A few summers back during a trip East I decided to visit Lie-Nielsen Toolworks in Warren, Maine. As luck would have it, they were holding their annual open-house, so I was able to tour the factory where they make hand planes, chisels, saws, and other traditional woodworking tools.

Nearly everything Lie-Nielsen sells is made right there in Warren. Among the small number of items I know of that aren't made in-house are Starrett measuring tools (Massachusetts), Wetterlings Axes (Sweden), and Auriou rasps (France).

It would have been nice to tour the plant while it was in operation, but I understand why it was shut down for the open house—it would be dangerous to have guests wandering through while machines were running. The photos above are from my tour of the factory and include captions that describe what things are.

A personal side note: although I don't own any Lie-Nielsen tools, I have a longstanding "relationship" with the company. In the early 80s I was a boat building apprentice at the Maine Maritime Museum in Bath, which is 35 miles south of Warren. One afternoon a guy walked into the shop, introduced himself as Tom and showed us some tiny planes he'd made for a man who built ship models. 

I was blown away by the beauty and quality of the tools he had made and would have loved to buy some from him. But like other apprentices, my budget was better suited to buying hand tools at flea markets and barn sales.

I remember thinking at the time that this Tom fellow (Thomas Lie-Nielsen) would never make a go of it because there could not possibly be enough people able to afford what he made. This is one of those cases where I am happy to have been wrong; in the 30+ years since Tom's visit to the boat shop his company has grown to around 100 employees and become a brand sold around the world.

Lie-Nielsen's headquarters and factory are housed in a pair of buildings off Route 1 in Warren Maine. The second floor of the building with the cupola houses a demo room where visitors can handle and try out any tool the company makes.

Photo credit: David Frane

The factory contains a mix of old and new equipment. These are some of their vintage Bridgeport mills.

Photo credit: David Frane

These CNC machines are among the more modern machines in the plant.

Photo credit: David Frane

This steel bar stock will be milled into parts in the CNC machines. I looked at the tags—even the steel they use is made in the U.S.A.

Photo credit: David Frane

The table of this surface grinding machine moves back and forth under the spinning head—which can be set up to bevel or flatten plane blades. The final honing is done by hand.

Photo credit: David Frane

Steel goes into the machine as a solid bar and comes out as a chisel or part. What's left are the shavings, which are sent to a recycler and eventually sold to steel producers.

Photo credit: David Frane

Blades are heat-treated in these electric ovens—which bring them to the desired combination of hardness and flexibility. If the blade is too hard it will chip or fracture in use; too soft and it won't hold an edge.

Photo credit: David Frane

The hardness of blades and other cutting tools is rated on the Rockwell Hardness scale. I've seen Rockwell numbers for years and yet this was the first time I saw the device used to determine it.

Photo credit: David Frane

The company lacks the facilities to produce iron castings so it subs that work to outside suppliers in Massachusetts and Maine. As you can see, the edges (and bottom) of these rough castings will require some machining. Lie-Nielsen plane bodies are made from ductile iron or manganese bronze—ductile iron because it's stronger than traditional gray iron and bronze because it wears better than brass.

Photo credit: David Frane

Our tour guide shows us a jointer plane body at an intermediate stage of machining. The bottom has been flattened and all that remains is to grind the sides square to it.

Photo credit: David Frane

As we mentioned earlier, Blade Runner 2049 director Denis Villeneuve commissioned three short films to bridge the gap between the original movie and his upcoming sequel. The first, featuring Jared Leto, was pretty darn good. The second, featuring Dave Bautista, was so-so.

Both of those were live-action, but the third short, entitled "Black Out 2022" is anime and it's fantastic. It was done by Shinichiro Watanabe, the creator of the wildly popular Cowboy Bebop series. Check it out (and be warned, there's some graphic violence):

I thought the flashback sequence was particularly artful. It was also cool to hear the return of Edward James Olmos (yes, that's him voice his original character), and I dug how Trixie clearly references Pris from the original film.

Blade Runner 2049 will go into wide release this Friday.

Those of us who live in small homes have a number of organizing challenges—and one of those challenges involves small bedrooms where fitting in a nightstand or two may be impossible. People who are bedridden may also want organizing tools that keep things closer at hand than on a nightstand.

