Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Popular Mechanics

I DIDN’T KNOW where to put my woodpile. This is a strange problem, and one not many people will relate to, and not actually a problem at all. But I’ll explain. This is our third winter in the country after 15 in the city. We bought the house and immediately—before we closed, even— had all kinds of plans. This wall would come down, that table would go there, and the first thing we needed was a deck. But then you spend some time living in the house, and you get to know it, and you learn how to use it. The priorities get rearranged as unexpected needs assert themselves. For example: The first thing we needed was definitely not a deck. The first thing we needed was working toilets. Long…

MODEL: 3D SYSTEMS CUBE PRODUCED: ROCK HILL, SOUTH CAROLINA TIME TO DISASSEMBLE: 5 HOURS, 17 MINUTES, 47 SECONDS NUMBER OF PARTS: 677 NOTES: “It seems kind of like magic,” began a science segment on the January 30, 1989, episode of Good Morning America, “but it’s called stereolithography.” Onscreen, a machine shoots UV light into a vat of liquid, causing the liquid to harden. Later in the segment, Chuck Hull, the inventor of stereolithography, describes the process as “a threedimensional printer.” Hull founded 3D Systems to create prototypes of industrial parts. Today it also sells a line of hobbyist printers that ditch the vat of liquid in favor of materials that harden as they cool. The Cube from 3D Systems is currently in its third generation, and 3D printing has come…

Find Hills ▶ Twice a week, go to the hilliest area you can and conquer it for 45 minutes. If you live in a flat area, crank your gear to a lower setting than you’re comfortable with and ride the same 45 minutes, with small breaks. If possible, do it into a headwind. This method, called high-intensity training, gets more muscle fibers active to help build muscle. Ride Far ▶ Once a week, raise your gear and ride for a longer time—at least an hour. The higher gear will force you to make more pedal revolutions per minute for a more aerobic cardio workout. This is highcadence training. Remember Your Core ▶ Buy a bike stand for 20 bucks, then use it to perform single-leg pedal drills. Lift your butt…

BRIAN DAVIS WAS WORKING in marketing and sales when he came up with his first product, the Fix It Stick, a portable multitool for bikes. He sketched out the idea and brought it to the owner of a local fix-it shop to ask if he would build a prototype. After fine-tuning the design with a faculty member from a local community college, Davis set up a Kickstarter page. In 30 days he raised more than $30,000. Since then he has successfully launched two more products—a hydration pack that doubles as a water bottle and a protective wind mask for cyclists, which debuted in January. A few of the lessons he’s learned about the mysterious and potentially lucrative world of crowdfunding. Finish the Product First ▶ Before you launch the campaign,…

FAKE AA BATTERIES If your flashlight or radio needs AA batteries and you only have AAAs, ball up some aluminum foil and use it to close the gap between the end of the smaller AAA battery and the terminal. AAAs used in place of AAs will die faster, but they’ll work. PURIFY WATER WITH REGULAR, UNSCENTED BLEACH Add 1/4 teaspoon per gallon of water and let stand for 30 minutes. Then sniff it. If it smells a little like chlorine, it’s drinkable. If not, add more bleach and wait 15more minutes. CRAYONS CAN REPLACE CANDLES If you run out of candles, a crayon will burn for up to half an hour, and a piece of cotton string in a can of shortening such as Crisco will burn for much longer—up…

SHOPPING LIST Proteins Canned ham Canned salmon Dried bottarga Grated Parmesan Barbecue jerky Carbs Jasmine rice Canned beans (black, kidney, garbanzo, refried) Dried beans (mung beans, Rancho Gordo mixed varieties) Pasta Bread crumbs Broths/Liquids/Veggies Really good olive oil Canned tomatoes Low-salt vegetable, chicken, and beef broths Pumpkin purée (for thickening soups) Evaporated milk Carrot and tomato juice (to add acidity) Canned corn Canned peas Spices/Flavors (In addition to pantry staples) Curry Chili seasoning Canned green chiles Harissa Tomato sauce Salsa Ketchup Pastes (tomato, garlic, onion, pesto, chipotle) Charlie Palmer, an avid outdoorsman, is a celebrity chef who oversees more than a dozen restaurants. He is also the author of Remington Camp Cooking.…

