shiny things in messy little piles

Tag: tools

Morning Linkage (Jan 6)

Transportation

Clas­sic Gulf rac­ing liv­ery has always been one of my favorites. And a bob­ber isn’t a bad thing. So here we have an H‑D bob­ber in a very nice ren­di­tion of the Gulf liv­ery. Yeah, I’ll give that one shop space.

Some dear friends are of a cer­tain age, and this Kawasa­ki Z1 cus­tom will bring sighs of recog­ni­tion. And then awe, this is every­thing the Z1 could have been if mod­ern forks and brakes, as well as mod­ern man­u­fac­tur­ing stan­dards had been avail­able then.

The fun of pho­tograph­ing a 1951 Coop­er Mk V, and a bit of the his­to­ry of the demon. Like so many oth­er rac­ers — it’s a string of bitza pro­to­types more than an actu­al “mod­el.” It’s also way too cute.

Science

I’ve seen these micro­scope images of snow flakes in a cou­ple of places. But nowhere are they as neat­ly tied to the uni­verse as here on Aki­ra the Don’s site where they are intro­duced with “Every lit­tle girl has got the galaxy inside her/ fun­ny how we always told the very same tales.”

Tools

Things I did­n’t know… A box scraper real­ly was orig­i­nal­ly used to scrape box­es or rather to scrape the labels off of box­es so that they could be reused.

Art, Images, and Design

Bright, bold, and um, gooey? Matt Mignanel­li. Way bet­ter than any of the “psy­che­del­ic” album cov­ers of our youth.

Thieves. More bikes and rid­ers done by the excel­lent French graph­ic artists at Silence TV. Clean lines, telling tonal val­ues, and miss­ing pieces.

Flat faced, elon­gat­ed crea­tures with scaly exte­ri­ors draw in black and white, Phlegm does a cou­ple of walls in Sheffield.

Hap­py mak­ing stor­age sys­tem. Bird hous­es on a pole for your kids room, erm, front hall.

Morning Linkage (Jun 16)

Trans­porta­tion — Com­ing Attractions

Hand-crafters Mor­gan Motor com­pa­ny will be unveil­ing anoth­er sports car in August at Peb­ble Beach. So far all we have is a over­ly processed pho­to of a sil­hou­ette. The EvaGT. Might want.

Pret­ty girls and motor­cy­cles. In this case a love­ly Swedish builder and the quest to build the fastest elec­tric bike.

Builder’s Corner

Speak­ing of build­ing things. One of the sweet­est tools you can have in any shop that works with met­al is a Bev­er­ly Shear. On the Most Want­ed list of every sil­ver­smith and anoth­er case of the real deal being worth the real dollars.

Art, Images, and Design

Turn of the (last) cen­tu­ry design can feel utter­ly mod­ern even 100 years lat­er. This serv­ing bas­ket by Ger­man sil­ver­smith Josef Hoff­man is a fine example

Seems I’m on a cut the mate­r­i­al to make the design roll so, die-cut but­ter­fly sil­hou­ettes. Black and orange. Very luxe choco­late packaging.

Photographs of Places

From the Big Pic­ture. Argenti­na cel­e­brates her bicen­ten­ni­al. Col­or, motion, pageantry, mem­o­ry. (Yes it’s a lit­tle late but dang — fine images.)

Dry glass plate neg­a­tives. An old fash­ioned, out of date, archa­ic medi­um for cap­tur­ing pho­tographs. And that might be a cry­ing shame. I dare you to click ‘View full size’ below this pho­to­graph of the West­ing­house Air-Brake plant from 1905. Be pre­pared to scroll across your multi-monitor set­up to see all the detail. Dear god, you can count the bricks.

off to be not working

Morning Linkage (Mar 2)

Transportation

The F1 safe­ty car. M‑B SLS AMG. My very favorite alpha­bet soup car. The rear light­ing is par­tic­u­lar­ly stylish.

Vin­ta­gent pro­vides anoth­er fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry from yes­ter­year. A 1967 “pro­duc­tion” bike class at the Isle of Man TT led to the cre­ation of a spe­cial Velo­cette Thrux­ton. Tales of it’s suc­cess­es and failures.

Lover­ly. In-car and side-of-the-road video of a prac­tice dri­ve for the 100 Acre Wood ral­ly. This is why they do it.

Fun­ny British “Watch for Motor­cy­clists” ad. Humor and a reminder. Plus per­haps the ulti­mate hel­met acces­so­ry, neon.

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Tools

A nice vari­a­tion on the multi-tool. I like rounder shapes for pock­et objects.

I love my rotary cut­ters for cut­ting both fab­ric and paper. I have sev­er­al includ­ing a cou­ple of the pret­ty flower pat­terned spe­cial edi­tions. Now the rotary cut­ter prin­ci­ple has been applied to emer­gency equip­ment. A bet­ter way to cut through lay­er of den­im, tex­tile, or leather.

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Science

A real­is­tic recon­struc­tion of a snake prey­ing on a rep­tile. Unre­mark­able except for the fact that the snake is 11 feet long and the rep­tile is an infant Titanosaur. Nice pho­tos of the orig­i­nals fos­sils as well as the reconstruction.

Tiny-saurs. Build-it-yourself mini mod­els, less than $20 for the deluxe kits.They also do cus­tom work if any­one is look­ing for the ulti­mate trade show swag.

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Art, Images and Design

Ani­ma­tion — sort of. Aard­man presents Home Sheep Home. Infu­ri­at­ing­ly sim­ple brows­er based game for lovers of Shaun the Sheep. Hate, hate, hate. I suck at video games.

Flickr user A Jour­ney Around My Skull is always a good source for new things to look at. These illus­tra­tions from Iran­ian chil­dren’s books are at the same time famil­iar and alien. Many seem to be folk­tales. This image of two rich­ly dressed char­ac­ters with flow­ers for heads sets the tone. There are many equal­ly fine images through out the set.

These are scary and weird and full of vague­ly obscene pigs pro­vid­ing moral guid­ance(?). In oth­er words, ter­rif­ic. Scott Has­sell.  Most­ly pen and ink. (NSFW)

Bird obsessed Jungil Hong was trained in ceram­ics at RISD but is best known for her collages.

More tomor­row…