A new law has gone into effect in France: As of this week, "It will be mandatory to use the label 'retouched photo' alongside any photo used for commercial purposes when the body of a model has been modified by an image-editing software to either slim or flesh out her figure," according to French news organization France 24. (It's not clear if the gender pronoun actually exists within the law itself, or if the law will apply to images of male models as well.)

The fashion industry has been promoting unrealistically thin women's bodies for decades, and French lawmakers point to estimates that 600,000 people suffer from eating disorders in France as the result. It's unclear if the law will yield the hoped-for changes, or if fashion rags will simply flout the law and pay the fine (which maxes out at €37,500). Still, France should be lauded for at least attempting to tackle the problem, on multiple fronts. Another French law requires models working in France to have a certificate signed off on by a doctor attesting that their Body Mass Index is at a healthful level.

In America we obviously have the doctored-model's-body photo problem as well, sometimes propagated by "celebrities" themselves. We also, perhaps perversely, have a food-photography-related problem: While we edit our images of models to make them look thinner, we fluff up our photographs of fast food to make them look thicker. Case in point: Have you ever seen a Big Mac that actually looks like the ones in the photos?

Our plant pot Kipo aims to emphasize our philosophy of use only locally sourced and sustainable materials to solve the unknown problems of our daily lives. With Kipo’s double potting system, drainage water is no longer a problem as the water falls through the soil, feeding the roots and lands into the second pot where it is stored. There, the water will be fed back into the plant through an old-fashioned wick system. This prevents root rot and increases the watering intervals.

On my last trip to Germany, I sat at a crowded café and marveled that all of the patrons were eating, drinking and interacting with each other. I saw not a single smartphone. Contrast that with America, or at least New York, where you can walk into any restaurant and see scores of people sitting across from each other and individually fiddling with their phones.

Award-winning chef Marco Canora hopes to gently persuade diners to do otherwise at his East Village restaurant, Hearth. On each table in the restaurant, you'll find a different vintage box:

Some are old jewelry boxes, others are cigar boxes, and all have a note on them saying "Open me!" Should curious diners do so, inside is another note saying

We'd like to invite you to unplug during your meal here at Hearth. Feel free to use this box, put your phone away, and connect with your fellow diners.

"If you want to do it you can do it, if you don't want to do it, don't," Canora told Eater, explaining why he's opted for passive boxes versus the active phone bans some restaurants have instituted. "It's just a box on the table that's there if you want it."

Canora reports that 6 out of 10 patrons place their phones in the boxes. "I think people are digging it," he says.

It would be nice if this turned into a trend, and if some woodworking box maker capitalized on it and started cranking out custom boxes for restaurants.

The NICK+ Designer/Animator is responsible for execution of comprehensive brand design and animation within the Nickelodeon Brand Group. NICK+ consists of five sub brands of Nickelodeon. NickToons, NickSplat, NickSports, NickMusic and TeenNick. Successful candidates will demonstrate ability to create graphics & animation from ideation thru concept development, refinement, and execution across all media platforms.

Humans will always invent mechanical contrivances that help them solve particular problems. By shaping materials and assembling parts in novel ways, these contrivances increased efficiency, whether they're eggbeaters, deli slicers or something more nefarious. Here we're going to look at the bump stock, which Stephen Paddock used to murder 58 people and wound over 500 in Las Vegas, and why people desire them.

The Difference Between Fully Automatic and Semi-Automatic

With a bolt-action rifle, the operator pulls the trigger, firing a single bullet. The operator must then pull the bolt handle back to eject the shell casing, then move the handle forward to load the next round.

With a semi-automatic rifle, the operator pulls the trigger, firing a single bullet. The recoil of the rifle then automatically ejects the casing and loads the next round. This is obviously far faster as the operator is not required to work a bolt handle.

With a fully automatic rifle, the operator holds the trigger down and bullets are automatically fed into the barrel, firing for as long as the trigger is held down. This is a magnitude of order faster than semi-automatic operation.

