Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2015 i Popular Mechanics

GRILLED TURKEY PERFECTION I normally cook my turkeys over a fire pit here in Vancouver, Washington, but found out that I’d be cooking this year’s Thanksgiving dinner in Dillon, Montana. The fine folks there didn’t happen to have a fire pit in their yard, but the answer to my dilemma was right there in the magazine (“Cook Thanksgiving Dinner on the Grill,” November 2014). Finding a loaner Weber Kettle was easy, but the twelvepound bird you recommended just wasn’t going to do it. To fit my twenty-five pound bird, I fashioned a shroud that fit between the kettle pot and the lid, which added an extra six inches to the inside of the grill. I kind of burnt the hell out of the turkey. I tried it again with the…

A good duffel needs to be tough. Fjällräven, the Swedish outdoor company, just introduced a new bag—its first to fully convert into a backpack, with straps that hide inside the bag until you need them. The Duffel No. 6 (starting at $200 for a fifty-liter bag, which is plenty of space to get you through a weekend) is already durable and waterresistant, since it’s made out of a cotton–polyester blend impregnated with paraffin and beeswax. But the bag can be even tougher, as long as you’re willing to put in a little work. For an extra $10 you can pick up your own bar of Fjällräven’s homemade Greenland wax. Rub on as much as you want, iron it in, and your duffel becomes practically indestructible. If you change your mind,…

THIS TEST WAS A BEAST. ON A BLAZING-HOT day, we took four cordless hedge trimmers to a large group of yews and boxwoods and a hedge that was about 8 feet tall, 6 feet wide, and 60 feet long. There were saplings growing in the middle of this thing, plus vines and thorns. Trimming it required a ladder and odd positioning, twisting and turning on the part of the testers. One editor was almost laid out by poison ivy. So we know these rankings are legitimate—all four trimmers went through the toughest obstacle course around. 10.4 Ib STIHL HSA 66 $630 Battery: 36-v/4.5-Ah Li-ion Blade length: 22½ in. Likes: Some years ago we gave Stihl a Breakthrough Award for its cordless-tool platform. That decision was based on the strength and…

Back in 2004 Bose revealed that it had been secretly working on an active suspension system since 1980. By using powerful electromagnetic struts, the Bose system could instantly extend or retract any one wheel, with all four corners working in concert to keep the car’s body level. Bose demonstrated the system on a Lexus LS400 outside its headquarters in Framingham, Massachusetts, speeding the car over all manner of obstacles while the body remained completely serene—as a finale, the Lexus gracefully leaped over a piece of lumber in its path. It seemed like the dawn of a new era, and the company predicted that within a few years the system would be available in production cars. More than a decade later, where’s our active suspension? So far, only in big-rig truck…

2015 FORD EXPEDITION ECOBOOST 4WD PRICE: $47,965 In recent years the big European SUVs have replaced their base V-8s with forced-induction V-6s. Ford follows suit with the 2015 Expedition EcoBoost, opting for the 3.5-liter twin-turbo V-6 from the F-150. With 365 horsepower and 420 pound-feet of torque, the turbo V-6 has diesel-like low-end torque along with robust top-end power. It tows 9,200 pounds, and fuel economy improves by two miles per gallon, to 16 city/22 highway for rear-wheel-drive models. Unlike on its Lincoln equivalent, the Navigator, the Expedition’s intake is plumbed to hear the turbos huff and puff—a reminder that small engines and big trucks are no longer strangers.…

When four-time polar explorer Parker Liautaud embarked on his first trip to the North Pole, at 15, he’d never pitched a tent before. “I only learned to set up the tent when I saw it for the first time, which was when I got to Norway,” he says. Liautaud, now 20, has learned a lot since then. Every tent is different, so the biggest thing, he says, is to practice. You should be completely familiar with all of your equipment before you ever use it in a real situation. PARKER LIAUTAUD, POLAR ADVENTURER 1 Choose your ground wisely. Of course you don’t want to sleep on lava rock, but even little bumps can make your tent floor uncomfortable. If your tent is long, position it so that the narrowest part…

TRACY ROSS, former backcountry ranger I didn’t learn to read a map until I was in my thirties, and for this I blame Denali National Park in Alaska, where I used to work. Oh, we had maps, and we were supposed to use them. But Denali has distinct landmarks, including 20,320-foot Mt. McKinley, and most of the terrain is treeless tundra. You could almost always look to the mountains or the rivers and orient yourself. When I moved to Colorado, I learned to locate myself on a map. To do this, point a compass’s direction-of-travel arrow at a real-life landmark, then turn the circular dial until the red end of the magnetic needle is in the red orienting arrow. Place the compass on the map, aligning the dial’s orienting lines…

