KEFIRKO is back on Kickstarter to seek funding for the KEFIRKO Cheese Maker, a simplified glass jar and strainer appliance aiming to make homemade probiotic cheese a normal thing. It looks easy to use, has minimal parts and there's the option to stray from probiotic cheese to experiment with other varieties—I think I can get behind this one.

All you do is fill up the strainer and let it sit in the fridge for as long as you want (less time = softer cheese, more time = harder cheese). Apparently, you can even drink the gross pee-colored liquid at the bottom for more health benefits?

In any case, here are some delicious cheese dishes you will be able to make by yourself:

At first, I thought KEFIRKO was a single-use kitchen appliance, which I detest 96% of the time. (Other examples include salad spinners and garlic peelers—if you can tell me three or more different ways to use a salad spinner, maybe I'll reconsider my stance on the product category.) However, it turns out you also have the option to make beverages, including coffee and almond milk, because of the dense strainer. A concern, though, is that the strainer looks tricky to clean. 

Anyways, I think the appliance's small size and versatility justify it for cheese lovers and cheese snobs that seek complete control over quality—you can't blame some cheese maker in France if your DIY probiotic cheese sucks. 

KEFIRKO already reached its Kickstarter funding goal by a landslide with over a month left in its campaign.

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Journalist Christopher Schwarz is something like the Indiana Jones of woodworking, uncovering valuable treasures from the past. In 2010 he was going through a book from 1678, Joseph Moxon's "The Mechanick Exercises"—widely thought to be the first book on woodworking published in English—when he came across the following illustration:

That's a dual-screw vise used by joiners of the period. Unlike a single-screw vise, the wide gap between the two screws allowed the craftsperson to hold wide boards in the jaws of the vise, to perform operations (like dovetailing) to the ends. In the accompanying text, Schwarz uncovered a reference to a permutation of the vise being a freestanding piece of equipment that could be clamped atop the workbench, rather than to the side of it.

This got him excited, as that design solves a common ergonomic problem amongst woodworkers. Conventional vises are mounted directly to the sides or ends of workbenches, as in the illustration, and are level with the benchtop. This means that when a craftsperson is attempting to cut dovetails, they must hunch down to the level of the benchtop, an activity that's hard on the back. Having a freestanding vise atop the workbench would elevate the work to a more ergonomically-comfortable height.

Schwarz built a prototype, writing up the process in an article for Popular Woodworking. "After a few revisions, here is what I came up with," he writes.

Image credit: Christopher Schwarz/Popular Woodworking

Image credit: Christopher Schwarz/Popular Woodworking

This vise solves a lot of problems that we joiners have. It allows you to hold stock of almost any size (mine holds up to 24-1/8?-wide material) with an incredible grip. More so, it raises your work above your benchtop surface. The vise as shown is 6? high, so the top edge of the vise is 39? from the floor.

The board I've clamped in the vise is 44? off the floor and is as stable as something clamped between two boulders. What does that mean? No more stooping to saw dovetails, tenons or other joinery.

And because the vise is portable, that means I can:
1. Put the vise wherever I want on the bench – the end, the back edge, wherever.
2. Remove it when I don't need it and hang it on the wall – most woodworkers don't need a twin-screw vise every day.
3. Leave it unclamped on the benchtop, and use it like a giant handscrew clamp (Peter Follansbee hipped me to this function).

The vise is quite easy to build – I used some scraps. The only other key piece of shop equipment is an 1-1/2? wooden thread box and tap, which is available at many suppliers for less than $50.

After the article ran, the popularity of the vise exploded within the woodworking community, helped along by Schwarz's step-by-step instructions of how to DIY it. Although Joseph Moxon did not invent the device—there are references to the design in other texts from the time period—it is now colloquially referred to as a Moxon vise. (Or in Commonwealth countries, Moxon vice, since they spell "vice" as in "Miami.")

Here are some links you may find of interest:

1. Schwarz's original Popular Woodworking article with instructions on how to build the vise.

2. Joseph Moxon's "The Mechanick Exercises" is public domain and has been digitized by the University of Michigan. It is available for free download here.