NOVEMBER 2015 THE SAWMILL IS QUIET. It rests on a patch of fallow ground at the fringe of our woodlot, the gas drained, the engine covered with a heavy tarp to protect it from inclement weather and nesting mice, the battery removed and placed on a trickle charger. I should pull the blade too. Hang it in the barn so it doesn’t rust. But I haven’t yet. I’ve been busy. The sawmill used to belong to my best friend, Jim. Five years ago, at the age of fortythree, he died in his sleep. Heart failure. This happened without warning, a mere two weeks before he and his wife were to adopt newborn twin girls. It had taken them years to line up this adoption. They’d come close to becoming parents…

March 8, 1947. North Carolina State has just won the Southern Conference men’s basketball tournament. To celebrate, the Wolfpack’s second-year head coach Everett Case proposes something strange: He wants to cut down a net. That’s what state champs used to do back when Case coached high school in Indiana. A fun idea, but damned if anyone at Duke Indoor Stadium can find a ladder. So Case and his boys simply lift one another up on their shoulders. That’s how the college tradition continued until the mid-1980s, when someone realized a ladder would be more humane after the athletes had spent an hour sprinting and jumping. Since 2008, that ladder, for both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments, has been built by Werner. This year, the 94-year-old Greenville, Pennsylvania–based company is…

Q In a traffic jam, is it better to constantly move into the lane that seems to be moving fastest, or to pick one and stick with it? A THIS IS ACTUALLY a bit of a philosophical question, and, as such, each of us must answer it for ourselves. Consider the word better. Better for whom? Better how? If you subscribe to the “every man for himself” principle, weave away, baby. Slam that Bimmer back and forth like Iceman’s on your six. They don’t call you Maverick for nothing. Conversely, if you’re the sort who frets over things like shared sacrifice in service of the greater good, pick a lane, any lane, settle in with a fresh bowl of Borkum Riff and enjoy that folk music on your cassette deck.…

A Felt DD 70 ▶ An aluminum frame makes this bike affordable and relatively lightweight. The fork legs are formed with high-pressure fluid instead of heat, which allows for more intricate shaping. $1,499 B Surly Pugsley ▶ The original. Surly started the fat-bike explosion in 2005, and most of the bikes made back then are still around. A highly durable bike with mostly off-theshelf (so, easy to replace) components. $1,750 C Farley 9.8 ▶ Thanks to its carbon-fiber frame, the Farley experiences less road vibration and weighs less than some traditional mountain bikes. Even with those huge tires. $4,800…

A Hardcore Survivalist LENGTH: 17 ｽ in. WEIGHT: 1.8 lb ▶ Aptly named, its light weight makes this hatchet ideal for lashing to the outside of your pack on overnight trips. Comes sharp enough to shave with straight from the factory. $135 B Estwing E3-R Rigger’s Axe LENGTH: 16 ｾ in. WEIGHT: 2.3 lb ▶ Forged from a single block of tool steel, the Estwing is indestructible. Its rubber handle provides a good grip in cold and wet weather or when wearing gloves. $60 C Plumb 11559P Rigster LENGTH: 18 in. WEIGHT: 1.8 lb ▶ Has superb workmanship, despite being made in Taiwan. The Plumb’s balance gives it an effortlessness that we found perfect for making kindling. $25 D Vaughan RB Rig Builders LENGTH: 18 in. WEIGHT: 2.2 lb ▶…

