Learning to drill a hole perfectly perpendicular to your surface is a crucial DIY skill. If you're drilling downwards into a horizontal surface in front of you, it's easy enough to see if you're leaning the drill along the X-axis, but a little trickier to tell if you're off in the Y-axis. Now a company called Cerwin Tools has developed a little laser gizmo they reckon will help you get it perfect.

Called the BullseyeBore, it's a small plastic disc with laser optics inside. You chuck it into your drill along with your bit, and then it projects easy-to-see concentric circles. By gauging the gap between the circles, one can thus tell when you're perpendicular or not:

I'd never use one myself, but I think the device is a neat idea. And it might make a good gift to encourage the uncoordinated to start working on their drilling skills.

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See Also: A Brilliant Design Feature that All Cordless Drills Should Have

Imagine buying a brand-new C5 Corvette, pulling the body off of it and replacing it with the body of a foreshortened 1965 Chevy Impala. That's just another day at the office for Chip Foose, the Art Center grad behind Foose Design.

Foose Design creates one-of-a-kind restorations, transplants, automotive mash-ups and wholly original cars that have won piles of auto show awards and attracted industry attention; one of his Art Center projects, the Hemisfear, would later go on to inspire the Plymouth Prowler. At any given moment his Southern California shop is filled with custom creations side-by-side with pieces of auto design history, primarily American, that are about to have new life breathed into them.

Here we get a look inside the hot rod god's shop, shot by Collision Hub TV. (Check out the suh-weet '56 Ford pickup that Foose's son will eventually inherit.) There's some fluff in the beginning of the video, and the shop stuff starts in earnest around 1:43 with the aforementioned Impala/Corvette:

You can see the project pages for Foose's completed builds here.

If you're anything like me, you're already on your second French press of coffee, fully caffeinated and shaking to the point of full-body convulsions as you dive head-first into another spectacular Monday. As you run your tongue along the back of your molars, however, you are horrified by the gritty sensation of leftover coffee grounds that have made their way into the crevices of your teeth, a sensation that is only made worse as you wince through those bitter last sips caused by over-extraction. Luckily for you, there's a new coffee steeper on the market.

The Duo Coffee Steeper, by fledgling product company Fellow, aims to keep the best parts of French press coffee while eliminating its downsides. "Like the French press, with Duo you control water temp and grind size," says Hanna McPhee, brand manager at Fellow. "Unlike the press, you have complete control over your brew time. The upper brewing chamber houses the grinds and hot water, extracting rich coffee. Then, when you're done brewing, you twist Duo's top to release only the coffee into a bottom glass carafe." The steeper helps keep your final cup ground-free thanks to two stainless steel filters. The first, a basket, holds a majority of the grounds, while the second, a small disc filter twice as fine as a French press filter, catches nearly all remaining coffee grounds and extra sludge. And as a bonus, all pieces are dishwasher safe and can be easily disassembled and tossed in with your other dishes.

The initial spark for Duo came about in Fall 2013, when founder and inventor Jake Miller, then a student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, enrolled in a class in Stanford's d.school called Launchpad. Previously, Miller had worked as a product manager for Caribou Coffee, and the program offered him a chance to combine his love of coffee and product design.

Led by Michael Dearing and Perry Klebahn, Launchpad pushed students to bring an idea from concept to company over the course of 12 weeks. It was there that Miller met his early team and was able to bring the idea for Duo to life. "Our goal was the big bold taste of a French press without the grit—plus the smooth clarity you typically find in a pour-over," Miller says.

The team brought on Oakland-based Enlisted Design to help with the industrial design of the product—working primarily with Julian Bagirov, "who had his hands all over the final design," Miller says. Starting with scrappy, duct-taped models, the team made over 40 prototypes that they forced onto family and friends to try—"each one exploding coffee grinds everywhere, but also incrementally sharpening our focus towards Duo's final design," McPhee says. "The shape organically came about through a series of prototypes. The weight distribution was tricky because we had to think about what Duo feels like in the user's hand when it's empty and when it's full of coffee. The pour mattered most, as that's when the balance of weight matters the most to a user. We therefore made Duo slightly top-heavy, to counterbalance four cups of coffee sitting in the glass carafe."

While Miller and his team were proud of the product, they wasn't sure if there was a market for it, so in December 2013 they put it up on Kickstarter to test the concept. "To our surprise, in just over one month we raised $193,000," Miller says. That's when the team got serious, changing their name from the playful Enormous Industries to the more mature Fellow.

