fan of me. Weird, awkward, and music-obsessed, I was a concert-tee-clad speck in a sea of polo shirts and boat shoes. My 30th high school reunion was last July. A friend of mine from high school, who has a sadistic sense of humor, added me to the reunion Facebook page. One of the organizers for the event asked the group what songs they wanted to hear at the reunion. They all commented with one singular word, “Eighties.” The organizer tried their best to be diplomatic, and calmly asked which particular songs they wanted to hear, which then prompted the response of, “Eighties.” This went on for a while. Finally, someone commented with Starship’s “We Built This City.”

Needless to say, I didn’t attend the reunion. I try my best to avoid situations where I might accidentally hear one note of Starship’s “We Built This City.” In a strange coincidence, some of my friends who didn’t attend my high school organized a gothic/punk/industrial ‘club kid’ reunion the weekend prior to my high school reunion. During the early-to-mid ’80s, the midwestern city I lived in had a great alternative music club scene. We would spend most of our evenings dressed in black and coiffed outrageously, dancing to Bauhaus’ seminal track “Bela Lugosi is Dead,” Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart,” amongst other doomy, angsty, deep cuts and non-hits. Going back to my hometown and dancing with old friends to great music was one of the highlights of 2015. Yes, I dressed in black.

Well, let’s segue into the review. The Coloring Book For Goths is a humorous coloring book requiring only one color: black. Geared to the current coloring book fad, it has one joke. Once you color it in, the page turns completely, thoroughly black. Featuring crows, black widow spiders, pentagrams, coffins, and crypts, and making references to Edgar Allen Poe, Robert Smith, and Friedrich Nietzsche, the book often only makes a passing reference to the goth subculture.

Some pages are funny and clever – a page of Metallica lyrics, pages exploring oblivion, the unknown, and the unknowable – but there are just as many embarrassing pages that belie a rudimentary understanding of the culture. An insecure killer whale? A polar bear in witness protection? Embarrassing tattoos? Unfortunately, someone enveloped in the goth culture would probably never purchase this book, and tourists to the culture probably won’t come away with a better understanding of it. It both embraces and pokes fun at the culture. Still, it was cute and made me snicker, because while we may have a serious demeanor, goths (and former goths) can take a joke. – S. Deathrage

06/24/25

Clays

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 143

Non-fired sculpting clay

Sugru

Sugru is a soft moldable material that reminds me of Fimo clay. But unlike Fimo, it does not have to be heated to cure. It air drys and is rubbery and sticks to anything. I used it to make a new button for my utility knife when the plastic one broke. I made bumpers for my cell phone. I put some on my tools so they would not roll off the table. I am still discovering ways to use the product. — Philip Lipton

This stuff comes in tiny pouches of different primary colors. You knead a bit with your hands until soft, then you apply it where you would like an additional grip, or stop, or section of repair. It’s pretty sticky, can be worked like clay, but dries into a hard rubber. The photo shows a paring knife handle that was falling apart from years of dishwasher use. I coated the outside with Sugru and it now it feels great and is dishwasher proof. See Sugru’s website for other ways it can be used. — KK

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Better than clay

Sculpey

Artists know about this stuff. It’s flexible polymer clay that hardens into rigid plastic after a spell in your kitchen oven. Bright steadfast colors. Or you can paint, drill, and polish it. Great for making toys, models, small sculptures, modern jewelry, and weird stuff — anything that demands that colored plastic look. SuperSculpey is a translucent beige-colored (skin like) variety sold in bulk that dollmakers and Hollywood special effects swear by. Most good art suppliers will stock it. — KK

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Stiff polymer clay

SuperSculpey Firm

A few weeks ago, my 11-year old son and I decided to sculpt, so we got out SuperSculpey Firm polymer clay. After working with this newer style of Sculpey for a while, we decided it totally kicks ass on softer styles of Sculpey. Why? Because it doesn’t flop over on its side when handled. And it’s firm enough to keep its shape when carved. My son began making a tank. So I made a tank. We have yet to paint them.

The Sculpey brands are especially encouraging for beginners, yet professionals artists depend on them as well. Pros ranging from vinyl toy artists to designers for film use it. Unlike normal clay, Sculpey hardly changes shape or size when baked, and hardening takes place quickly, at the relatively low temperatures of a convection oven (even a toaster oven will do).