QUICK FIXES Some problems can be resolved without much work. Water rings Try gently wiping the area with a cloth dampened in denatured alcohol. Get the cloth just wet enough that any alcohol visible on the surface evaporates immediately. Follow up with a little furniture polish. Scratches Liquid products like Old English Scratch Cover and solid products like scratch-cover pens both work well for small, unobtrusive scratches—just be sure to test the color first in an inconspicuous area. 1 Find the Right Piece You don’t want to buy a fixer-upper that’s going to cost a fortune to restore, and you don’t want to invest time and money in something that was never that great to begin with. Three Things to Look For 1 According to Mike Kollman of I Like…

My wife, Lisa, has been a biker for more than 40 years. As a teenager, she had a boyfriend who rode a Hercules. He was a maniac, prompting Lisa to get off the back of his bike and teach herself how to ride on a 1969 BMW R60/2. She is impossibly cool and sexy when she rides. The leather jacket with just enough jagged scuffs. The well-worn gloves slipped over the cuffs. The way she shakes her luscious mane of jetblack hair after she takes off her helmet. Every man who does not ride is a sucker for a woman who does. We met in 1998 in Seattle. After copious amounts of booze and cigarettes at the hip late-night spot Palace Kitchen, she took me back to her house to…

EVEN COMPARED TO Florida’s usual propensity for getting clobbered by tropical weather systems, the 2004 hurricane season was ludicrous. In six weeks, four hurricanes (categories 4, 2, 3, and 3) slammed into the state, flooding central Florida and demolishing towns on both coasts. By September, the cities were so littered with leaves and tree branches it looked like the streets had been drawn in green crayon. No one’s hair had been straight in months. School officials postponed the season-opening football game between Miami University and Florida State, which I think requires a special dispensation from God. I don’t remember which of the four storms occasioned the slip-and-slide, only that it must have been toward the end because we were getting restless. Every new hurricane had brought the same routine: Replenish…

LIEUTENANT MIKE PATTERSON, commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Katmai Bay, took in the frozen scene from the wheelhouse of his ship. Out the windows, freighters pointing up- and downriver stood still. The little ferry to Sugar Island was trapped in port and calling for help. None of them looked like they’d be moving anytime soon: The St. Marys River was iced up. The ice had moved in overnight. It blew south out of Lake Superior and piled up in Whitefish Bay, then slid out of the bay and into the St. Marys. In blocks and bergs it tumbled down the rapids and through the stone raceways of the Soo Locks. Then, two miles below the locks, where the river funnels into a narrow channel called Little Rapids…

Fourth of July. My wife and I took our two kids back to my small hometown in Massachusetts to see the parade and go for a fire-truck ride. As we waited in line, volunteer firefighters handed out stickers to the kids. We rode the fire truck. Fun day. At home, I noticed that one of our kids had stuck a sticker on the driver-side door of my wife’s car, a 2006 navy blue Scion xB (the last year Scion made its signature box). I carefully peeled it off...and centered it in the middle of the door. I thought it looked cool. Later my wife stormed in yelling, “Did you see that sticker Frida put on my car?” I raised my eyebrows, pretending to be surprised, and went to remove the…

On the island of forgotten toys that is the average Amazon cart, there are a few certainties. One: You’ll leave your mother’s birthday gift in there so long you’ll end up having to pay for expedited shipping. Two: Amazon knows which items you’re likely to buy—and which ones you’ll jettison. A couple years ago Amazon was granted a patent for Anticipatory Shipping, a program to predict what products people will purchase before they purchase them. It analyzes shopping history, demographics, and, ominously, “any other suitable source of information” to gain insight into your buying patterns, so Amazon can ship potential buys to a location near you. Though Amazon hasn’t said how much of the technology outlined in the Anticipatory Shipping patent is already in use, the rapid rollout of superfast…