Fellow quickly scrambled to secure a manufacturing partner in Taiwan and got to work. "Our biggest challenge was that we didn't do a good enough job thinking through manufacturability during the design process," Miller says. "After [the] Kickstarter, we had to completely rethink the brew mechanism—same outcome, different means. The original design just couldn't be produced at scale." In total, Miller and his team made five trips to Asia over roughly two months to troubleshoot problems and get the beta Duo produced. "Going into the project, we thought we would only need one trip," Miller says.

“Our biggest challenge was that we didn't do a good enough job thinking through manufacturability during the design process. After Kickstarter, we had to completely rethink the brew mechanism.”

Choosing manufacturing partners posed another challenge for the small team, as they looked to bring various materials together for the final product. With different materials—stainless steel, glass, plastic and silicone—came varying tolerances as each part had to be carefully considered to ensure everything fit together. To achieve this, the Fellow team needed to set-up a supply chain and assembly facility that worked in unison.

Early sketches

Duo prototypes

Manufacturing for the Duo begins with its stainless steel brewing chambers. An 18-8 sheet is deep drawn and run through various tooling steps to create the inner and outer brew chamber housings. Additional stainless steel parts are formed, then stamped and welded to the housings. These pieces are then polished to the final finish. The team chose to not incorporate plastic wherever there was coffee, to avoid any alteration in taste. "This choice added significant delays to the manufacturing process," McPhee says. Duo's lid is nylon injection-molded plastic, along with a silicon sleeve that wraps around the exterior. These parts are assembled onto the housings to finish the part assembly.

The glass carafe proved to be one of the more challenging parts to get made, with Miller rejecting four glass manufacturers before finding Fellow's current partner. Miller cites inability to consistently deliver a quality product as the main shortcoming with these manufacturers. Each carafe starts as a tube of borosilicate glass that is hand-blown and formed into shape before the threads are added. During final assembly, each part is tested and checked to meet both functional requirements and quality control standards.

After several months, Fellow's supply chain had produced the 2,200 Duos needed to fulfill its Kickstarter orders. Those Duos were then packed into boxes, loaded into a 20-foot container and shipped via ocean freight to the Port of Oakland. "When the container arrived, the entire Fellow team—all three of us—and every friend we could find on short notice unloaded the container and shipped out the units in mid-2015," Miller says.

With one product under their belt, the Fellow team is already thinking of their next one, dropping hints via Instagram that something is already in the works. Meanwhile, the Duo Coffee Steeper is available for order online through Fellow for $85, and the team has plans to expand their offering to small coffee shops and select retail stores in the future.

MIT's Mediated Matter Group develops novel production methods that allow us to shape material in new ways. As part of their Additive Manufacturing of Optically Transparent Glass project, they've developed a 3D printer that can actually handle molten glass.

The FDM-style printer they've developed, called the G3DP, uses a "Kiln Cartridge" to heat the material to 1900 freaking degrees Fahrenheit. As for applications, it's apparently not for the tabletop-sized, vase-like objects you saw in the video; it seems they intend to scale this machine up with the intent of applying it to architecture. As they explain:

[Existing] digital design and construction technologies for product and building scale are generally limited in their capacity to deliver multi-functional building skins…. The Glass Printing project is an enabling technology for optical glass 3D printing at architectural scale designed to manufacture multi-functional glass structures and facade elements.

The final size of the G3DP machine the team is envisioning would thus likely be enormous, on the scale of what China is using to 3D print those houses.

It's Knife Week at Hand-Eye Supply! Get 25% off all knives in stock with the code "KnifeWeek2015" now through Saturday 8.29.15!

To celebrate, let's re-meet the Higonokami, a simple Japanese knife with a samurai pedigree. Higo no kami means 'Lord of Higo,' referring to both the region where the knives originated and a title once given to venerated samurai. The knives have been popular throughout Japan since their introduction in 1896. Today they are only made by a tiny handful of smiths, and officially by just one maker: Mr. Motosuki Nagao, the 4th and last generation of blacksmiths to make this knife.

For hundreds of years Japan's warrior classes were the only people allowed to carry weapons like swords and axes, and the craftsmanship of those weapons is world famous for good reason. But in the Meiji era of the late 19th century the samurai were a quickly fading social class. Mounting showdowns against the royalty the samurai ostensibly served and an unsuccessful stand-off against the US Navy pushed the country to modernize rapidly, shedding the storied sword-carrying order of the old feudal system and outlawing large weapons entirely. In this context, the talented guilds of swordmaking blacksmiths turned their trade towards small goods that escaped classification as "weapons." Small pocket knives used by farmers and craftsmen? Fair game.

