I Organized My Drill Bits and You Won’t Believe What Happened Next

...t through the drawer wasting time better spent actually using the bit. Sometimes, if I couldn’t find a bit, I’d buy another one at the hardware store only to find out that I already had that particular size. Last week, as part of the sort of sweeping workshop reorganization that comes with middle age, I vowed to put an end to the madness that was my drill bit drawer. There is not one true path to drill bit storage but rather many paths leading up...

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The Kit Houses of the Pacific Ready-Cut Home Company

...lly think we need a small house movement rather than a tiny house one. Why not just start building these perfectly good early 20th century houses again? A big thanks to Colin for the tip on the catalog and on a article in the LA Times about the Pacific Ready-Cut Company. Which, before its demise switched to manufacturing surfboards! The Times article notes that there are thousands of Pacific Ready-Cut Designs not shown in the 1925 catalog I linked...

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Do I Need Books?

...as well as some new ebooks that the library makes available for free. Sometimes one’s personal library can devolve into a kind of virtue signaling, a way to seem smart when visitors drop by. In my case it’s definitely time for a book winnowing and, yes, I will still have a bookshelf populated with books I use for reference. Kelly has her own books and shelf. Of course books have a tendency to accumulate and I have no doubt that I will have to go...

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Team Human

...here will be no podcast this week due to the fact that I’ve spent too much time glazing windows and too little time booking guests. Rest assured that you can look forward to future Root Simple Podcast episodes involving topics as varied as climate science, lard and rum. If you are glazing windows today and want a podcast to listen to, let me suggest Douglas Rushkoff’s Team Human. While you struggle with the putty, Rushkoff struggles with our troub...

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Fun With Mortises and Tenons

...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 suspects that the exchange of neighborhood gossip is the real purpose of the “workshop.” I will neither confirm nor deny this. But back to the table. Mistakes were made. While routing out one...

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