BOOKS
8V Impact Screwdriver
I used to think you couldn’t beat a corded ½" drill for hardcore screwdriving, but I’ve just changed my mind. I recently built a wooden gate, driving a few dozen deck screws with my drill — careful, slow work. Then, I got my hands on the new Black & Decker 8V Max Lithium Impact Screwdriver. I can’t believe how much better this compact, solid tool is for the job. Instead of risking stripped screw heads, it drives like a dream. The percussive rat-a-tat becomes a loud — but welcome — sound as it turns screws with terrific torque and speed. It comes with a charger, magnetic hex bit storage, and integrated LED light.
—John Edgar Park
Kimwipes
Kimwipes look like tissue paper, but they’re quite different. These low-lint wipes are used in labs throughout the country, but they’re also great for makers. I use them mostly for cleaning 3D printer beds with acetone. Since they’re also low-static, I use them with a horsehair brush and alcohol for cleaning PCBs. The wipes are also strong enough to scrub off adhesive gunk when using a solvent like Goo-Gone. Cheaper than lens wipes, they’re great in a pinch for cleaning all kinds of optics, from microscope slides to magnifier lenses, and even your eyeglasses. They’re not bad as LED diffusers, too.
—TK
Photographs by Gunther Kirsch
For more than 10 years, Kevin Kelly (a co-founder of Wired and an editor of the Whole Earth Catalog) has been publishing recommendations of useful tools on his website, Cool-Tools.org (disclosure — I recently started working with Kevin on the site). Using the Whole Earth Catalog as an inspiration, Kevin has collected more than 1,500 reviews from his website into a full-color, massively oversized, 472-page catalog of how-to information of immense interest to makers. Kevin’s definition of a tool includes anything that helps you get something done — it could be a website, a book, a map, a material, an item of clothing, a gadget, or anything else that improves your abilities. If you wanted to rebuild civilization after a zombie apocalypse, this would be your guidebook.
The effect of seeing these reviews on large pages (when opened a two-page spread is 22”×17”) is remarkable. As Kevin wrote on his site, “There is something very powerful at work on large pages of a book. Your brain begins to make naturally associations between tools in a way that it doesn’t on small screens. The juxtapositions of diverse items on the page prod the reader to weave relationships between them, connecting ideas that once seemed far apart. The large real estate of the page opens up the mind, making you more receptive to patterns found in related tools. There’s room to see the depth of a book in a glance. You can scan a whole field of one type of tool faster than you can on the web. In that respect, a large paper book rewards both fast browsing and deep study better than the web or a small tablet.” As a result, Kevin has no plans for releasing an electronic version of the book (and the website is the electronic version, anyway).
When Kevin showed me a copy — airmailed from Hong Kong hot off the press — my mind was blown, just as it was when I discovered a copy of the Whole Earth Catalog when I was a 10-year-old. This is the book I want my kids to blow their minds with.
— Mark Frauenfelder
NICK AND TESLA’S HIGH VOLTAGE DANGER LAB
by “Science Bob” Pflugfelder and Steve Hockensmith $13 : Quirk Books
When the parents of 11-year-old twins Nick and Tesla disappear, they move in with their Uncle Newt. He’s a gadget maker for a secret government agency. As you might expect, the kids quickly get involved in a hair-raising adventure, and are called on to build a number of electronic gadgets to save themselves and the free world from an untimely end. The bonus part of this fun middle-schooler adventure/mystery series is that the book includes instructions for building the devices Nick and Tesla use: a burglar alarm, an electromagnet, a mobile tracking device, a compressed-air water rocket, and more. It’s the first in a series of books starring the techie twins. Look for the follow-up title, Robot Army Rampage, in February 2014.
—MF
ARDUINO ADVENTURES: ESCAPE FROM GEMINI STATION
by James Floyd Kelly and Harold Timmis $40 : Apress
Like Nick and Tesla’s High Voltage Danger Lab, Arduino Adventures is a science-fiction novel filled with projects you can make to help the protagonists get out of dangerous situations. In this story, you and a couple of space cadets named Cade and Ella are trapped in a damaged space station that’s orbiting Earth. Your mission is to build eight different Arduino gadgets that will enable you and the young scientists to escape the space station. Geared to a slightly older audience, even adults will have fun making a temperature sensor, a bucket transport system, a motion detecting gizmo, and more. The book was co-written by MAKE contributor James Floyd Kelly.
—MF
STRUCTURAL PACKAGING: DESIGN YOUR OWN BOXES AND 3-D FORMS
by Paul Jackson $25 : Laurence King
I recently listened to an interview with Mythbuster Adam Savage in which he enthusiastically described his ongoing love affair with cardboard as a construction material. Savage would find a soul mate in Paul Jackson, a papercraft artist and professional “folding consultant” to Nike, Siemens, and other companies. Jackson’s book contains step-by-step instructions for making cardboard packaging and reflects his long experience and consideration of package design. Based on his formula for “creating the strongest possible one-piece net that will enclose any volumetric form which has flat faces and straight sides,” the variety of box shapes shown here that can be made with a single sheet of cardboard is remarkable and inspiring. Take a look at videos and sample box templates: www.laurenceking.com/en/structural-packaging-design-your-own-boxes-and-3d-forms/
—MF
RAW AND FINISHED MATERIALS
by Brian Dereu $69 (ebook) $85 (print) : Momentum Press
Written in a straightforward, easy-to-understand style, this is a guide to the properties and uses of common materials: metals, alloys, plastics, composites, ceramics, adhesives, and more. It’s pricey, but a worthy addition to the bookshelf of anyone who builds things that must meet certain specifications achievable only through the use of certain materials. It’s also full of interesting facts: “Teflon...is the only material that a gecko lizard cannot climb” and “Dried peat bogs... plagued Russia in 2010, where more than 30 peat fires joined several hundred forest fires in producing unprecedented deadly smog throughout the western half of the country.” Brian Dereu, the author, has written two projects for MAKE: the "Dead Drop Device" (Vol 16, page 72) and the "Telekinetic Pen" magic trick (Vol 13, page 85).
—MF
by Chris Lefteri
$35 : Laurence King
Have you ever looked at something and wondered, “How did they make that?” Chances are, this book will provide the answer. With descriptions of more than 100 different manufacturing techniques, including machining, CNC cutting, electron beam machining, plasma arc cutting, blow molding, fluid forming, and centrifugal casting, this book will make you envious of the production methods that are affordable only to deep-pocketed organizations, such as powder forging (aka sinter forging), which is used to make automotive parts and hand tools. However, many of the techniques are affordable even for small runs, and, at the very least, will open your eyes to what’s possible. They may even inspire you to create a low-cost desktop manufacturing alternative to one of the expensive industrial processes described in the book.
—MF