Community Power! Elect Hugo Soto-Martinez!

...ary working people. He supports building social housing, jobs programs and making our streets safer for everyone. You can read more about his platform on his website. Electing Hugo is just the beginning. There’s a lot of work to do to turn this city around. Thankfully, more people are starting to pay attention to local elections. You can help out by going to my fundraising page for Hugo and chipping in a few dollars. Wherever you are you can be a...

Read…

Unflipping the Gentrifence

...n essential resource for anyone interested in historical preservation. I recycled all of the old gentrifence, but had to buy some more lumber to complete the project. To make the oddly shaped pickets, I used a combo of table saw cuts along with a jig for my jigsaw. Making jigs increases speed and safety. I’m not entirely happy with the metal handrail but, since I had it already, I didn’t want to let it go to waste. It’s functional and I don’t have...

Read…

Saturday Linkages: Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind

Blow Blow Thou Winter Wind, John Everett Millais 1892. Ornament Making in the Octavia Lab ‘The Best Thing You Can Do Is Not Buy More Stuff,’ Says ‘Secondhand’ Expert Do This Before It Snows! Snow Blower Maintenance A wheel education: the environmental diploma you earn by bike Cypress Park’s “Egghead Stonehenge” takes a hit Notes on an afternoon inside John Portman’s Bonaventure Hotel Should I Worry About Death Cap Mushroooms in California? Video:...

Read…

Fun With Mortises and Tenons

...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...

Read…

Saturday Tweets: Spiders, Boomerangs and a New HGTV

...via @Curbed — Root Simple (@rootsimple) July 2, 2018 I’m getting better at making and throwing #boomerangs. This thing was made out of light weight, cheap, underlayment plywood from home depot. Got the plans from this ridiculously large and entertaining database https://t.co/9gtj8155J2. Fun to browse just to see silly shapes. pic.twitter.com/XxFfqWwvpu — federico tobon (@wolfCatWorkshop) July 6, 2018 Meanwhile, in the beautiful world of medieval m...

Read…