Tools you have to have: Japanese Saw

It’s good, nay, neccessary to have the right tool for the job. If you have to do lots of different things it is therefore good to have the right tool for lots of different jobs. All the more so if you want to keep your toolkit small & light. In New York it is expensive and inefficient to go to the job site every day with a truck full of tools. Generally you load in all your relevant tools and materials with a crew and then take public transportation most of the other days. Often though you may have a small job where you need just a small bag of hand tools and a drill set.

Even if you don’t think you’ll need to cut any wood, you never know. Or you know you will but just don’t want to lug a saw with you. So The Japanese Pullsaw is a great thing to have in the bag. As opposed to standard American handsaws, Japanese saws cut on the pull stroke. This means that the blade can be incredibly thin, since they do not need the stiffness required for a push cut. Also, the blades easily are removable from the handle which makes for very easy storage in even a small tool bag.

There are many varieties of Japanese hand saws, but the two most common are the Dôzuki and the Ryôba:

Dozuki Saw: A backsaw that is useful for precise cuts because of its stiffening rib on the back. Great to have in the shop to do all those hand-cut dovetails. Disadvantage is the depth of cuts are limited.

Ryoba Saw: A double-sided saw with a cross-cutting blade on one side & ripping blade on the other. This is my preference. The cross-cutting blade is incredibly sharp and can cut through a 2×4 in just a few strokes. Add it to a miter box & you have an easy way to cut a few small trim pieces if you don’t want the fuss & dust of a chop-saw.

120 Bikes on the Wall

Bike Shop  in Altlandsberg, Germany.

via notcot

Taking apart the Truck

Removed the rear fender and the mounting bolts for the Utility Body. Only 2 bolts in back & 2 brackets toward front holding it on. I can remove it now whenever I want.

It’s mainly because of these Nasty Welds holding on the rear bumper that I’m sure that the Utility Body isn’t original. The bolt at the top is one of 2 that held the Body in place.

As I take everything apart, I’m able to see the real extent of all the rust damage. Sadly I’m afraid a large part of this is from the past 2 years that the truck was sitting idle in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

Truck

Been having dreams about my truck lately, so I think that means I want to start the overhaul. So yesterday spent a few hours cleaning out the trash, pulling weeds that have grown around it, and began to look at what I’m facing. In short: a lot of rust.

Most finish panels on the front have rust spots – a few are way beyond repair (d/s quarterpanel I think). Bottom of doors need to be repaired, etc etc. Hopefully no major structural rust, but that remains to be seen.

I think I’m going to proceed with removing the “utility” back of the truck. It’s big, heavy, and none of the latches work anymore.

Anyway. here we go.

Make Flowers Not War

From design you can trust

Handmade Tops from Germany

Aren’t these tops beautiful? Handmade by German manufacturer Mader Kreiselmanufaktur. Check out the site to see them being made!

via notcot

Breaking Bottles in Brooklyn

Nice piece in NY Times about David Belt’s new project in Brooklyn called “Glassphemy!”. David’s the guy who created DIY pool parties in dumpsters last summer and obviously he’s trying hard to one-up himself by creating a bottle smashing venue in Gowanus. Designed by Belt & Vamos Architects it is essentially a 20′ x 30′ box made from steel tubing, bulletproof glass and a lighting system designed by Jason Krugman that flashes when bottles smash.  Users stand on a raised platform and throw bottles onto the opposite wall where they smash before the faces of people standing behind the opposite clear wall 30 feet away.

Recently unveiled at a private party in the undisclosed section of Brooklyn, “Glassphemy!” is inspired by a desire to mix the visceral pleasures of breaking glass with the socially conscious needs of recycling. And what happens to all the broken glass? Belt plans to have it all recycled on-site in a variety of ways. There’s a machine to make sand for one a local beer garden and local designers Hecho have built a bicycle-powered glass polisher from a concrete mixer.

“Glasssphemy!” will officially open on May 20 to invited guests. Though not as awesomely simple as a Dumpster Pool, its nevertheless a nifty way to mix our lust for breaking things with saving the planet.

Circus Knie Tent Setup

Zirkus Knie Timelapse tilt shift from SanktGallen.ch on Vimeo.

A few years ago I traveled with a circus friend and was able to see Circus Knie in a beautiful Swiss town. After the performance was over we got to see the real show – watching the teardown! I think it took about 2 hours for the crews to completely disassemble the tent, load everything on lorries and get it all on the road to the next town.  Very impressive!  At the time I was living in New York  after several years on the road with circuses – the most recent being in Oklahoma with a long & disorganized takedown and long drives between towns.  I was so impressed that Knie’s system was so efficient and I was also jealous that their travel between shows was so short (small country, you know….). Anyway – saw this link on swissmiss and it took me back a few years…

We Are Happy To Serve You

Nice piece in the New York Times on the passing of Leslie Buck, designer of the ubiquitous “We Are Happy…” take-out cups. Some designs become the air we breathe…

Clever but BAD

Just visited a client’s house in the West Village and this doorknob installation made me laugh it was so BAD! They bought this place newly renovated in, oh I don’t know, probably around ’98 I would guess. It’s one of those gorgeous Landmarked buildings down there but the interior renovation was clearly a “SELL RENO” that has all the high-end hardware that looks good at first but then things start to fall apart little by little….

I’ve never seen a trick this bad though – the door is a standard 1-3/4″ metal door (which is bad enough in a high end house…) but the knob & latch is  a fancy Baldwin that requires a smaller hole than the standard 2-1/8″. So what did they do since metal doors always come with the bigger hole? They filled it with some sort of wood putty or Bondo, and redrilled a smaller hole into that material for mounting the knobs. I’ll bet they were so proud of their ingenuity… but now all that fill has shattered & fallen out so the knob is just hanging there, looking all ugly.

Amazing….