MOST DANGEROUS Inverted Underwater Car Season 8, episode 19 After showing that you can’t open a car door underwater until the pressure has equalized, Savage agrees to try to escape a car that has flipped upside down in a later episode. It proves nearly impossible. SAVAGE: “This one spooked both of us, for great reason. We knew that there were so many unknowns. We ended up with six levels of safety, and we used five. We would ask: ‘Do you still feel wiggy about this one? Let’s talk it through.’ ” MOST COMPLICATED Swimming in Syrup Season 7, episode 6 The MythBusters test whether the added thrust you’d get from swimming through syrup would cancel out the drag from its viscosity. AS: “Every single day the results we came up…

EDITORS’ CHIOCE In 1965, a chemist at DuPont named Stephanie Kwolek was searching for a lighter alternative to replace the steel used in reinforcing racing tires. In the lab, she discovered a liquid crystal polyamide that when spun into a fiber was five times stronger than steel at the same weight and lighter than nylon—DuPont’s first commercially successful synthetic fiber. The chemical name for Kwolek’s compound was poly-paraphenylene terephthalamide. DuPont called it Kevlar. Since then, it has become synonymous with the tactical bulletproof vests worn by military and SWAT teams, saving thousands of lives since the body armor was introduced in 1975. Kevlar is also found in conveyor belts in coal mines, NASA spacesuits, cellphone cases, motorcycle pants, and hockey socks that can last longer than their smell ought to…

THE WINTER MORNING would hardly seem right for a bike ride. A fresh snow had fallen overnight atop the old, refrozen sheets and piles of snow all around. A chilly wind blew fine, stinging grit. The sidewalks were mostly invisible, the roads an uninviting mix of brown slush and salt. And yet there was my 14-year-old son, Jack, on the walkway beside our shed, checking the tire pressure on a thick-framed black bike. The driveway was to his left. A knee-high bank of snow was to his right. He took his seat, swung the front tire to the right, lunged down on the pedal and crested the snowbank and set off across our snow-covered yard. I followed him, listening to a crust of frozen snow break beneath my weight as…

“Our mission is to change the way viscous liquids f low and to eliminate waste.” Ñ Kripa Varanasi Anyone who saw Kripa Varanasi’s 2012 video of ketchup slipping effortlessly from its bottle (without a single tap or shake) knew they were witnessing game-changing coating technology. Going viral, it resulted in thousands of inquiries before there was even a business— shattering the traditional startup model. And today the product of LiquiGlide™, the MIT professor’s company, “is to liquids what the wheel was to transportation.” What inspired LiquiGlide’s development? Originally, we were trying to solve a range of sticky problems (like buildups in oil and gas pipelines) by using liquid-impregnated, slippery surfaces. What industries will LiquiGlide impact? While our initial focus was packaged goods, viscous liquids are ubiquitous. So we’re exploring the…

Q Mice are getting into our house, most likely through the garage. I can’t seem to find a way to keep them out. What can I do? FRANK N., WAUSAU, WISCONSIN A The garage is the biggest opening into your house, so it’s not surprising that that’s where mice would go. It’s bigger than any window or door, and exponentially larger than some tiny gap around a badly fitting piece of siding. Furthermore, there’s often a meal on the other side of the door—pet food, birdseed, even garbage. A mouse would be crazy to try to enter any other way. Fortunately, the fix is simple. I used it several years ago when mice nearly overran our little neighborhood. Take a trip to a hardware store and buy some aluminum flashing.…

OWNER: Mike Villa LOCATION: Santa Ana, California YEARS OWNED: Two I WAS DOING VIDEO production for a magazine, and I got to drive a lot of the new BMWs. I remember coming away so unimpressed. They’re extremely comfortable, but it’s sensory deprivation. There’s just no feedback in the electric steering, and they feel like bigger overall cars than five, ten years ago. To be fair, you could say that about nearly any manufacturer now. That got me looking into older BMWs, then older and older BMWs. I found mine on Craigslist in San Diego. The owner clearly never had a large budget and wasn’t terribly concerned with doing things the right way. Later I found out that the shift linkage was made out of rebar welded to a MagLite flashlight.…

