Last summer I wrote about the miracle that is smoked cream cheese. Aside from being a delicious appetizer that can be seasoned a number of ways, these bricks of cream cheese are a smart way to use up any free real estate you have on your smoker while you’re preparing meat and other foods (you don’t want to waste any…
Located only 25 miles southeast of Rochester, the community of Canandaigua is known as “The Chosen Spot,” a Native American translation that holds true today. The town is historic and scenic with a wide variety of locally-owned shops, galleries, restaurants and places to stay.
Bill Smith's Atlantic Beach Pie is the re-named, modern version of Lemon Pie which is a classic summer dessert served in eastern North Carolina and beyond. Bill does not claim to have created the pie, but he certainly popularized it, and I personally think he improved it.
Don’t forget: I now offer a way for you to promote your tool, newsletter, book, blog, video channel, app, etc. Coming soon: Unclassifieds at the end of the newsletter. Share your work with fellow readers and help support this publication. Here for the skinny.
Comparing Wire Nuts to Wago Connectors
In this GreatScott! video, Scott decides to compare wire nut connectors, common in the US, against Wago connectors, more common in Europe. Scott tests for ease of use, problems, speed of application, reusability, size, price, pull test, resistance, and flammability. In the end, both connectors perform as adverised, with Wagos being far more expensive. But if you don’t mind spending the bread, Wagos seem to have some real advantages over nuts for ease of use, speed of application, and reusability.
Overcoming One’s Fear of Machining
I love that Bob Clagett admits in the beginning of this video that he fears his Bridgeport mill and metal lathe. He rarely uses them as a result. To try and at least dip his toe in the machining waters, he decides to undertake a simple project: create a channeled metal stop-block for his radial arm saw. In the video, he timidly goes about the project, reveals his apprehensions and lack of deeper knowledge about the tools, but in the end, he comes away with a very serviceable tool. It’s not perfect, but it’s decent-looking and it works. And he now has less fear and intimidation around these tools. I’m sure he will look back on this project years from now and have a soft spot for it.
Great Measuring Tips
There are a ton of measuring tape tutorials and tips and tricks videos out there. Many of them cover similar ground. Most of what this video from Stumpy Nubs includes has been covered elsewhere (I cover many of these tricks in Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 of my tips books). But it’s a nice collection of tricks and there are a few here that you may not have seen, like how to throw out a tape to where you want it to go, how to do quick subtractions of numbers by turning a tape on itself, and the party trick of using a tape measure to tell someone the year in which they were born. Another tip that might be new is using a Sharpie on your tape to create a storey stick (marks of common measurements) and then cleaning it off with WD-40 when you’re done using those marks.
Put Screws Back When Disassembling
In this Tested video, in which Adam Savage is making a replica of the movement tracker from the movie Aliens, he does something worth pointing out: In disassembling parts he’ll be reassembling, rather than storing the hardware somewhere and then trying to remember where it all goes back, he temporary hand-screws it into the threaded part of the piece for safe keeping. If that’s unclear, see 7:11 in the video.
Using Chair Sliders as Jaw Guards on Clamps
On Colin Knecht‘s Instagram account, he shares this tip from a follower. You can use self-adhesive chair and table felt or cork feet as jaw guards on your shop clamps.
Leaving More Witness Marks
As a word nerd as well as a maker, I’ve always been in love with the tech term “witness marks.” It is used in clock-making and elsewhere to refer to marks and other evidence (whether intentional or not) that offer clues as to how something was once put together or repaired. It can also be used to refer to little notes left inside of an objects giving dates of when it was serviced/repaired and what was done. I think the practice of intentionally leaving marks and notes should be more widely applied – as you repair and maintain the perennial objects in your life, leave a mark, a history of your interactions with them.
Maker Slang
Drag soldering. Note the use of poster tack to hold the IC in place.
Jargon, slang, and tech terms of interest to DIYers.
Burning an inch – When taking tape measurements that you want to be as accurate as possible, you can start the ruler at the 1″ mark in case the end hook on the tape isn’t 100% accurate (and then, of course, you subtract 1″ from your resulting measurement).Crustard –A textured ground-covering paste used in tabletop gaming terrain, diorama-making, etc. Made of a mixture of fine sand, PVA wood glue, tile grout, baking powder, and acrylic paint.Drag soldering – A technique for soldering the numerous “gull-wing” leads of an integrated circuit. You basically deposit solder on the tip of your iron and drag it over the surface of the pins on all sides of the IC that have pins.