Tossing the bowling ball straight down the lane may have worked for most of your life, but you’re an adult now. It’s time for a new challenge. Between the first and second row of pins is a six-degree pocket that almost guarantees a strike, but the only way to hit this window is with a proper hook. Here, Mike Fagan, most recent winner of the Professional Bowlers Association World Championship, explains how. 1 Start your swing, letting the weight of the ball carry your arm backward. Don’t rush. 2 Use the momentary pause at the top of your backswing to make sure your hand is positioned underneath and to the inside of the ball as much as possible. This allows for maximum rotation. 3 As you release the ball, you…

Mark a line across a piece of lumber. Set the saw’s cutting depth to about half an inch deeper than the lumber is thick, then align the cut mark on the saw’s shoe with the line you drew. Make sure the saw’s blade is on the waste side of the line. Press the trigger. Once the blade reaches full speed, move the saw across. As you near the wood’s far edge, push a little harder and faster so the saw clears the cut just as the waste piece drops free. To make a plunge cut, as you might when producing a square hole, set the saw to cut a half inch deeper than the wood’s thickness. Rest the front of the saw’s shoe on the wood and pivot the blade…

We’ll assume you’re somewhere that this is legal, like the autobahn or the Bonneville Salt Flats. The most important thing about triple-digit speeds, the rule above all rules, is to keep your eyes up. Look as far ahead as you can. Don’t focus on the area immediately in front of you: If anything were there, you’d hit it before you could react. Slow down your input to the steering and, especially, the brakes. Remember that nearly all street cars generate aerodynamic lift, which means that at 150 miles per hour the car has less grip than it does at fifty miles per hour. So don’t ask the car to corner or brake as hard as it could under normal circumstances. And resist the urge to stare at the speedometer. A…

Young men start out wanting to catch a fish. Then they want to catch more fish. Bigger fish. A trophy fish. Old men just want to relax. They navigate a patch of water slowly—they have to. So they can study the tough casting situations. Old men discern rhythms of nature they previously would have blown right by. So says Joe Humphreys, a retired fly-fishing instructor who caught his first trout at 6 and turned 86 a few months ago. He says it all starts with the basics: casting and line control. With the pole straight in front of you, lift the rod in a counterclockwise motion, accelerating until the rod is vertical. Now pause (Humphreys: “Say ‘one hundred.’”). This unspools the line behind you. To send the fly to the…

LEGO IS THE COOLEST COMPANY IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW. BETWEEN THE HIT MOVIE, LICENSING TIE-INS, RETAIL STORES, AND ITS CONSTANT QUEST TO INNOVATE, THE BUSINESS KEEPS FINDING WAYS TO STAY RELEVANT AND PROFITABLE. BUT IT ALL COMES DOWN TO THE MAGIC THAT HAPPENS WHEN A KID SNAPS TWO BRICKS TOGETHER. TYPOGRAPHY BY ISTVÁN SZUGYICZKY When he disappears, he disappears behind the walnut door to his room—the door, it seems, must always be closed to seal him in his private capsule—and then there’s the sound of banging and rummaging in the closet, the padding of feet, and the sudden jangly spill of Lego bricks. And that’s it. We won’t see him for two, three, four hours. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t drink. We’ll crack the door to make sure he’s…

BY DANIEL PAUL SIMMONS WHEN A GROUP OF FRIENDS SIT AROUND A TABLE PLAYING CARDS or drinking beer, not one of them will spend hours gazing into the table itself, thinking about cowboys and friendship and human prehistory. A table does not have this power. A fre, with its meandering sparks and fame animals and depthless colors, does. An outdoor fire adds ancestral depth to a weekend in the country. In the case of the table, you have a pretty good time. In the case of the fire, you wear the same shirt to work on Monday so you can still smell the wood smoke. My point here is that when I built a weekend cottage in Lumberland, New York, in 2009, I wanted a fire pit. I wanted to…

1. APPLE WATCH Apple’s long-awaited wearable arrives this spring with the elegance we’ve come to expect from Cupertino. Apple Watch’s face features a minimalist take on the company’s mobile operating system. Wearers will be able to check tweets, monitor their workout, or see an airline boarding pass right on their wrist. 2. IBLAZR FLASH FOR IPHONE Smartphones now can match the performance of stand-alone cameras in many areas, but one place they fall flat is with flash. Iblazr plugs into your phone’s headphone jack to deliver a more powerful burst of light than a smartphone or tablet’s tiny flash could provide. 3. HIKU COUNTER Stop writing paper grocery lists and coming home to realize you forgot the milk. The handheld Hiku scans the bar codes in your kitchen and stores…