When I was in college, I took out a loan to buy a Lamborghini and start an exotic-car-rental company. We later got a Ferrari 360 Spider in the fleet, and one morning, after a night when the temperature dipped below 20 degrees, I got to the garage where I’d left it, planning to drive it back to our warehouse. When I hit the unlock button on the key fob, I could hear the locks straining to rotate, but the doors wouldn’t unlock. The car also had this security feature where both doors had to unlock before either one would open, which meant I couldn’t use a physical key to muscle my way in. I called the local dealer. They had no idea that the locks could even freeze. I called…

Pulaski, New York, is about three and a half, maybe four, hours from just about anywhere. It took that long for two collectives of fly fishermen— the guys of Pigfarm Ink Nor’eastah from New England and the Vermont Fly Guys out of Highgate Springs, enthusiast groups of men and women who found each other on Instagram and Facebook and meet in real life on weekends—to get up here on Friday evening. They gathered at the Tailwater Lodge, an old school that’s been converted into a resort for the modern outdoorsmen who flock here when the steelhead run strong, October through May. The two groups had sponsored and organized a local flytying competition for Friday, a small event for themselves, the locals, and a couple of teens from the area to…

BEST FOR A TSUNAMI GIBBS QUADSKI In front of you: a traffic jam. Behind you: a rapidly approaching wall of death by seawater. You’re glad you’ve got a Gibbs Quadski, an ATV that can hit 45 mph on either land or water. Retract the wheels, fire up the jet drive, and keep heading inland. Or out to sea. It doesn’t really make a difference at this point, does it? BEST FOR A BLIZZARD RAM ECODIESEL 4X4 ON TRACK N GO SNOW TRACKS You want the diesel for range—you can’t count on gas stations being open. The Track N Go system is like truck snowshoes. Bolt one on each corner and your pickup is now a snowmobile. Now let’s quit this talk of the Donner Party. It just started snowing. BEST…

Last July, a Russian helicopter pilot had nearly completed a record-breaking trip around the globe when he crashed into the icy waters of the Arctic Circle. Stuck on a slab of ice surrounded by polar bears, with only a handful of protein tablets, a half-liter of water, and his GPS trackers lost at the bottom of the sea, he never should have survived. The pounding noise shatters the ancient, eerie silence of the Davis Strait, a frigid finger of ocean separating Canada and Greenland. ¶ Thwick-thwack, thwick-thwack, thwick-thwack.¶ It comes from above but the marine fog is thick, the source invisible. The sound gets closer, louder.¶ THWICK-THWACK, THWICK-THWACK, THWICK-THWACK.¶ The pilot wears an old red neoprene survival suit. But it’s hot in the helicopter, and the bulky outfit’s mittens make…

BRASH PLATE FAST GREASE CANDLING…

NOTE Avoid pine and other conifers, which are often sticky with sap. We found that any hardwood branch will do. If the wood you find is freshly fallen, bring the branch inside and let it dry out for a few days. The glue used to secure the lead works much better on dry wood. Instructions parent only kid only parent and kid 1. After finding a few suitable twigs, use a pruner to trim each to about 6 inches. The dryer the wood, the easier it will be to drill into. 2. Select a drill bit that’s a little wider than the pencil lead you plan on using. We used a ³/32-inch twist bit. 3. Clamp the twig to a workbench. Gently pulse the drill to coax the bit into…

EDWIN THE DUCK This Bluetoothenabled rubber ducky plays music, makes funny sounds, and checks that the bath water isn’t too hot. Isn’t that what parents are for? MEATER Enter what you’re cooking into the app and a wireless thermometer pings your phone when the meat is done—so you don’t have to, like, actually know what you’re doing. NORA, THE SMART SNORING SOLUTION When the bedside monitor senses a certain decibel level, an inflatable pillow insert adjusts the snorer’s head so he shuts up.…