3. Christopher Schwarz runs Lost Art Press, "a small Midwestern publishing company that seeks to help the modern woodworker learn traditional hand-tool skills." Below is their mission statement, which also explains the company's name:

Since World War II, traditional and effective hand skills have disappeared from the home, professional and school woodshops in North America.

Those quickly disappearing hand skills have been replaced by a reliance on machine work, even when it is less effective, slower or sloppier. The founders of Lost Art Press – Christopher Schwarz and John Hoffman – are trying to restore the balance between hand and machine work by unearthing the so-called "lost arts" of hand skills and explaining how they can be integrated with the machinery in the modern shop to help produce furniture that is crisp, well-proportioned, stout and quickly made.

Next we'll look at a very practical Moxon vise with some modern-day design upgrades.

Everyone loves BBQ and other grilled foods while camping, but cleaning, storing and moving your grill is always a challenge. Often, the weight of camping gear, a typical grill's bulky size and general lack of storage space are obstacles for outdoor lovers. BBQ grills should be easy to clean and easy to cook with, which is why Bison's rolling grill can be rolled in for compact size and is simple to clean clean.

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When sifting Coroflot for interesting projects and design thinking to highlight, we usually skew towards work that has at least made it to prototyping. Conceptual ideas are important, but they're like [a rude analogy]: everybody's got them. That said, the AR Cane concept caught my attention by answering a familiar medical problem with slightly fantastical tech elements, in a form we haven't seen much of yet. In short: smart canes aren't a common item yet, but they might be useful for a wide array of users. 

The bulk of assistive technology for Dementia patients leans on wearable tracking devices or tools for aiding memory and recognition. While helpful, these often overlook the willful abandonment of small items, since smart jewelry and wearables can be taken off or ignored if their disoriented user finds them unfamiliar. 

As proposed, the AR Cane proposes to serve in a smart capacity—offering a display with tracking and orientation tools—while maintaining a base level function as a cane. Users who may become lost could benefit from a built-in navigation system, and those who become frustrated, forgetful of, or disinterested in the tech may be more likely to continue using a cane if they're accustomed to relying on it physically. The AR Cane also adds a camera, voice control, and Bluetooth interface for phones. 

The project was shared at Coroflot by team member TaeHoon Park, a senior Industrial Design student at Shintaru Akatsu School of Design at the University of Bridgeport. The team's attraction to standard consumer tech shines through the starkly modern forms in this iteration, featuring contemporary sharp angles instead of ergonomic curves. Though this element of the concept would likely be ironed out in the first serious round, the flat projecting face is an interesting surface to use for a data display. 

Are the proportions conducive to working as a cane? I'd hope so, and if not someone's grandpa can whittle you a proper guide in one afternoon. Would it be as easy to crack as a phone when dropped? I hope not, because falling over is what canes are secretly best at. 

Additionally, the detailed map and displays proposed might not jive with many older users' decreased range of sight. But I'd wager that streamlined visuals, a large screen area, and thoughtful haptics could keep navigation feasible. 

Because issues like Dementia and Alzheimer's affect every patient differently, a networked cane could potentially assist a wide range of users—from homebound to the staunchly independent—with the option for customized menus and alert settings. In cases where a user's language centers are affected, they could record a written shopping list of the product words needed. Recorded audio or automatic boundary alerts could help family members who wander a bit too far, and help the family members looking for them. 

Though not quite common it's not a wild idea. Different takes on "smart" canes have debuted over the last few years, with terrain recognition tools for the sight impaired showing up by 2015, and simpler digitized walking sticks debuting as recently as this year's CES. So the cane does have some leg to stand on.

What do we think? Is a tool-packed iPhonesque interface a good fit for the humble walking stick? Or just another expensive theft risk while relaxing at the cafe? What would it take for this to be a daily use design?

After Christopher Schwarz wrote an article on how to build a Moxon vise, untold numbers of people tried it. But a sticking point for some was that one of the design elements in Schwarz's rendition are handscrews made from wood:

Creating these requires turning blanks and cutting threads into them, a process some found difficult. People began reaching out to Benchcrafted, an Iowa-based manufacturer of high-quality vise hardware. "Soon after the [Moxon vise] article appeared," they write, "we received numerous requests for hardware to make a vise similar to Schwarz's version, but without having to buy a tapping kit and deal with the frustration that many have experienced with these kits."