I MAGINE HOLDING A YARDSTICK AT one end. When you fex your wrist even the tiniest bit, the far end of the yardstick whips back and forth. But if you hang a small weight on a spring at that far end, the weight’s inertia absorbs some of the yardstick’s kinetic energy and the whipping drops to a gentle sway. Scale that up, a lot, and you have a mass damper, the system that’s used to control movement in skyscrapers by reducing both the speed at which the building oscillates and the distance those oscillations cover. Mass dampers consist of large pendulums—usually steel plates bolted together to form a solid chunk—suspended from cables near the top of the building. When the building sways in a gust, the weight’s inertia acts as…

I’m not a tool snob. I’m totally not. But there is a huge difference between a good spray gun and a cheap one. At the adult night-school class I help teach in the Freedom garage, plenty of guys have their own nice guns. But some bring cheap guns and I’m like, don’t even get that out of your truck, dude. You can use mine. Older guns don’t atomize paint and primer the way the new high-velocity, low-pressure guns do. And when I’ve tried to take them apart for cleaning after just one use, I end up throwing them away instead. Cheaper guns just don’t hold up…

Aside from a hammer, pliers are the most frequently used tools in your kit. They lead a hard life, so they have to be well made. That’s why I was glad to try out Irwin Tools’ Vise-Grip Max Leverage Diagonal Cutting Pliers. They’re equipped with a compoundaction hinge that, the company says, doubles your cutting force. The pliers can easily chop through stranded and solid copper wire, twelve-gauge cable, steel nails, and small machine screws—hardware that’s usually reserved for small bolt cutters or big linesman pliers. This makes the Vise-Grip particularly useful for working in old houses, where you need to chop away junk before wiring in your new fixture or outlet. At $30 to $40 they’re on the expensive side, but they’re extremely sturdy. My bet is they’ll last…

T he 2001 Corvette Z06 revived an obscure 1960s option code, applying the alphanumerical moniker to a new model that redefined affordable performance. The Z06 was lightweight—it had a titanium muffler and a fixed-roof hardtop body— and used a unique LS6 V-8 that generated 385 horsepower in 2001 and 405 in later model years. The result was monster performance, with zero to sixty in four seconds. Nearly a decade and a half later, the original Z06 is still quicker than a new Porsche 911 Carrera GTS. And you can pick up a nice one for $20,000. It was a bargain when it was new, and it’s an even better one now.…

Q I just turned 16 and will be purchasing my first car. My budget is about $5,000 to $7,500. I want something with good resale value and that is safe yet interesting. A classic American land yacht would be preferable. Suggestions? — EVAN BRANDAO, COLUMBUS, OHIO A Wait, you’re 16 and want a car? Shouldn’t you be Snapchatting on your Oculus Rift or whatnot? Since you desire a nonvirtual transportation conveyance, an American barge is a fine way to go. For safety and reliability reasons, we’d err toward newer models. Now, you could pick up a 260-horsepower, LT1-powered 1994–96 Buick Roadmaster, but that’s too obvious. Your budget would also get you a 1993–95 Ford SVT Lightning, Ford’s original muscle pickup. But what you really need is a two-door, full-size Chevy…

HOW TO WHEN OUR SON TURNED 6, MY WIFE AND I BOUGHT HIM AN ELECTRA RATROD with twenty-inch wheels and orange and red fames on the black frame. For the next month Vaughn walked it around the backyard and gazed upon it as an art admirer might a Matisse. The only thing he didn’t love about the bike was the idea of riding it. I tried on successive Saturdays to get him pedaling at the high school parking lot, but each time he managed only a few shaky revolutions before braking or toppling over. Characteristically, he became reluctant about the whole enterprise. He is an ebullient kid, but cautious. We try to nudge him along in life, toward the nicks and welts but also the joy that might follow. One…

Position the running car so that its battery is close to the battery of the dead car. Turn off the running car and get out jumper cables. Connect one end of the positive cable (the red one) to the positive terminal on the dead battery. Connect the other end to the positive terminal on the live battery. Connect the negative cable (black) to the negative battery terminal on the live car. Connect the other end of the negative cable to an unpainted metal surface on the dead car’s engine. Start the live car and let it run for a few minutes. Now start the dead car, disconnect the cables in reverse order, and drive for at least fifteen minutes to let the alternator recharge the battery. HOW TO GET DOWN…