What a Bump Stock Does

A bump stock replaces the standard stock on a semi-automatic rifle, and allows that rifle to slide backwards within the stock after each shot. Coupled with a forward handle grasped by the operator's non-trigger hand, what then essentially happens is that the recoil of the rifle sends it backwards into the stock after a shot, and it then bounces back forwards, bumping the trigger into the operator's stationary trigger finger.

In other words, it renders the weapon automatic, firing bullets at a far faster rate than one could possibly pull the trigger. (By some estimates, between six and 12 shots per second.)

From a mechanical perspective, it is fiendishly ingenious. And incredibly deadly.

How Do People Get Them?

While fully automatic machine guns are largely illegal, bump stocks are perfectly legal and can be ordered online for as little as $100.

That bump stocks are legal does not appear to make sense, but the Firearms Technology Branch of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives has deemed them okay for technical reasons you can read in this letter posted by a bump stock retailer.

Why do People Want Them?

Automatic weapons are a boon to soldiers in combat. Where do they fit within the context of civilian life?

Hunting?

No. Even the most artless hunter would agree that fully automatic fire has no utility when one is killing an animal for food; venison isn't much good when it's riddled with 5.56mm rounds.

Entertainment

For some people, firing a fully automatic weapon presumably confers a thrill. This is why businesses like Machine Guns Vegas, a gun range that allows patrons to fire fully automatic weapons in a controlled environment, exist. "Machine Guns Vegas is the only Vegas-lounge experience that lets you fire the kind of kick-ass artillery you've seen in the hands of the highly-skilled SEAL and Delta Force teams," the company writes.

From modern machine guns to historical handguns, you'll get the real feel of what it's like to clear a room with just a pull of the trigger. This isn't a walk-in gun store or dimly-lit shooting gallery. Machine Guns Vegas is a sensory experience that will rock your thrill index with every shot you take.

Following Paddock's killing spree, even the co-owner of Machine Guns Vegas, Genghis Cohen, called for stricter gun laws. "One guy sat in a hotel room with 23 guns and managed to kill or injure 600 people," Cohen told The Guardian. "They say he was using 60 to 100 round magazines. Why does a 64-year-old man, who is not in the military or in the police department…need a gun that can basically fire fully automatically?"

Cohen, who briefly closed the business after the shooting, was met with this: "The company has been targeted with 'fuck you' hate mail from seething gun enthusiasts who do not believe he should have closed for two days."

Fear

It is important to note that there are otherwise law-abiding citizens in this country who actually believe that one day the government is going to attack them to take their weapons away by force. They believe this and will tell you so. Others cite the need to defend their homes and families, linking to YouTube videos of security footage capturing horrifically violent home invasions. Well-equipped weapons, they feel, will keep them safe.

Something More Troublesome

To understand the mindset of someone who wants to purchase bump stocks, let's look at how Slide Fire, a bump stock manufacturer, markets them to its target audience. Listen carefully to the language:

What is your reaction to that video?

In my own limited experience, the people I have met that I could classify as hardcore gun enthusiasts, and their fervently anti-gun opponents, have little concept of the others' beliefs. Without a grasp of these beliefs, however outlandishly one side views the other, I suspect that little can be accomplished within the sphere of reasoned debate or legislative adjustments.

We will leave the topic of legislation to more politically-oriented websites. Here we looked at a technical solution to the "problem" of not being able to fire bullets fast enough. In the next entry, we'll look at technical suggestions, supplied by design-minded readers, on how an attack like Paddock's might be stopped in future.

Coder Stelian Firez recently tweeted this screenshot of what has to be the world's worst web form for entering one's phone number: The gauntlet thus thrown down, fellow coders tried to top it in badness: Who knew coders had such senses of humor? In any case the list goes on, and you can see more here.

If you have a little one of your own, you're probably all too familiar with the struggle of retrieving lost pacifiers throughout the night. NiNite solves this problem by making your child's favorite binky a smart pacifier. A small sealed enclosure attaches to the pacifier and houses a series of microscopic sensors, which continuously monitor the state of your child's sleep. As your child begins to search for their pacifier, the NiNite responds accordingly by glowing, buzzing, and blinking.

NiNite

NiNite tightly fits onto the Philips Avent Soothie and meets all safety requirements for pacifiers.

