As a book-loving maker family, we try to find books that will prime our two boys, ages 2 and 4, to have the curiosity, whimsy, creativity, resourcefulness, flexibility of thinking, environmental understanding, and mechanical sense to contribute to the family-wide maker projects we’ve already started to do together. But discovering compelling books that can do this can be challenging.
I have a lot of scissors. The less precious pairs come and go, but any textile crafter will tell you that fabric scissors have a special spot in the collection. They need to be sharp, heavy, and easy to handle. So when GarrettWade sent me a pair of their 7″ dressmaker’s scissors, I was excited to dig in for a review.
“Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.” Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams, 1992 That was the thought in Thomas Thwaites’ mind as he undertook a 9-month, £1187.54 project to recreate his own toaster as part of his Master’s degree at the Royal […]
One thing I wrestle with in my day-to-day, sometimes literally, is shipping boxes — lots of shipping boxes: boxes of MAKE books and magazines, review books and hardware, and boxes of other cool stuff that shows up on my doorstep. And because I don’t drive and live alone, most of my shopping is on the internet. More boxes. So, my most frequent around-the-office tools are scissors and a box cutter. So, I was very interested when Fiskars offered to send me one of their new ShopBoss snips-based multi-tool.
Last Thursday, I attended the launch party for The BurdaStyle Sewing Handbook at the beautiful event space at Housing Works Bookstore in NYC. I was so excited to be invited, and I really enjoyed checking out the book, talking to some of the project designers, and hanging out in a room filled with other people […]
Weighing in at eighty pounds, the DW734 is the smaller of two bench-top planers that DeWalt offers. You can pick one up from a big box store for around $360-$400. The 15A, 120V electric motor spins the three cutting blades at 10,000 RPM and the automatic feed system uses two rubber drums to grab the workpiece and steadily feed it through the blades at 96 cuts per inch. The blades are reversible and produce a nice finish, however due to the mounting hole configuration they are very difficult to re-sharpen. You can buy a pack of three replacement blades for around $45 online.
The MetaWatch is a sweet-looking programmable watch that can be paired with an Android device via Bluetooth in order to bring some of the smartphone’s functionality to the watch, reducing the need to haul out your phone to check on an alert.