The story goes that in the mid-1890s, the now-knife-making blacksmith Sadaharu Murakami was approached by a tool wholesaler who had a small folding knife in a style he wanted to sell en masse. The resulting version of the knife was a simple and versatile design: a high carbon 'white steel' blade housed in folded brass scales, with no locking mechanism and a single tang to open and close. The tough and affordable design quickly gained popularity. A new knife-making guild was created shortly after and the name "Higonokami" was trademarked for the handy little knife, signifying that only members of the guild could produce it. And so the knife and membership in the Higonokami guild boomed.

At the height of its popularity the Higonokami, or higo, was a pocket companion for anyone from carpenters to school children. The easy to sharpen, long-lasting blades and small hand-friendly shape made them useful for anything from preparing drafting materials to sharpening pencils to enjoying lunch.

Sadly, a sword-based national tragedy brought knife sales and use to a grinding halt in the 1960s. With even greater constraints on knife making and ownership, the Higonokami guild dwindled. Today there is a single solitary smith working under the traditional Higonokami handle. Motosuki Nagao (alternately spelled Motosuke in our English-bound parts of the internet) is the last Higonokami blacksmith, and he can trace his craft lineage through his family back to the knife's origin over 100 years ago.

Small knives in the higonokami style are readily available throughout Japan, but true Higonokami using the traditional high quality white steel blade and construction are easily spotted. First, they still come in a distinctive yellow, blue and gold box, marked with their name. Second, they don't sport the stamped image of a Samurai, as cool as that is. Those close copies are tellingly called "Higonaifu" - higo style knives. Third, due to the high output of his single-man shop, knives made by Motosuke Nagao are all slightly imperfect. 

Their hand-crafted nature is clear when you compare even two—the tension of the joint varies, the appearance of the finishing on the blades is different, and almost every knife arrives with the telltale scratches and markings of something individually handled. In our opinion, this distinctiveness is a price worth paying if you want a pocket sized grandchild of the samurai sword. 

Available in Brass, Black, and the baby-sized Mame. $18-$35 at Hand-Eye Supply.

Last week, we introduced the firsttwo sessions of the 2015 Core77 Conference, taking place in Los Angeles on October 23. Today, we're back with a preview of our third session, Business Now.

Our first speaker is Matthew Manos, founder of verynice, a global design strategy and foresight consultancy that gives away more than 50 percent of its work to nonprofits. How does verynice manage this feat? Manos will explain how his "give half" model works—and argue why, for designers, giving away work doesn't necessarily mean losing something. He'll also talk about his newest venture, Models of Impact, an online platform that helps social entrepreneurs design business models.

Manos's book, How to Give Half of Your Work Away for Free

Next we'll have a pair of back-to-back conversations about the realities of running a design studio today. The first one will feature Victoria Slaker, vice president of design at the San Francisco consultancy Ammunition, and Pip Tomkin, founder of LA's Pip Tompkin Studio. Together with a Core77 moderator, they'll talk about identifying new market opportunities, finding good design talent, and keeping up with the increasingly rapid pace of product development.

The Polycom Soundstation Connect, designed by Pip Tomkin Studio

Our second business conversation will feature a pair of designers who run less traditional studios. Ryder Ripps is a conceptual artist living in New York City and the creative director of OKFocus, a digital marketing and design agency. Nicole Jacek is an award-winning graphic designer and the founder of the Venice Beach design consultancy NJ(L.A.). Both studios create playful, experimental work for a variety of corporate and cultural clients. Together with a Core77 moderator, Ripps and Jacek will talk about running multidisciplinary practices that are blurring the lines between art, design and branding.

OKFocus's projects include website development and design for the fashion label Nicopanda.

Tomorrow we'll be back with a preview of our final conference session, The Future Now—and tomorrow is also the last day we're offering early-bird tickets, so be sure to take advantage of those discounts before they expire.

Home-page thumbnail image by OKFocus

You've probably heard that earlier this summer L.A. dumped 96 million "shade balls" into their reservoirs. The thinking was that the black, 4-inch HDPE spheres will reduce evaporation. Here's a quick vid showing part of the mesmerizing dumping, which reminds us of Jelle Bakker's epic Marble Machine:

Authorities are not clear on how the following incident happened, but here's what we know:

1. A gigantic red ball created by Brooklyn artist Kurt Perschke apparently witnessed the video above.

2. During the installation process of Perschke's RedBall Project at the Toledo Museum of Art, the aforementioned red ball decided it had had enough, and made up its mind to travel to Los Angeles to join its smaller waterborne friends.