Credit: Hive Design

NiNite

NiNite Lights On

Credit: Hive Design

Credit: Hive Design

Credit: Hive Design

Credit: Hive Design

Credit: Hive Design

A desk design with attachments giving it added functionality based on use. From residential to small office, the concept can evolve and be expanded on based on need. Attachments include a task lamp, a side pocket system for extra storage, a privacy screen and more.

A guy found this tool in his basement, had no use for it, and handed it to me. What can we determine by looking at it?

My first impression, because of the tool's rounded nose, was that it was a turning tool. But it's not. It's too short—which of course could just mean wear. The dead giveaway, however, is the bolster. Bolsters exist so that hitting a handle with a mallet doesn't cause the tang to drive further into the handle. In the days before ferrules (pre-1850) bolsters were wide and essential for preventing splitting the handle. Post ferrule introduction, bolsters were largely (but not entirely) redundant, and they got smaller and smaller. Turning tools, which aren't struck, don't need bolsters and therefore don't have them.

So this tool is a gouge of some sort.

What kind of gouge? It's not a carving tool. The lines of the tool are wrong, and the curved grind in front it pretty useless for carving. It's a firmer gouge used by cabinetmakers. The curved nose makes it easy to shave off bits of wood to a line precisely.

The octagonal bolster, which is in very good shape and is pretty crisp, tells me that the tool is probably from the 19th or early 20th century. (I need to check the maker to be more specific). I'm also struck by how gracefully the neck tapers down, is interrupted by the bolster, and then picks up and continued on the tang on the same lines. The bolster was forged in and finished up with a file.

The front of the tool bears the maker's stamp (Butcher) and the back is the trademark. I haven't been able to track down details on the maker. I think I have more information on Butcher—but the information is my library, just about the only part of TFWW's move that hasn't been unpacked. A book I need is in a box, on a pallet, on a rack twelve feet up in the air.

The front also bears a faint stamp, from either the retailer or the user. I'm a little confused by it. That part of the tool near the neck would be hardened but not so much that a stamp would not work. The deep maker's mark and brand were stamped when the tool was finished but not hardened.

If we look closely at the cutting edge, we can see that it isn't perfectly curved and is worn a bit at the center. If you look carefully, you can see faint grind marks. This tool was used, but it was carefully used, and properly maintained for most of its life. There are clear grind marks on the neck that suggest that that part of the tool never rusted. The back of the tool has some evidence of putting, which suggest rust at some point but not a lot. The inside of the gouge is clear now but shows lots of pits. However, because the initials are fairly crisp I think the rust on this side was also pretty minimal. The rough inside texture of the gouge might come from pitting caused by rust that was subsequently removed, but more likely - based on the typical practice of the time - the gouge simply wasn't ground on the inside when it was manufactured.

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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.

New-Jersey-based woodworker and Popular Woodworking contributor Wilbur Pan is "the guy" when it comes to knowledge of Japanese hand tools. For those of you working in shops outfitted largely with Western tools, you may be curious about what the benefits are of integrating Japanese tools, and where you might want to start.

You can find the answers to those questions—which largely have to do with your own workflow and preferences—by spending several hours Googling through articles and the like, but here Pan has boiled some basic questions and answers down to a tight five minutes: What role might Japanese saws/chisels/hand planes play in your shop? Which tools mix and which don't? Which ones should you start with, and how much will you pay? Is the maintenance any different? And what are the benefits/drawbacks of having a cheap or expensive sharpening set-up?

Google just announced their new Google Pixel Buds, which are way more exciting than they appear. About halfway through Google's product presentation, it was revealed that the buds are live-translating, meaning they allow seamless face-to-face communication between people that speak different languages. The presentation is the only demonstration out at the moment, and it is highly impressive, almost shocking:

The buds' most notable feature is that the translation goes both ways. Of course, the user experiences the translation directly in their ear with the buds, but the sound kicks back out through front speakers so the non-user can hear the user's response in their own language. If everything runs smoothly, both parties in the conversation are able to speak their native tongue without any awkward misinterpretations. 