Benchcrafted looked at the design of the Moxon vise and brought it into the 21st Century. The wooden screws were jettisoned, replaced by carbon steel Acme screws, which can withstand a tremendous amount of force. (Acme screws have trapezoidal thread profiles; this makes them exceptionally strong and the go-to thread profile for power machinery.)

Acme threads

Acme threads

Rather than requiring the user to twist handles with octagonal cross-sections, as in Moxon's 17th-century version, Benchcrafted added a much more ergonomic touch: Their signature cast-iron handwheels, which have enough mass that once you get them going, they practically spin themselves.

Next they made this interesting design choice: The handwheels do not drive the screws, but rotate on the screws. "Instead of the handwheel rotating the screws and being restricted by the weight of the movable jaw, we've fixed the screws to the vise itself (they don't move) and tapped the handwheels, allowing them to move in and out on the rigid screws. The mass of the wheels and the polished acme threads allows the hand wheels to spin freely and do the work of drawing the jaws together effortlessly."

Finally they've lined the inside of the front chop with Crubber, a material made by grinding cork and rubber and combining them under high pressure. Cut into sheets and used to line a vise, the material provides excellent grip yet will not mar the workpiece.

If you don't understand any of the descriptions above, watch the following demo and all will be clear:

Benchcrafted manufactures and sells the Moxon vise hardware (for $149) only; the end user is meant to provide the wood and knock it together.

Benchcrafted's design improvements to the Moxon vise are apparent. But next we'll look at how a couple of ingenious fellows pushed the design even further with some clever hacks.

Designers are well aware that building artistic objects can be educational, and educational materials can be artistic. The recently debuted Trido magnetic blocks are an exercise in both. The blocks are designed around platonic solids, using a combination of three geometric shapes to form familiar patterns for construction with an enormous array of possible forms.

Much like the cubic building toys we featured last week, the magnetic structure helps make the blocks versatile and quick to rearrange. Thoughtful placement of the internal magnets means every side of every piece can pair with any other side of any other piece. What makes this UK startup different is the playful geometric possibility and fantastic colors.

The benefits of playful construction for young brains are pretty well established, with payoffs in hand eye coordination and cognitive development. 

The honeycomb combinations of octohedrons, tetrahedrons and half-tetrahedrons can go a long way while teaching geometry principles. And for younger users non-figurative toys can help tap into creative storytelling... while a larger block size might be better for mouthy young builders. 

Hand painted Trido blocks in beta

While a large chunk of their successful Kickstarter campaign can be attributed to that kid-friendly appeal, designers and other fidgeters might benefit too. Tactile processing can be soothing for people of all ages, and having attractive desk items is proven to boost morale. so if the blocky haptics of the Fidget Cube are too utilitarian, these satisfying magnetic art blocks might feel more at home on your desk. Luckily for us, the Trido blocks are likely to arrive for sale late summer 2017. 

Here in Part 4, the prototype of the mobile solar charging platform starts to take shape. Industrial designer Eric Strebel, founder of Botzen Design, shows us the tricks of the trade:

- Using a laser cutter on the styrene forms that he vacuum-formed last time, he's able to get precise shapes in a compound-curved surface

- When cutting out parts that don't require an entire sheet of material, he uses the opportunity to cut extra test parts out of the extra material

- The versatility of styrene, which he's even able to fashion hinges out of

- The benefits of wet sanding, and the importance of sanding blocks

- How to solvent-weld plastic with great precision

Check it out:

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We saw manufacturer Benchcrafted's improvements to the Moxon vise. But depending on your own preferences and workflow, there's always room for yet more design upgrades. Here David Barron, a UK-based furniture maker, has considered his experience with the vise carefully, then implemented two very clever modifications:

Barron's attention to ergonomic and functional detail, with the recesses and such, is the stuff good industrial designers are made of. 

I've already been thinking about getting one of these vises, and if I do I'll also head to McMaster-Carr to get the springs and such.

We've heard the story of how the Moxon vise was resurrected by Christopher Schwarz; seen a modern-day version created by Benchcrafted; and watched David Barron hack his for greater efficiency.