The following video was shot just moments after the ball broke loose and attempted to find a freeway on-ramp:

Luckily the dangerous crimson sphere, which rolled over several parked cars while blatanly ignoring a One Way sign, was detained by museum employees who somehow managed to talk it down.

Authorities are requesting that RedBall Project visitors refrain from showing the ball any videos of Bakker's marble machine, which is located across the Atlantic Ocean in Holland.

We here at Core77 wouldn't have let founding partner Allan Chochinov out of the office four years ago, if he hadn't gone off to do an important thing: Co-founding and chairing the School of Visual Arts' Products of Design MFA program. Chochinov has been toiling away at the innovative program for nearly half a decade now, turning global citizens from diverse vocational backgrounds into the world's next generation of change-savvy designers.

So how has the program shaped up thus far? Pretty darn well, see for yourself:

The video was shot by filmmaker and faculty member Michael Chung, and by all accounts the tough part wasn't shooting it, but editing it: "Honestly we had too many great stories we wanted to tell," Chung says. "Trying to narrow them down and fitting them into a few-minute timeframe was really our biggest challenge—too many good quotes and too little time!"

There's a quick Q&A with Chung on the project here. And for those of you ready to up your design education, you can learn more about the program here.

I recently purchased this retractable air compressor cable reel:

Sixty bucks is more than I wanted to spend, but it's a lot easier than manually winding the cable up each time. And since it's easier to deal with the cable, I find myself blowing the room clean much more often. I also like that it's wall-mounted, saving me some precious floor space in my tiny shop room.

However, if I had a little more floor space and had seen this video first, I might've been tempted to try to make this:

You reckon it's fully DIY? I was impressed at how clean the opening in the side of the bucket is; if the guy who made it has got good hands, it's possible he could've done it with a hole saw and a jigsaw, but I can't believe how clean it looks.

I poked around a bit to see if there was a comparable commercial product, but only found this one, for extension cords:

All I know about the guy who made the bucket-based air compressor cable reel is that his name is Joshua. He mentioned he'd post a subsequent video showing how he made it, but that was back in January of 2014 and it never materialized. He did, however, offer this in his comments under the video:

To be honest…its just a couple of circles with a support in the middle, Lazy Susan and bucket.

I used a battery drill and a 3/8 to 1/4 Hex adapter. But you could offset a knob from the center and be able to wind it up manually.

9" Lazy Susan bearing, 3 plywood circles. The bottom one being a snug tight [fit] and the other 2 having a 1/8" clearance all the way around. You will need a shaft going down the middle. Notch out a 5 gallon bucket. Drill a 3/8 hole in a piece of steel and file the hole square. Took about an hour to make the first one and 30 minutes for the last couple that I have made. I have them on extension cords and air hoses and they work great.

Core77 is holding its second-annual design conference in Los Angeles on October 23, and we're pulling out all the stops. We've got a spectacular venue in downtown LA; we're throwing two parties; we're offering optional field trips the morning after the conference—and, of course, we have a stellar lineup of speakers and topics, which we've been introducing in a seriesofposts over the last few days.

Today, we're previewing our fourth and final conference session, The Future Now. Our first speaker is Jessie Kawata, a creative strategist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she helped pioneer the first in-house design studio. Kawata will talk about her work integrating design thinking, creative methodologies and visual storytelling into early space mission concepts.

Jessie Kawata

Our next speaker is Mickey McManus, the chairman and a principal of MAYA Design, a design consultancy and technology research lab based in Pittsburgh. McManus is a pioneer in the fields of collaborative innovation, pervasive computing, human-centered design and education—and he'll talk to us about what happens when the things we design "wake up."

MAYA Design's three core disciplines

Our second-to-last speak is Javier Verdura, the director of product design at Tesla Motors, the American automotive and energy-storage company that probably needs little introduction. Verdura will sit down for a moderated conversation on his design work at Tesla and his thoughts on the big-picture future of automotive design.

Finally, NewDealDesign's creative leader and president, Gadi Amit, will talks to us about the future of technology design. As he told us in an interview last February, Amit belives that designers are now in a position to influence the lives of people to a greater extent than ever before. His talk will reflect on this moment — one of great promise for the design community, but also one of uncertainty and risk. How can designers ensure that they are at the center of conversations about assimilating technology into society? Does design education or professional development need to be rethought? What are designers doing well and what do they need to be doing better?