Crustard –A textured ground-covering paste used in tabletop gaming terrain, diorama-making, etc. Made of a mixture of fine sand, PVA wood glue, tile grout, baking powder, and acrylic paint.
Drag soldering – A technique for soldering the numerous “gull-wing” leads of an integrated circuit. You basically deposit solder on the tip of your iron and drag it over the surface of the pins on all sides of the IC that have pins.
Shop Talk
In response to my item on creative ways of using your phone as a work tool, Tim Hare responded:
“In regard to note-taking on a phone: for Android users, including Amazon tablets, ColorNote is a great app for making little notes and task/check lists. You make them standalone or create them on a day in the calendar that’s part of the app. This is one of those apps that’s pretty intuitively easy to use, does what it does and doesn’t try to be a Swiss Army knife of an app. Android only, though. I use it for lists of things I need to get at the hardware store, to jot down dimensions, or to remember a link to something that I found through the phone.”
On the same subject, Gord Crone writes:
“I use my phone to take a picture of model and serial numbers of any tools, appliances etc. Helps for product registration, searching for online manuals, warranty issues etc.”
I value independence more than anything else in finance.
More than I value a big paycheck.
More than I value big returns.
More than I value any amount of money.
Doing what you want, when you want, with whom you want, is the most incredible thing money offers that too often goes overlooked.
It takes a shift in perspective
Derek Sivers is a successful entrepreneur who founded CD Baby. When a friend asked him to tell the story of how he got rich, this is how he responded:
I had a day job in midtown Manhattan paying $20k per year — about minimum wage … I never ate out, and never took a taxi. My cost of living was about $1000/month, and I was earning $1800/month. I did this for two years, and saved up $12,000. I was 22 years old.
Once I had $12,000 I could quit my job and become a full-time musician. I knew I could get a few gigs per month to pay my cost of living. So I was free. I quit my job a month later, and never had a job again.
When I finished telling my friend this story, he asked for more. I said no, that was it. He said, “No, what about when you sold your company?”
I said no, that didn’t make a big difference in my life. That was just more money in the bank. The difference happened when I was 22.
Incredible.
Viewing every additional dollar of wealth as “a little bit more independence and a part of my future I now own” is a fun way to think about it.
In the next Mission: Impossible movie, Ethan Hunt should try buying a house.
Home prices rose faster than ever in 2021, mortgage rates are the highest they’ve been since 2008, and limited supply means buyers are scrambling for whatever they can get.
But an alternative option that gives buyers another path to homeownership is gaining steam, per Protocol.
Lease-to-own…
… is a model that allows customers to make a monthly lease payment, with a portion of it going toward owning the property.
After a certain time period, they can either buy the property outright, or continue with monthly payments.
The movement is powered by fintech startups like Divvy, Verbhouse, and ZeroDown, which buy homes in cash and rent them to customers using lease-to-own agreements.
Here’s how it works
With Divvy, a typical agreement:
Requires 1%-2% of the home price upfront, which goes toward the down payment if the renters decide to buy
Charges a monthly rental fee, plus a home savings fee (i.e. your down payment savings account)
Locksin a future purchase price; however, renters can pass on buying and walk away with home savings funds
Divvy’s program is designed for renters to become “mortgage-eligible in three years,” according to the company’s website.
But rent-to-own agreements are controversial
They have a history of being predatory and targeting low-income Black and brown homebuyers.
Critics point out other downsides as well:
Rent-to-own encourages companies to shell out cash and compete with humans for limited housing stock
Locked-in home prices could be bad for buyers if the market drops
There’s no guarantee renters will qualify for a mortgage once their lease term is up
For its part, Divvy says roughly half of its customers are able to buy their homes. But the market likely wouldn’t be as competitive if these companies weren’t scooping up homes in the first place.
Like many good things in this world, “Sandwiches of History” started with buttered bread. In 2021, Barry Enderwick, a marketing executive, came upon a recipe book from the turn of the 20th century. Some of the recipes were straightforward; others were downright bizarre by modern sensibilities. Intrigued, Enderwick decided to find out what they were like for himself—and to tell people on social media about it.