In this video, engineer Paul Marcel shows you how to actually build one from the Benchcrafted kit. And not only that, he shows you why he deviates from the assembly instructions to introduce more functionality, and reveals a couple of clever modifications and a jig he's made to speed his workflow.

Because this video is long, we've cued it up into sections for you, so you can skip to the parts you're interested in:

Introducing the Vise

[40 seconds long]

The Original Design's Intended Usage

[1 minute long]

Revealing the Benchcrafted Kit's Contents

[2 minutes long]

Building the Vise: Materials You'll Need

[47 seconds long]

The Actual Build 

(with Paul Marcel's modifications)

[7 minutes long]

Demonstrating its Basic Use

[2.5 minutes long]

Demonstration of Modification 1

(Why he made it assymetrical with the extra long right side)

[50 seconds long]

Demonstrating a Clever Jig

[2 minutes long]

Demonstration of Modification 2

(Why he cut V-grooves into the chops)

[1 minute long]

A Closing Joke

[30 seconds long]

As with the David Barron modifications, I'm digging Paul Marcel's industrial-designer-like careful consideration of how he will actually use the vise and designing for that specifically. And little details, like the way he thinks ahead and future-proofs it with the extra mortise in the chops.

Lastly, please note that this video was made several years ago, when Benchcrafted was still selling the kit with suede rather than Crubber.

In the "good ol' days," grinders would sit for 8-10 hours a day straddling a 4-foot diameter solid sandstone grinding wheel spinning at a surface speed of about 60 miles per hour. While wheel explosions were rare, early death from silicosis wasn't. It was a known occupational hazard, but grinders were willing to risk respiratory problems and perhaps an early death in return for pretty good wages. Back then most folks didn't have the luxury of thinking long-term and there was no shortage of apprentice grinders.

Fast forward 150 years to present day Brooklyn. In the Gramercy Tools workshop we do what some might consider an excessive amount of hand filing. We hand-sharpen all our saws, and we manufactured this beautiful line of Kings County Hammers where we hand-filed every last decorative detail:

We do/did it that way because it's traditional, we love the old ways, and honestly the results speak for themselves. However in both cases we have found the learning curve for filers to be high and the people who have the skill for the work don't want to do it day in and day out - no matter the pay.

Nearly all of our top filers have experienced hand/elbow/wrist problems at one time or another. It's not the sort of thing that makes us feel good about handwork. Part of the issue is that we've grown. We simply make more saws now than ever before. Also, the files that are available today are of significantly worse quality than a few years ago, and don't remove material as quickly. So, we have to file more. This raises our cost and in general requires more work to get a consistent product we are proud of.

The issues raised by repetitive stress injury caused by following traditional manufacturing methods are substantial, and increasingly relevant as we see more and more folks interested in returning to traditional methods of manufacturing. Is grinding without proper dust collection "old timey" or simply stupid? Is repetitive stress injury an acceptable by-product of a world-class saw or hammer? In both cases the answer is obvious. No product is worth endangering the wellbeing of an employee, after all it's no longer the "good" ol' days.

As we see it, a responsible company has the following possible solutions:

1. Stop making hand-filed products.
2. Drastically reduce the workload per-filer and raise prices accordingly.
3. Outsource the work so that it becomes someone else's problem.
4. Automate portions of our process, reducing the necessary handwork.

There was only one right answer for us, #4. We are highly invested in growing as a company, in maintaining our reputation for the highest quality, and in the health and well-being of our employees.

The reason we were hand-filing the Kings County Hammers was that our CNC Machine shop, whom we've worked with for years, didn't think they could machine the details - even if cost wasn't an issue. The slight asymmetry of the decoration (which makes it look right to the human eye) makes for exceptionally complicated cutter paths, fragile cutter geometries, and several tooling changes, not to mention complicated fixturing.

After the first batch of hammers were hand-filed, we threw down the gauntlet, and asked the crew over at the machine shop to try again. It took them about a month to get back to us, and the conversation started with "I think we've got it, but you're not going to like the cost."

The rest of the conversation revealed a HUGE surprise: Our hammers cost as much to produce on a CNC mill as they do with a hand file. Almost to the dollar!