One of NewDealDesign's latest projects is Beep, which transforms any stereo or speakers into a conduit for streaming music.

That wraps up our four-part CoreCon preview, and we hope that we've convinced you to join us in LA on October 23. If so, grab your tickets today if all possible—it's our last day of early-pricing for the event.

Carbon fiber is awesome stuff, being both lightweight and strong. It's also a difficult-to-produce, non-renewable material. But for over a decade two material scientists from Scotland, David Hepworth and Eric Whale, have been working on a natural alternative made from, believe it or not, carrots.

To be clear, Hepworth and Whale's discovery will not replace what we think of as carbon fiber—which is actually carbon fibers that have been bonded with polymers—altogether. The new material, known as Curran, still requires the polymers to form it into a cohesive material. But the nanofibers that Curran is made from are not only lighter and stronger than the carbon stuff, but are extracted from the much more renewable source of carrot pulp and other root vegetables.

Hepworth and Whale's company, CelluComp, has already commercialized Carrot Stix, a line of fishing rods, made with Curran. They've been selling them since 2007 and have reportedly moved over half a million units. 

Currently the company is focusing on integrating Curran into paints and coatings, as it can add durability and structural properties to those materials while replacing those nasty off-gassing VOCs. As for applications in 3D product designs beyond fishing rods, CelluComp hired an organization called EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) to find ideal uses for Curran. According to Smithsonian Magazine, EMPA's research indicates "that the smartest, most ecologically responsible use for the nanofibers…was for protective sporting goods, in particular motorcycle helmets which have to be both strong and light."

In their analysis, EMPA found that protective sporting goods, which need stiff, strong, light fibers and low economic overhead, were some of the best use cases for Curran. [EMPA researcher Roland] Hischier and his team are also looking at the viability of using it in surfboards and insulation for mobile homes. The challenge now is taking the material from the lab to production, and making sure that it's still ecologically smart on a grander scale.

With any luck, the studies will pan out and the material will…take root. Because the most exciting thing about Curran isn't necessarily what it can do, but where it comes from. As CelluComp states,

Curran is manufactured from waste streams produced by the food processing industry. Common raw materials are carrots or sugar beet and, because only materials otherwise discarded by the food industry are used, it does not compete with food crops for scarce land. CelluComp is working with major players in the food processing industry to optimise use of vegetable waste.

Here's a look at what the company does:

There are people that we expect to espouse robot snakes, but Elon Musk wasn't one of them. Nevertheless, Tesla Motors has released this video of an experimental robot snake charging arm that plugs itself in:

The video comes with no written description, but Wired's got a line on what the robosnake is for. The first reason is that a self-parking car isn't much good if you need to follow it into the garage to plug it in. As for the second reason:

Charging cables soon may be too heavy to lift. Much of the R&D in the EV industry is focused on reducing charging time, most likely by pumping more voltage into the car. That requires a heavier cable.

From a design perspective, the snake form factor seems to be a logical choice: It can move up-and-out-of-the-way, yet can lean forward with enough leverage to plug itself in. It also seems ideal to plug in at different heights (to accommodate what will one day be a range of Tesla vehicle styles). A series of hinged arms might be able to accomplish the same thing, but the robosnake is unquestionably more elegant, if a bit creepy.

Texas Tech University's National Wind Institute is the place to go when you want to study how to mitigate tornado and hurricane damage. One of the toys they've got in their testing labs is a crazy pneumatic cannon that can fire, well, anything you can stuff into it, at speeds of up to 250 miles per hour.

In the following video, they load the thing up with a freaking 2x4 and fire it clear through a brick wall. Afterwards they fire another 2x4 into a fabric tape at the same speed, and watch what happens:

So what the heck is that stuff? That's Dyneema, trademarked as The World's Strongest Fiber. Dyneema is a trade name for UHMwPE, a/k/a Ultra-High Molecular Weight Polyethylene, which is reckoned to be tougher than Kevlar, and pops up in similar places like bulletproof vests. Produced by Dutch material science firm DSM, Dyneema is also used in ropes, slings, nets, sailcloth, cut-resistant gloves, and even specialty jeans and motorcycle clothing.