Although Enderwick was no stranger to sharing his thoughts on the internet (he also runs a channel for reviewing chips from around the world, a cooking channel, and a channel where he discusses savory ice cream), he never expected this project to resonate in quite the way that it did. To date, he’s racked up more than 3.1 million views on TikTok by reviewing sandwiches ranging from the vile—such as a mashed anchovy sandwich he calls a “salt lick”—to the superb—like a French pan bagnat that requires two days, but winds up "crazy good."
Much of the appeal of “Sandwiches of History” comes from its simplicity. As with the best of TikTok, its production values are next to nothing. Each episode delivers precisely what it promises: Enderwick, in his home kitchen, making a sandwich. For him, it really is all about eating his way through history, one loaf at a time.
A few of his creations are complicated, multi-day affairs, but the majority of his recipes have ingredient lists you could count on one hand. The sandwiches that stick with Enderwick are often those that are greater than the sum of their parts, like two slabs of Boston brown bread layered with onion and slicked with mayonnaise. “It was actually kind of good,” he says. “You soak the onion in water, which takes the bite out of it, then you have the sweet molasses notes from the brown bread. The mayonnaise just adds richness.”
Gastro Obscura spoke with Enderwick about one of Elvis’s favorite sandwiches, a Chinese recipe from 200 B.C.E., and how to make fake bananas in case of wartime rationing.
How did you come up with this idea?
I've been reviewing potato chips for longer. My friend Adam put me up to doing that. Then one day he sends me over this PDF for The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book of 1909. He goes, “These are kind of wild.” I'm like, “Yeah, I kind of want to make some of these.” The first one I ever did was the oyster sandwich.
How would you describe the oyster sandwich?
Slimy. It wasn't fried oysters. It called for raw oysters chopped up, mixed with olive oil, a little bit of a Worcestershire sauce, and then put in between buttered bread with a leaf of lettuce. I like raw oysters on the half shell, but this was nasty.
Well, that is just genuinely horrifying. Where did you find this particular gem?
That was in The Up-to-Date Sandwich Book. At that point, I was only doing recipes from one book. Now I've got 10 or 12 old recipe books going on. One of the oldest sandwich recipes I made was just beef between buttered bread. It was from 1777. So it was about 15 years after the Earl of Sandwich supposedly created “the sandwich.”
But you’ve also got sandwiches that go way back before the Earl of Sandwich. What about the ancient Chinese sandwich you made from 200B.C.E.?
The Earl of Sandwich got his name on it around 1762, but clearly people have been putting stuff between bread for longer than that. Rou jia mou, the Chinese one, was just phenomenally delicious.
That's the one with the cumin-spiced beef on bai ji mo bread. That looked great.
And I found out about it through the Gastro Obscura book!
What’s the most complicated sandwich you’ve wound up making?
I just did one not too long ago called the Milwaukee Sandwich. It has fried oysters. No idea why that’s associated with Milwaukee. This is from a different 1909 book called Salads, Sandwiches, and Chafing Dish Dainties.
It starts off by making your tartar sauce with chopped sweet pickles, chopped olives, chopped onions, and chopped celery. Then you have to squeeze that to get the liquid out. Then you have to shuck and fry the oysters. Then you dip three slices of rye bread in an egg batter and fry those like French toast. You top the bottom slice with the oysters, grate a little horseradish on that, then you put on another slice of bread, add sliced chicken breast, then on top of that you put bacon and another slice of bread, then you cut lemon into a square and put that on top.
I like how they had to add that extra little bit of fussiness. Why use a circular lemon when you could meticulously cut it into a square?
One of the things that the recipe had me do was make that tartar sauce and put it into a hollowed-out tomato to be kind of schmancy. It was pretty bonkers.
You’ve made the Fool’s Gold, an Elvis Presley favorite. What was that like?
It's the one that Elvis flew to Denver for in his private plane and apparently ordered 20 of them. It's a loaf of French bread that's cut in half and gutted a little. Take some of the bread out, then fill it with a jar of peanut butter, a jar of blueberry preserves, and a pound of bacon. It's actually really good, but it's even better with a little chili powder on it.
That's interesting, because the stereotypical Elvis sandwich is peanut butter, bacon, and banana. Speaking of banana, I saw that you did a recipe from 1941 for a fake banana sandwich. What was that like?