Stand with your nondominant foot forward, with 30 percent of your weight on your front foot and 70 percent on your back. Make sure your fist is tight with your thumb outside your fingers. Pivot on the ball of your rear foot and twist your waist in toward your target, carrying the energy up your back and down your arm. Drive your dominant arm forward and connect with the knuckles of your pointer finger, middle finger, and ring finger. For maximum effectiveness, imagine you are punching through your opponent. Walls are ill-advised opponents. HOW TO FELL A TREE POPULAR MECHANICS FIELD GUIDE TO LIFE 18 THROUGH 22 A tree comes down in three cuts. CUT ONE: At a 45-degree angle downward. CUT TWO: At a 45-degree angle upward, to intersect…

Put a floor lamp or worklight on one side of the door. Stand on the other and nearly close the door. The light will reflect off the doorframe to illuminate the edge of the door itself. The part of the edge that is not illuminated is the part that’s sticking. Make a pencil mark where the gleam of light tapers off, then make a small X on the dark side of the line. This is where you’ll remove wood. Take the door off its hinges and stand it on its edge, supported by a pair of sawhorses. Use a hand or power plane to remove wood from your mark in the direction of the X, concentrating on the door’s end. Remove just enough to get the door to close. MAKE…

A dry-laid wall adds gravitas to a property, a sense of acreage and potential horses. It looks like it should be an easy task to build one. It is not. First you’ll need three piles of material: small, medium, and large. Use stakes and mason’s line to lay out an outline of the wall’s direction and width. Dig a footing trench between the lines, about three to six inches deep. Make the bottom of the trench smooth and level. Lay the largest and heaviest stones at the base of the wall, stacking them so they slant toward the wall’s center. Use the two-over-one, one-over-two rule to ensure that you’re not stacking stones of the same size directly over each other. Instead, lay them in an overlapping pattern, like bricks. Use…

WILD WATERCRESS WHEN: Early spring and fall HOW TO CONSUME: Put it in a salad, like lettuce. CHICKWEED WHEN: Early spring HOW TO CONSUME: Again, just like lettuce. BURDOCK WHEN: Fall the first year, spring the second HOW TO CONSUME: Cook the root. POISON IVY WHY TO AVOID: It causes dermatitis—itchy skin and blisters POISON HEMLOCK WHY TO AVOID: Consuming the root can kill you, like it did Socrates POISON SUMAC WHY TO AVOID: Same reason as poison ivy—but even nastier. With thanks to STEVEN FOSTER, herbalist and coauthor of the Peterson Field Guide to Medicinal Plants and Herbs of Eastern and Central North America.…

POPULAR MECHANICS FIELD GUIDE TO LIFE AGE 60 + The first time I tried cutting dovetails by hand, as an apprentice cabinetmaker, I failed so miserably that my boss told me to cut the ends off the practice joint I’d made and throw them out. “You’re not ready for dovetails,” he said. He was right. Hand-cut dovetails—classic woodworking joints that use precise cuts rather than fasteners to join wood— are not the beginning but the culmination of a long string of fundamentals: You’re not ready to make them until you can consistently mark a geometrically correct shape and then accurately cut it out using a dovetail saw and chisel. Learning to handcut dovetails is a slow, meticulous process, but it’s a rewarding one. A dovetail joint is a thing of…

IN 2010 THE OAKL AND, CALIFORNIA, POLICE DEPARTMENT BECAME THE FIRST LARGE POL ICE FORCE IN THE COUNTRY TO WEAR BODY CAMER AS THAT RECORD EVERY THING THE OFFICERS SEE, SAY, AND DO. CHIEF SEAN WHENT DESCRIBES THE TRANSITION: “There was some skepticism at first, but the offers have been won over. They really see the value in it. The cameras show that they are hardworking and do the right thing consistently. There are other factors to attribute this to as well, but over the last two years we’re looking at a more than 50 percent reduction in complaints. Those complaints that do come in, we’re able to resolve them a lot faster. And while occasionally we’ll catch somebody doing something they shouldn’t be, the video evidence used in complaints…

1. Listen to your vehicle. Most modern cars have an oil life monitoring system that signals you when you’re in need of a change. 2. There are quick release oil drain valves on the market that replace your normal drain pan bolt. These can make oil changes much more convenient and can reduce the amount of mess you make. 3. When you remove the oil filter, make sure the rubber gasket ring comes off with it. If it stays on the car, the new filter won’t get a proper seal on the engine. 4. Wrap your used filter in newspaper and set it aside to take to a recycling center with your old oil. 5. When installing the new oil filter, dip your finger (while wearing gloves) in some new…