Though it was developed in the '60s, Dyneema doesn't seem to have the same brand recognition that Kevlar does. But that may be changing. Remember the Swiss Barefoot Company whose tough-as-nails outdoor socks we showed you a few years ago? Turns out they've now ditched Kevlar for Dyneema:

That Kickstarter campaign, which sought $10,000, has currently netted $233,826 with 12 days left to pledge. That's gotta be the first 20x-funded Kickstarter campaign we've seen that involved socks.

You can learn more about Dyneema here.

You simply have to see this. Imagine an Etch-a-Sketch had sex with a lava lamp, and the resultant offspring was raised by adoptive digital clock parents. The result could only be the Ferrolic Display, a wonderfully bizarre time-telling device created by designer Zelf Koelman.

Eindhoven-based Koelman has harnessed ferrofluid, a/k/a ferromagnetic fluid, with electromagnets within the device to dynamically form the numbers. The Ferrolic is of course run on software, which means the device needn't be a clock, but could presumably be hacked to deliver your text messages and the like.

However, in its current iteration the product wouldn't last long. Still in the prototype stages, "the lifetime of the fluids used in the glass container module mainly depends on the frequency of use. In practice this lifetime is expected to be a few months of full usage," Koelman writes. However, he also adds that "Ongoing development allows for a much longer lifetime in the near future."

Without the means of mass production, Koelman is selling 24 prototype-stage Ferrolics for €7,500 (pre-tax), or about USD $8,576. Users can connect to the device via Wi-Fi and control it via web browser. As for the short lifespan, the language on the Inquiries page of Ferrolic's website isn't quite clear, but it appears one may be able to order updated glass modules in the future.

It's Knife Week at Hand-Eye Supply! Get 25% off all knives in stock with the code "KnifeWeek2015" now through Saturday 8.29.15!

The IXL British Army Knife is a gleaming example of what traditional craftsmanship looks like in the modern age. These unusual knives have been in production since the mid-1800s, predating those flashy red Swiss doodads by around 40 years. They are still made in Sheffield, England, the region long considered the birthplace of modern stainless steel production and the gritty heart of British steelworks for over 700 years. 

The British Army Knife is distinctively shaped and distinctively useful, having descended from stout "workman's" knives used by English coachmen, craftsmen and soldiers in the early 1800s. The strikingly angled 2.25-inch sheepsfoot blade is blunted for safety, particularly nice when working in close proximity to others, or while on a moving vehicle or boat. As a modern bonus, its stubby length makes it street legal in the UK and other countries with a strict 3" blade limit.

These oddly shaped multi-tools have barely changed over the last century-plus, and are as simple and nearly indestructible as their predecessors. The biggest changes were the late-1800s addition of the can opener, which allowed soldiers to crack into their newly tinned field rations, and the switch to stainless steel in the 1910s was immediately appreciated by users in the damp British outdoors.

In addition to the sturdy sheepsfoot blade and can opener you get a built in screwdriver bit, and a thick forged marlin spike. Marlin spikes are an essential tool for anyone who sails, but also come in handy for anyone with knot picking, tie-down-tying, or general knife-unfriendly prying and scraping in their lives. Despite the chunky addition of the spike, the handle is slim and wide. No tube-like handle of the generic multi-blade knife here, just a surprisingly thin and surprisingly grippable palmful of stainless scales.

During WWI and WWII, Joseph Rodgers was the primary manufacturer of these knives (which is still mentioned on their retro-rad packaging). The IXL Army Knife torch is now carried on by Egginton group. Originally "Egginton Bros. Ltd.", the group formed in 1872, and has sought to preserve the once ailing Sheffield cutlery industry ever since. If the British Army Knife is any indicator, they're doing a great job. 

Grab your own pocketful of British tradition for $52, over at Hand-Eye Supply.

Sketching Lab is an annual design conference in San Jose, Costa Rica that promotes the design process and visual communication techniques for students and young professionals in creative industries. Every year, Sketching Lab covers the basics of how to draw, and this year I hosted a session that explored the WHY of sketching aka applied sketching or as I like to call it, "Sketching to Learn." Here are 5 lessons from this year's session:

Sketching Lab participants "Sketching to Learn"

1. Sketching is a form of communication 

Sketching communicates thoughts, tangible things, emotions and innovative ideas without words. Like verbal languages, the sketching alphabet can be arranged and rearranged into visual dialogues and even longer cohesive stories with a variety of purposes.