So we switched production of the hammers to be done entirely by CNC. At most we'd touch up the decoration after polishing if needed, and that was the only time they saw the business end of a file. And were glad to say, that using CNC gave us a crisper, more consistent look—with a lot less wear and tear on our staff.

So what does this all mean? Were we giving in to computers and machines? We didn't think so; to us, it felt more like we were pulling our heads out of the sand.

There will always be processes that require handwork. For instance, each hammer head still required a ton of hand processing: From patina, to differential tempering over a flame, to mirror polishing, and grinding. But we no longer had the sinking feeling that we're asking the guys and gals in our shop to do something that could lead to injury. And we steadfastly kept production local, and in the hands of craftsmen and women who take pride in producing top quality work. The end result was a better product than we had before without the dumbing down of the design that automation sometimes brings. I think this combined result of hand and CNC puts us squarely in the modern craft tradition - one that dates back to tilt hammers and Jacquard looms.

As of this writing I am working on motion control software to help us file saws. We plan to do the rough tooth forming on custom automated machinery that we are building and programming ourselves. Kris, our head saw filer, is counting the minutes - but it's not because a machine is about to take his job. It's because it's a waste of his time to do anything but the final hand sharpening. Just about everyone agrees that hand filing produces a better saw than machine filing and our competitors seem to agree. They all either machine-filed to save money, or machine-filed then hand-filed over it. We have added a few programming tricks but the real test is coming.

"The Turing Test" proposed by mathematician Alan Turing was an idea to place a human and a computer behind a screen and have people ask questions of them. If the audience couldn't tell which was the machine and which was the human, then we can say artificial intelligence works. Once our new system gets operational, we plan to have a little test - We call it "The Tim Test." We take two saws, one totally hand filed, one filed by machine with final sharpening done by hand. If Tim Corbett, our head designer or anyone else can't tell which is which, then we know we have something we can offer the public. Otherwise - it's back to the drawing board.

As for the hammers, I'm afraid this story doesn't end well. Ultimately we had to stop making them. We were making them out of W1 tool steel that was hardened differentially—soft on the inside, hard on the outside, which made them a pleasure to use—but we could not find a manufacturer who could harden them consistently, and the loss rate became unacceptable.

Still, producing the Kings County Hammer taught us a lot, and raised some very interesting questions for anyone engaged in craftsmanship at a high level. We are firm believers that tradition has shown that progress is a good thing. Gramercy Tools never has and never will make replicas, nor period-correct tools. It will continue to produce tools, and upgrade its production processes in such a way that the tool you buy tomorrow is a better tool than you can buy today, not only in its function, but in its form, and manufacture. And if we cannot make the tool correctly, or can only make it to the peril of our employees, we will not make it at all.

___________________

This "Tools & Craft" section is provided courtesy of Joel Moskowitz, founder of Tools for Working Wood, the Brooklyn-based catalog retailer of everything from hand tools to Festool; check out their online shop here. Joel also founded Gramercy Tools, the award-winning boutique manufacturer of hand tools made the old-fashioned way: Built to work and built to last.

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If you're creative, there are plenty of tools you can get away with not having in your shop, but a tape measure isn't one of them. The indispensable and almost absurdly inexpensive object truly is a marvel of design and engineering. Here's how the thing works and how it's made, all revealed in under three minutes:

For Dubai Design Days 2017, Bee'ah, the Middle East's leading integrated environmental management company based in Sharjah, U.A.E, has commissioned KALO as one of two teams of designers to explore the potential of using its locally recycled rubber crumbs in a furniture collection.

Ammar Kalo's Macaron Seatsexplore the raw material's softness, compressibility and ability to bond with other recycled materials such as wood chips to redefine the relationship between soft and hard surfaces within a chair.

Household accessories brand Good Thing is busy for this year's edition of NYCxDesign, kicking things off with an elegant collaborative exhibit at WANTED Design Manhattan featuring one classic item: the shaving brush. This redesign is not by chance, as they've teamed up with shaving accessory delivery giant Harry's to organize the show. Good Thing's own Jamie Wolfond said they've wanted to team up with Harry's for a while: "we're excited to see such a fast-growing startup take on such a design-focused approach to their products. We wanted to help them reach the design-savvy audience that has come to know Good Thing products but maybe isn't yet aware of Harry's commitment to good design."