Not to go unnoticed is Google Pixel Buds' inconspicuous form factor, as in they look exactly like regular headphones—perhaps even less obnoxious. They'll be available this November for $159 USD, a comparable price to Apple's AirPods.

Google Translate has already become second nature for many people when it comes to online shopping, research and quick searches during international conversations. Now that the handy service can be applied to everyday life, will people still have a desire to learn new languages?

When we opened the doors in 1986, it was with a simple idea: to make products people loved. Today, we are the market leader in soft sided insulated coolers and lunch bags, with offices around the world and a large team of passionate experts. A passion for innovation has driven everything we do. It is reflected in the construction of our products, our choice of materials and our exacting attention to every detail. We pride ourselves on bringing new ideas to the marketplace faster than any of our competitors and hold numerous design and utility patents.

So you say you're ready to start sketchnoting. Maybe you're not much of a sketcher but you take a lot of notes, and are interested in making them more meaningful and interesting, but you're afraid your drawings are too crude. For you, it's important to stress that sketchnotes—although they are inherently a visual medium—do not require drawing ability of any kind.

As designers, we naturally try to think of what systems could be devised to prevent tragedies like the mass shooting in Vegas. Realistically it would require a cocktail of procedures well beyond the scope of mere design, but let's go through some ideas here, some supplied by readers, as a mental exercise.

We'll use the exact attack scenario conducted by mass murderer Stephen Paddock, which was terrifying in its meticulous preparation. Here are the relevant facts of the attack as we know them, for which we'll try to brainstorm some physical countermeasures:

- Paddock was firing on a crowd of 22,000 people who were largely in the open

- He fired from a range of about 1,200 feet and an elevation of 32 stories

Image by Wall Street Journal

- He fired from two different locations approximately 30 feet apart within a sprawling hotel suite and an adjoining room he also rented

Image by New York Times

- He had amassed a total of 23 firearms on-site, including 12 assault rifles convered to automatic fire using bump stocks

- He was equipped with an oven-mitt-like glove used to grab overheated gun barrels so that he could quickly swap rifles

- He fired for approximately ten minutes

- He had cameras set up, nanny-cam-style, to monitor the hallway

- When a security guard approached his room, Paddock was aware and fired 200 rounds into the hallway

Potential Solutions

As reader Nathan Guice pointed out, "It may be impossible to prevent this sort of attack. I'm afraid we may only be able to develop means of responding rather than prevention." Let's go with that assumption and figure out some response measures.

Detection/Location

First up: How to determine where the gunfire is coming from? As Guice pointed out, "There are systems already out there like ShotSpotter that can pinpoint the shooter." 

Already in use by the NYPD and some 90 other cities, ShotSpotter is a system of acoustic sensors that are deployed around hotspots and uses triangulation to isolate the location of gunfire. 

The algorithms do their thing fairly quickly: It takes about 45 seconds from the sound of the first gunshot until police have a blinking red dot on a map.

I've gone through ShotSpotter's FAQ and it's not clear if the system works in three dimensions, i.e. while the system provides longitude and latitude, I don't know if it can provide precise altitude. Another potential issue is how to deploy them in festival situations/cities without ShotSpotter infrastructure already in place. About 15 to 20 sensors are required to cover a square mile. Lastly, would they need to be camouflaged or guarded to prevent tampering prior to an attack?

As for detecting gunfire from a weapon using a suppressor, ShotSpotter writes: "We believe we will have various options ranging from increasing our sensor array density to developing software/firmware to address the detection of suppressed gunfire if it were to become a widespread issue."

Neutralization

Another reader who did not provide his/her name takes the ShotSpotter idea further, proposing a "sound triangulating laser system which targets the source of the gunfire. It could serve to blind the assailant and also let the crowd know where the threat is."

This sounds like a great idea too; we know that simple laser pointers can be used to temporarily blind pilots, so beefier ones might potentially be very effective. Paddock was firing from two different locations, so we would need enough of these laser devices to cover a certain amount of ground, and some means of guiding them with pinpoint accuracy.

The same reader also alternatively suggested conventional "spotlights [that blast] a million [candlepower] in the face of the assaulter," but the pinpoint nature of lasers sound better to me as they alert everyone around to the precise location of the danger.

