On the History and Uses of the Router

...vid, guided me through the creation of the through and half-blind dovetail joints you can see above. Don’t forget safety. The thing spins at 27,500 rpm and it takes quite a while for it to come to a stop. And don’t forget to turn the power off when making adjustments. The one minor flaw in my old Porter Cable is the power switch. It’s simultaneously difficult to switch off and easy to accidentally switch on. I’ve heard that the new model’s switch...

Read…

The New Homemade Kitchen

...ioned bread baking, the IDT offered classes in mustard, cheese making, jam making, coffee roasting, cocktail crating and much more. Joseph gathered the recipes and collected wisdom of these classes into his posthumously published book The New Homemade Kitchen: 250 Recipes and Ideas for Reinventing the Art of Preserving, Canning, Fermenting, Dehydrating, and More just released this month by Chronicle. The section on cocktails is a good example of t...

Read…

The Rag and Bone Man

...the bicycle chains clean. 4. Paper making–one traditional method of paper making begins with fermenting cotton rags in water for a few weeks and then beating them to a pulp with hammers. The rag and bone man pictured above is collecting rags for paper making (the bones went to make glue and other things). The contemporary version of the rag and bone man are the thift stores that ship our old clothes to the third world putting local garment makers...

Read…

A Prickly Situation

...ss, no pesticides, no watering once established. And note that not all prickly pear varieties produce edible fruit so when you look for cuttings seek out plants that are productive and tasty. It’s the ideal plant for what we call “pirategardening, the act of taking over a vacant lot or otherwise abandoned public or semi-public space. Plant a bunch of prickly pear and come back to harvest the nopalitos and fruit. More info and recipes can be foun...

Read…

Saturday Linkages: Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind

Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind, John Everett Millais 1892. Ornament Making in the Octavia Lab ‘The Best Thing You Can Do Is Not Buy More Stuff,’ Says ‘Secondhand’ Expert Do This Before It Snows! Snow Blower Maintenance A wheel education: the environmental diploma you earn by bike Cypress Park’s “Egghead Stonehenge” takes a hit Notes on an afternoon inside John Portman’s Bonaventure Hotel Should I Worry About Death Cap Mushroooms in California? Video:...

Read…