Search Results for: label/art%20of%20memory/2011/04/making-it/2010/06/the-urban-homestead

996 results

Fun With Mortises and Tenons

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Design
8 Comments
...els of craftsmanship, I haphazardly fixed the table with screws and nails. Making the mortises and tenons took forever even though I was working with power tools–a plunge router to make the mortises and a table saw to cut the tenons. Of course, a great deal of the time in the workshop was spent in idle chatter. My workshop is right on the public sidewalk and serves as a kind of conversational trap for every passing neighbor and dog walker. Kelly s...

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Whacked the President with a Single Stick

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Fitness
3 Comments
...e ex-Colonel nor the ex-Lieutenant Colonel of the Rough Riders has aimed a making this point, but both havve confined themselves to developing their skill with the weapon and getting as much exercise and fun out of the game as possible. Notwithstanding this, it is impossible to play with single-sticks without occasionally getting hurt, and both the President and his ex-superior officer have daily given and received some pretty severe raps. Lumps h...

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SolSource Review Part I: Assembly

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Appropriate Technology, Solar, Solar Oven Summer, Water and Power
4 Comments
...We’re going to break our initial review of the SolSource into a couple of parts, starting with assembly. But first, a few basic things so you know what you’re looking at. The SolSource is a parabolic mirror with a clever central cutout to allow easy access to the cooking surface. The sun’s rays are directed beneath a pot/frying pan support, so that all the cooking heat is focused on a single spot at the bottom of the cooking pot or pan. A small mi...

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How to Mix and Shape Dough Explained Without Words in Two Minutes

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Bread, Food
6 Comments
...bout this video: Bakers use scales and so should you. Mixing dough entails making an incredible mess. Learning to shape dough requires practice. As regards point #3, my plan is to mix up some practice dough (I use the dead dough recipe in the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook but any bread dough will do) and practice over and over. As a professional once told me when I complimented her on her pizza shaping prowess, “It’s because I’ve done it 10,000 times.”...

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Restoring the Original Black Box: Our Western Electric 534A Subset

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Appropriate Technology, Thoughtstylings
7 Comments
...s were mounted in a separate box in a central location in the house. This particular ringer box was manufactured between the years 1918 and 1930 and replaced earlier wooden models. Phone expert Ralph O. Meyer speculates that the Western Electric 534 ringer box may be where we get the term “black box” from (flight recorders are bright orange, not black). Ringer boxes and the phones that went with them were also one of the first consumer electronic...

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