I like the idea of taking away an assailant's vision, because the simple fact is that he can't shoot what he can't see. While he could still blindly fire outside of the window at the sizeable crowd, if his vision was disabled it might at least impair his ability to reload/switch rifles.

Elimination

Temporarily blinding Paddock might cause him to simply abandon his original target; perhaps he would have gone down to the casino floor to continue his killing spree. In order to incapacitate him, the obvious solution, as Guice pointed out, would be a human sniper/spotter team, assuming they could use some type of ammunition that would not pass through Paddock and into the suites behind him.

However, I've got an idea that's a little on the crazy side. Another reader, who did not provide his/her name, suggested police drones that could incapacitate an assailant using unspecified means. Here's my suggestion for that:

When soldiers or police teams are clearing a room, they'll toss a flashbang/stun grenade inside first. This produces a blinding light and a bang in excess of 170 decibels in order to stun the occupants. 

But since Paddock had cameras in the hall, he would've seen them coming.

So what if we equipped some sacrificial, camera-equipped quadrotor drones, each with one flashbang grenade attached, and flew them right into Paddock's open windows? 

If flown towards his windows from directly above or below they'd be hard to spot and shoot, and if we sent multiple drones in, I'd have to think at least one could make it inside and somehow activate its grenade.

Responding police officers reportedly reached Paddock's suite just 12 minutes after he started firing. They then had to spend nearly an hour clearing the entire floor before breaching his room, for safety's sake. But if they had visual confirmation that the shooter was incapacitated and that there was no one else in the suite, perhaps they could have entered immediately.

While that point may be moot--it is thought that Paddock killed himself right after his ten minutes of shooting--if a flashbang drone could've been flown into his suite just minutes after he started firing, perhaps his spree could've been cut short and more casualties prevented.

If you've got more ideas, please let us know! In particular, the problem of how some were injured in the stampede is a difficult one to solve.

Luca Curci Architects has designed a landmark for the Persian Gulf skyline based on the concept of "Organic Cities". The organic buildings become part of the new megalopolis, merging and mixing residential elements with business divisions, shopping life with wellness areas, cultural places with social life. The aim is to create a common place where people can live, meet, learn, work, socialize and create new intertwined cultures.

Whether you're a footwear designer or just interested in how the human body works, you should watch this.

First, a preamble: I've been training in internal martial arts for years and teach qi gong to private clients on the side. Both of these things have taught me that that most of us sit, stand, walk, carry things and even breathe incorrectly, in ways that are ultimately detrimental. Most of you reading this probably have some sort of back, shoulder or knee problems, and they'll worsen over time.

Here's why: We are born with correct posture and movement instincts—and almost immediately learn bad physical habits. Babies are sat in high chairs, children are sat at school desks for hours and saddled with backpacks before and after. We walk around on unforgiving concrete and wear artificially spongy shoes to compensate. All of these things promote habits of incorrect posture that last for the rest of our lives and cause stiffness, soreness or outright injury.

These unnatural trappings even lead us to breathe incorrectly; very young children naturally breathe into their diaphragms, which is correct. But unless you take yoga or something similar, I'm willing to bet most of you reading this breathe into your chests.

Sorry for the long aside. In this video, Cornelius Berthold of Germany's History Park Bärnau—a sort of Colonial Williamsburg, but Slavic and medieval—explains how we used to walk very differently, due to the more naturalistic design of old-school footwear:

It makes total sense to me. If you've ever been at one of those lousy unsandy beaches where you need to walk across sharp rocks while barefoot, you'll recognize that in that situation you walk exactly as Berthold demonstrated.

I should point out that in the internal martial art of Ba Gua a form of walking called "mud stepping," similar to what Berthold demonstrated, is practiced and drilled. If you ever have an opportunity to try it, you'll find that it engages completely different muscle groups than our modern-day walking style does. It also places your spine into the correct natural alignment.

I'm not sure exactly what modern-day footwear designers could do that could get us to walk the way Berthold shows. But if anyone from Nike, Adidas etc. is reading this, I can tell you there is a desperate need for someone to design a proper kung fu/Tai Chi slipper with characteristics very different from modern-day sneakers. Drop a line and I'll tell you all about it.