2. Sketching has an audience

Your audience will inform the purpose of your sketch, which ultimately will inform the type of sketching style or level of fidelity. For example, if we are in a brainstorm with our classmates or colleagues, the ideal sketch is loose and open to interpretation. It should capture the idea in a few gestural lines without much detail, that way your colleague can build on your original idea and make it even better. However, if your sketch is too tight, rigid and looks finished, then others won't feel as compelled to build on it.

"Dialogue with a Sketch" by Bill Buxton helps to illustrate a non-verbal conversation and ultimately the flow of an ideal brainstorm.

3. Sketching is a universal language

At the Sketching Lab, we usually have a mix of English and Spanish speaking participants, so naturally there are a few words or phrases that not everyone can comprehend in their second language. The one way that ensures all participants understand is through a picture or sketch that captures the idea in its purest form—proving that sketching is our universal language.

Sketching Lab participants communicating visually

4. Sketching has rhythm

The speed at which we sketch can greatly influence the type of output or content we create. As a general rule, fast and sporadic sketch rhythm usually equates to more gestural output that stems from emotion and feelings. Whereas a slower sketch rhythm equates to more pragmatic output that stems from a cerebral approach. Either way, each sketch rhythm has its own superpower. For instance, the fast and loose style lends itself more towards form exploration and the slower and tighter style allows your brain to keep with the rhythm of the sketch, thus informing it and solving problems in real time.

Sketching Lab Cofounder, Jose Gamboa, demonstrating sketching rhythm using his Sketch Aerobics methodology

5. Sketching to learn

Also known as "failing fast," is all about developing meaningful ideas by way of iterating through an abundance of throwaway ideas. Through this process, the sketch becomes merely a vehicle for thought. Remember, learning to sketch is only a skill, but sketching to learn is applying that skill to create something meaningful.

"Sketching to Learn" exercise where the participants created 10 second sketches on post-it notes of a chorreador (Costa Rican Coffee Maker) design evolution.

Alex Dodson describes himself as "a technology teacher at a secondary school tasked with inspiring the next generation of designers." We've no idea what he does in the classroom, but we're guessing his sideline business, "Burned by Design," takes care of the "inspiring" part.

UK-based Dodson has artistic talent, welding skills, an appreciation for sci-fi movies and ready access to discarded gas canisters. These four elements have led him to create the rather unusual series of wood-burning stoves you see here.

Instructor that he is, Dodson isn't shy about sharing his process; indeed, he's posted multiple Instructables on how he puts them together. The Stormtrooper one alone is fascinating:

"My biggest challenge was trying to create the sides on the helmet, I was struggling for what to make them out of," Dodson writes. "I ended up using the top section of a large gas bottle and it turned out great."

Dodson sells his creations on eBay and will ship them as far as Australia. He also accepts orders on his Facebook page, with prices ranging from £220 to £300 (US $343 to $468. Business is apparently brisk; a local newspaper from Barnsley, Dodson's neck of the woods, reports that "one customer in the USA has just ordered 30 [of Dodson's] patio heaters and says it is only his first of what will be many more orders." Not too shabby, considering Dodson only started making these last October, when he bought his first welding rig.

What we'd like to see him tackle next: Barbecue grills!

Five years in the making, the Nebia showerhead is designed to get more water onto your body while reducing the actual amount you're using. How does it do that? Science.

The Nebia is the brainchild of Carlos Gomez Andonaegui, who ran a health club in Mexico City. He observed that running all of those showers was consuming a lot of water; after attacking the problem with his father, a retired engineer, they conceived of a showerhead that could effectively atomize the water. During the subsequent years of development, thermofluid experts were brought in to refine the design. The result is that the Nebia increases the surface area of the agua by a factor of 10, while using less than a third of the stuff!

Consumers are clearly interested; the Kickstarter campaign is well past its $100,000 goal with nearly $2.6 million in funding, and nearly every Early Bird special is gone. What's also interesting is that five pledgers have opted for the $10,000 package to receive 40 Nebias each, indicating that someone who runs an apartment complex, health club or similar has taken note. The water savings, of course, scales up:

With 14 days left in the campaign, here's still a pledging option available to receive a single Nebia for $299, expected to retail for $399 when it comes out next year.

I do wonder a bit about the installation:

Those of you with plumbing experience, or experience designing plumbing fixtures, do you reckon the press-fit shown in the video will be strong enough to both support the weight of the device over time, and provide a leak-free seal? And whatever gasket or grommet is serving to provide the internal seal is bound to wear out over time; I think I'd be tempted to caulk-tack the back of the unit into place against the tiles, but I suppose it would need to be ripped off to replace the gasket or grommet. Any thoughts?