That was a recipe sent from someone in Manchester, England. I guess in the UK, they were big on banana sandwiches in the 1940s. During World War II, they couldn't get fresh bananas, but banana extract was readily available and would last forever. So they figured out that if you boil parsnips, mash them, and then add banana extract and a little bit of sugar, you get pretty close to a mashed banana. I was shocked at how close it was to an actual banana. Especially if it’s wartime and you're rationing, that's a pretty good win right there.
The process of slow cooking with smoke can be a daunting one. You’re committing a bunch of time to a hunk of meat, just praying that it’ll be at least somewhat palatable when it comes out of the smoker. (But I highly recommend you do it.) There’s all sorts of useful tools you’ll want when smoking meat, but there’s an…
[David], DL1DN, is an Amateur Radio enthusiast with a penchant for low-power (QRP) portable operations. Recently he was out and about, and found that 10 m propagation was wide open. Not discouraged by having forgotten his antenna, he kludges up a makeshift one using a 20 cm length of aluminum foil (see video demonstration below the break). [David] wasn’t completely unprepared, as he did have the loading coil for his portable 20 m antenna, but was missing the telescoping whip. He calculated the whip length should be around 20 cm for 10 m operation, and crinkles up a sheet of foil the approximate length. He tunes it to length by rolling the tip to shorten the “whip” until he gets an SWR minimum.
Schematic of [David]’s QRP Portable Whip Antenna[David] describes this style of portable antenna in another video, using a more conventional telescoping whip as the radiating element. The loading coil is built from common PVC pipe and insulated wire. While these aren’t necessarily the most efficient antennas, they can do the trick when portability is a major concern. For a different approach, here’s a QRP Hackaday.io portable antenna project using a magnetic loop antenna. But for the ultimate in QRP, check out this transmitter we wrote about in 2013 that uses only voice power to operate.
What are some unusual items you’ve used as makeshift antennas? Let us know in the comments below. Thanks to [mister35mm] for submitting this to our tip line.
Hoarding disorder is a mental disorder classified by the accumulation of possessions. Those with hoarding disorder often acquire an excessive amount of material items and are also unable to get rid of things, no matter how truly worthless they are. If you have ever watched an episode of the reality TV series Hoarders, you know […]
When it comes to classic cars, the entertainment options can be limited. You’re often stuck with an old cassette deck and AM/FM radio, or you can swap it out for some hideous flashy modern head unit. [Jim] had a working 8-track deck in his Corvette, and didn’t want to swap it out. Thus, he set about building himself a simple Bluetooth to 8-track adapter.
The hack is straightforward, with [Jim] grabbing a Bluetooth-to-cassette adapter off the shelf. These simply take in audio over Bluetooth, and pipe the analog audio out to a magnetic head, which is largely similar to the head that reads the cassette. Pumping the audio to the magnetic coils in the adapter’s head creates a changing magnetic field essentially the same as the audio tape moving past the cassette reader head. It doesn’t really matter whether you’re working with an 8-track player or a regular cassette. Get the magnetic field in the right spot, and it’ll work.
The electronics from the cassette adapter are simply placed inside an old 8-track tape, with holes cut in the chassis for the charge port and on switch. Then, all you need to do is pop the adapter into the 8-track deck, pair with it over Bluetooth, and you can get the tunes pumping.
Others have had success with hilarious Rube Goldberg methods, too. [Techmoan] took a classic cassette-to-8-track adapter, which is actually self-powered by the deck, and simply popped a Bluetooth cassette inside. That worked surprisingly well, and it was interesting to see how it all worked on the inside. We even saw a 3D-printed device on TikTok.
Thus, if you’ve got an old Corvette, particularly of that era with the Doug Nash 4+3 transmission, this might just be the hack for you. Alternatively, you can hack Bluetooth in to just about any classic stereo; we’ve got a guide on how to do just that. Video after the break.
Terry Gruber is probably one of the last portrait photographers in the United States to still use a 100-year-old, 12x20-inch banquet camera for its original purpose: capturing large groups in formal occasions.
Hidden away in a garage for over 40 years, this 1957 BMW 507 will go to auction in September.
Nikon introduces a video-focused camera that's also its smallest, lightest mirrorless offering yet.
Enjoy the fortnight with this unofficial drink of Wimbledon that's perfect for hot summer days.
Controlled with just three knobs, the Pal BT mixes retro looks with Bluetooth wireless convenience.
Founded in 1819, Jacob Bromwell still makes their flasks by hand using pure, lead-free solid copper.
Sotheby's is auctioning off a 712-acre private island in the Bahamas.