Because of its polymer base, there’s loads of fun techniques to try with Sculpey: like baking your sculpture for only half the allotted time. When you take it out of the oven, prematurely, you’ll find your little masterpiece has a soft, rubbery texture. In this state, it won’t lose its shape and can be easily carved with a knife or a file. Have you cut too much away? Add a little more Sculpey and put it back in the oven, for more cooking! — Robyn Miller

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Silver clay that becomes silver metal

Precious Metal Clay

Precious Metal Clay lets you make fine jewelry with little experience or equipment. It works like Fimo clay, except it is more crumbly because it contains powdered precious metal, such as silver, or gold. (It will also dry out faster.) The organic clay binding burns off when you fire it and you end up with pure fine silver or gold in the shape of the clay you made. If you have jewelry skills you can keep working it from there, soldering, shaping, etc.. Since I don’t have much skill I just polish up my pieces or antique them with silver black. There’s an implication that you have to fire PMC pieces in a kiln (that would be nice), but so far everything I’ve done I’ve fired myself on the kitchen floor with a basic propane torch.

All PMC shrinks significantly when fired. However since the shrinkage is proportional, jewelers use this shrinkage to produce very fine detail that would be difficult if you had to work at full size. PMC comes in various formulations with different shrinkage rates. The original PMC shrinks 30%, while PMC+ and PMC3 shrinks only 10%. (I’ve never tried using the torch on anything except silver PMC+ and PMC3 because I prefer the lower shrinkage of these.)

My one piece of advice about firing PMC with a propane torch: This stuff is very expensive (it’s silver or gold, remember!) so take a small piece and sacrifice it to learn how to heat evenly first. It is very easy to overheat it which will melt the silver into a blob., which is bad. If you aren’t sure if it’s metal yet (it’ll be whitish), pick it up with needle nose plier and drop it very gently on the metal surface you fired it on. It should make a satisfying metal-on-metal thunk. When I am feeling more flush, I’ll find out if gold PMC can be fired this way. — Quinn Norton

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Moldable plastic

Shapelock

Shapelock is “Ultra-High Molecular Weight Low Temperature Thermoplastic. Similar to nylon and polypropylene in toughness., except it’s easy to work with and shape.”

You get a bag of plastic pellets, put them in 160F water, and they phase change, becoming soft and moldable. If you don’t let the water get too hot, when you take the plastic out, it’s cool enough to shape with your hands.

When it cools down, it hardens into a strong, durable, paintable, machine-able white plastic. If you don’t like what you made, you just put it in 160F water again and reshape it.

Great for making prototypes — also fun to play with. The same stuff, under a different name (Friendly Plastic), is available in larger quantities, at a slightly cheaper rate. — Patrick Tufts

06/23/25

Personal info audit/Free audio transcription/Than Average

Recomendo - issue #467

Auditing personal info on web

Google has made it easier to see what personal information about you is currently posted on the web. Go to the Results About You page at Google, and fill out the form. It will take several days to weeks before you get results back showing what the public web shows. For me about a dozen occurrences of my home and email address. You can ask Google to delete each instance, but it only deletes it from its search results and not the web. (For that you need to contact the site displaying it.) — KK

Free audio transcription

Speech-to-Text by Borg is an automated transcription service with a generous free tier. You can upload MP3s up to 25MB (roughly 30 minutes of audio) and get fast, high-quality transcripts without paying a cent. They offer a paid tier at $0.06/hour for longer recordings. I use it for interviews, meeting notes, and voice memos. — MF

Compare yourself to others

Than Average is a small, “unscientific” investigation into how you compare yourself to others—for fun. Just answer the questions instinctively and see where you land in a room with 100 strangers. You can view all the questions and see how many people have answered them. I left my emotions and insecurities out of it, and found all the results interesting. — CD

Used stuff marketplace

Rather than trashing my old stuff, I like to find a new home for it, selling it or giving it away for free. The real action for used stuff has moved away from Craigslist to Facebook Marketplace. (The broadest reach is on eBay, but everything needs to be packaged for shipping.) Facebook Marketplace is the best for local and bulky things. It is a lot easier to use than Craigslist, and in my experience has 10 times the responses (for selling) or varieties (for buying). It is free to use. If you have patience you can find almost anything you want on Facebook Marketplace used, or get rid of almost anything you want with minimal hassle. — KK

Suction cup caddy

I needed a caddy for a newly tiled shower stall but was skeptical of suction-cup mounts, which in my experience always fail. The Hasko Shower Caddy changed my mind — it uses a knob-tightening mechanism that creates an incredibly strong hold on smooth tile. I installed it a month ago and it hasn’t budged, even when loaded with heavy bottles and supplies. For rough surfaces, it includes adhesive mounting discs. — MF

Beginner’s Wood Whittling Kit

Through ACER, an online integration community I am part of, I occasionally host wood whittling sessions. I am not a detail-oriented person or particularly skilled with my hands, but I find it very soothing and meditative to shape and smooth out tree sticks, which I then glue crystals and feathers onto to create wands. My only tool is this beginner’s carving kit by BeaverCraft. I’ve used it for a year now, and the knives are still sharp and easy to hold. They’re helping to build my confidence to someday carve a figure. — CD

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06/22/25

What’s in my NOW? — Eric Maierson