Redesigning a shaving brush is a curious concept to begin with as it reads more "nostalgic design object" than it does "modern necessity"—both companies, however, saw this as a welcome challenge. "[The shaving brush is a] ritualistic tool for self-care that has been largely overlooked by the design community," says Wolfond, "it's a memory-packed device – it often evokes images of fathers, grandfathers, and other dapper gentlemen of yore. This provided our designers great material to work with."

Brush by Chen Chen & Kai Williams

 

Working with 13 different designers for this exhibition, the brushes all seem to play on particular narratives of nostalgia, which Good Thing notes will be highlighted at WANTED in a printed publication detailing the backstory behind a few of the pieces. For example, design duo Chen & Kai's contribution was initially inspired by Chen's childhood camping trips:

"I lived in Wyoming as a child and my parents would take me camping in the Rockies. One time we had a giant bonfire next to a lake and threw all the aluminum cans into the fire. The next morning I was amazed the cans had all melted down. When we melt aluminum – that moment when the solid starts dissolving – I always think of that experience of and watching Terminator 2 on VHS all the time as a kid."

Aside from the same classic badger brush head, the objects featured in the collection each carry an entirely distinct identity. Ranging from "process-based experimental practitioners to functionality-driven industrial designers," as Good Thing puts it, this diverse combination of minds resulted in several elegant takes on a classic (not to mention some downright wacky reinterpretations). 

Take a look below at some different variations:

Designed by the Harry's design team 

Designed by Visibility

Designed by Norma 

Designed by Earnest Studio

Designed by Fredericks and Mae

Designed by Branch Creative

Interested in finding one of these brushes for purchase? The pieces included in the collection were initially envisioned as one-offs for this special exhibition, but according to Wolfond, thanks to heightening interest those plans may change: "so far we have had such a positive response that we'd be interested to see at least a couple in mass production!"

The collection of shaving brushes will be on display at Good Thing's booth at WANTED Design Manhattan beginning this Saturday, May 20th.

Want to see more NYCxDesign events worth attending? Visit our Core77 "Navigating New York Design Week" Map

This is oddly compelling. A Japanese TV show has a regular segment where they assemble a group of artists, ranging in age from children to the elderly, in a circle around an object. They each then draw the object from their perspective and in their unique sketching style. In this episode the subject is one of the finest examples of industrial design from the last century, the Aeron Chair:

The show is called Design Ah! and is intended to educate children about design. I'm trying to find out more about the show, what the 360 sketching segment is called and where I can find more, but the program's Japanese-language website is untranslatable. If any of our Japanese readers can offer any assistance, please do chime in!

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Carpenters and woodworkers who want a work table that can be used for clamping would do well to consider the MFSlab, a one-inch MDF top that can be placed on whatever sawhorses are handy. The brainchild of Steve Olson, a remodeler in San Francisco, it is intended to be a job site alternative to the Festool MFT Table.

Olson uses an MFT in the shop but finds it too heavy and bulky to be easily carried onto urban job sites and too expensive to leave there overnight. An MFSlab can be made for a fraction of the cost of an MFT and is more easily stored and transported.

The 20mm holes in the top of the MFSlab accept a variety of specialized clamps and dogs for horizontal and vertical clamping. Standard clamps can be inserted through slots at the perimeter and used to clamp material to the edge. 

Shallow troughs near the edge of the top hold small parts and tools. An open slot in the edge holds a Festool vacuum hose when it's not connected to a machine; there's no reason it couldn't be sized to fit other brands and types of hose. The design includes a lower shelf that is slotted to hold circular saws and other tools in an upright position.

The MFSlab could have been made with hand-held power tools but Olson chose to subcontract the most tedious part of the job, giving a CAD file of the design to a shop with a CNC machine and having them cut the holes and slots. Olson did the finishing touches himself, using a router to ease the edges and cut troughs. Those parts of the job could have been done by CNC, but the setup charges would have added disproportionately to the cost.

Including the CNC work Olson spent $250 for two such tops and shelves, which is just over half the cost of the least expensive MFT.  It would have cost even less if he'd been willing to drill and cut everything himself. The CAD file is available for purchase on his website.