I've seen a lot of office spaces, and in many of them it's hard to quickly find a good pen or pencil on the desk, even though the resident has many of them. In a number of cases, all the user needs is a simple pencil cup, and a spare coffee mug can serve that purpose. But some people will appreciate a more carefully designed alternative.

One step up from that pencil cup is something like the Trina pencil holder from Alessi, designed by Hani Rashid of Asymptote, which allows the end user to group various types of writing and drawing instruments together. It seems that some of the sections are shorter than others, which would accommodate pens, pencils and markers of varying heights.

Anthropologie's Multiples pencil holder has many of the same features as the Trina, but it also has smaller sections for any writing tools the end user might want to keep separate from the rest. The smallest container could possibly hold related items, such as erasers. But to some end users it could be an annoyance, taking up unnecessary space in what would otherwise be just a pencil holder.

The acrylic pencil holder from russell+hazel looks lovely in the photos—and probably less lovely in real life unless the end user has a matching set of pencils, sharpened to perfect points. It holds 14 No. 2 pencils; some pens would also fit, but probably not the fatter pens that many end users prefer. So this is not a general-purpose pencil/pen/marker holder as many other "pencil holders" are.

Less & More makes pen and pencil holders with slots for individual items. The pen holders are designed for larger pens, including fountain pens; the diameter of each hole is 1.2 cm. The holders can also work for smaller pens if the end user wouldn't mind seeing the pens at a tilt.  

The pencil holder has staggered holes for the two rows, making it easy to see all the pencils. I did wonder a bit about the center of gravity and the stability of this design, but I haven't seen any purchasers complaining. 

This type of pen or pencil holder would appeal to end users who appreciate the visual cue that an item is missing when a slot is empty. 

Dudek Modern Goods also has pen holders with holes measuring .5", but the holders can be ordered with some larger holes if need be; that's a terrific customization feature to offer. Some of the pen holders come with a slot for a slender notebook— a smart combination that will suit some end users well.

You see a lot of pen and pencil holders, often with an animal motif, which have the writing utensils going out at all sorts of angles—as with this one from Lenny Mud. This can be a great design for children if it encourages them to put the pens and pencils away, and some adults will just like the whimsy. But such designs can also take up more desktop space than other designs do, and sometimes the pens and pencils seem less stable in the holes.

Two kinds of pen stands favored by those who sell high-end pens could also work for those using such pens in their offices. This 7-pen stand from Penn State Industries really puts the pens on display, but they're also easy to grab and use. 

One purchaser (of the larger 12-pen stand) complained about "the base, where the holes are wide enough, but too shallow to securely hold the pens that have larger finials, especially thick, cylindrical ones" but numerous other purchasers didn't report any such problems. Still, it's a good reminder how important it is to get the sizing right when designing this type of product.

Pens can also be held horizontally, as with this cascading pen stand. It's a flexible design, accommodating many pen sizes. However, since it's 8 1/2" deep, it's going to take up a fair amount of desktop space, and many end users don't have that space to spare.

The Pen Rest solves that desktop space problem; it's a modular stackable pen holder that's less than 2" deep. ("Modular" and "stackable" are two of an organizer's favorite words.) The original product was launched on Kickstarter, and there's a new Kickstarter now (closing on August 31 at 12: 29 p.m. PDT) that offers the same design with new color options.

While most pen/pencil/marker holders are designed to work with many different writing and drawing tools, another design approach involves specialization. For example, this laser-cut marker stand is designed specifically for the Copic Ciao.

Flexible, roll-up keyboards made from silicone, like these two, actually can't be rolled up that tightly, making them awkward in their stored form.

On top of that, they provide the spongy feedback that no pro typist desires.

In contrast, LG's just-announced Rolly Keyboard seems a much more intelligent design. They've kept the keyboard rigid, providing the tactile feedback you're accustomed to with a regular keyboard, and the "key pitch"—the spacing from one key to another, on center—is 17mm, close to the 18mm key pitch of a desktop keyboard. The keyboard is hinged between each row, allowing the user to roll it, lengthwise, into a stick form.

The UX is well-considered too. To turn the keyboard on, one only need unfurl it, and it both powers on and automatically pairs via Bluetooth with your device. It runs on a single AAA battery that the company reckons will last for three months.

Take a look:

The Rolly is expected to be available in the U.S. come September, with Asia, Europe and Latin American markets receiving it later in the year. No price has been announced.