We dispatched photographer Christopher Griffith on a jaunt, literally across the country in five days, covering about 3,000 miles, to capture the new body cameras and, more importantly, the law enforcement officers who are wearing them in the police departments of East Haven, Connecticut; Oakland, California; and Ferguson, Missouri (see the full portfolio on page 86). When it came to Ferguson, Griffith says, “I was waiting for the police there to be on the defensive. And they were categorically the opposite. Irrespective of the side of the fence you sit on with what went down there, they’ve been through enough that this seemed like a safe bet. Even the police chief came down as we were photographing and was absolutely delightful. I was really surprised.”…

THE WINNER OF THE POPULAR MECHANICS HOME WORKSHOP CHALLENGE NO. 1 By now your collective splinters should be removed, the sawdust swept up, the last bit of lacquer applied, and your plywood projects proudly at work or on display. Good job, all of you. Our first-ever Home Workshop Challenge asked you to construct something out of a single 4 x 8– foot sheet of plywood. Some people relied on CAD software, some people seemed to have no prior experience operating a saw. We were impressed by all of them. Still, there can only be one winner. And he is Mead Pelletier of Cairo, New York. He designed and crafted a heavy-lifting hand truck, wheels and all, from his sheet of plywood. We were struck by the unique, purpose-driven use of…

By the time the new Whitney Museum of American Art opens in New York City on May 1, having moved from the 1966 building that housed it for forty-eight years, its galleries will have been sitting, complete but empty, for almost four months. The issue: contaminants such as sulfur dioxide, ozone, acetic acid, and chlorides, which are all by-products of standard construction materials—and which can all cause fine art to deteriorate. To remove these gases and airborne particles, the museum’s HVAC system is running specific airflow and filtering sequences for 120 days. Once particulate levels are low enough, the Whitney will bring in its permanent collection, including works by Jasper Johns, Cindy Sherman, and Mark Rothko.…

SPRING IS TRICKY. IT’S COLD, THEN IT’S HOT, THEN it’s cold again. It’s annoying. And it means you need a sweater. But what would really be great is a sweater that uses the same technology that’s been protecting astronauts for twenty-five years. Gihan Amarasiriwardena, who trained as an engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, partnered with two students at the business school to launch an online clothing company, Ministry of Supply, in 2012. (The first permanent physical store opened in 2014 in Boston.) Their goal was to combine the technology of athletic gear with the style of dress clothes. At first this meant using moisture-wicking, stretchable fabric to make button-downs, but then the company incorporated phase-change materials, which were used in textiles by NASA to regulate the temperature inside a…

YOU GET THE FEELING WHEN YOU WALK BY A CONSTRUCTION SITE. WHAT WOULD IT BE LIKE TO hop up in the chair and drive the backhoe, move around some gravel? All those levers. What do they do? Maybe you’re momentarily imagining saving the day, and that empty tower crane would be the perfect tool for rescuing a busload of orphans. But you don’t know how to drive a crane! You could read the instruction manual, but the orphans don’t have that kind of time. That’s why we pulled together these instructions. They’re not enough for a certification, and the professionals would probably call the authorities if you tried any of this without permission, but when you have ten minutes to foil the plans of nefarious evildoers (or, you know, to…

SHELTON DAVIS “We have pests in the basement, so we came to get chicken wire, mousetraps, and spray foam to persuade them to go elsewhere.” PATRICK GARMAN “Latex paint and plaster of Paris to mix for a nice, chalky finish. Apparently it’s all the rage in designer magazines right now.” IAN FLOWERS “I’m staying at my cousin’s house, and he has old toilet seats that keep breaking. I stopped in to get a replacement.”…

He doesn’t use it as often as a jigger, but Chad Solomon, co-owner of Dallas bar Midnight Rambler, often reaches for his Extech refractometer to make certain that the bar’s cocktails are balanced. The device, which resembles a small telescope, registers the amount of sugar in a liquid by measuring the refraction of light traveling through that liquid. Solomon uses his to make complex ingredients in-house, such as falernum, a spiced-rum base mixed with additional spices and lime oleo-saccharum, an essential oil from citrus and sugar. The refractometer ensures that Solomon can duplicate any ingredient within a 1 percent margin of error every time. It’s like a measuring cup with a laser on it.…

HOW TO CHOOSING A PRIMER If you’re restoring a panel or a whole car, you’ll want to use a first layer of epoxybased primer and a second layer of thick, urethanebased primer. Apply both with a gun designed for priming, such as a 3M Accuspray 07 series. If you are working on a smaller repair, such as repainting the dent you learned how to fill in our last installment, you can get by with a can of Sherwin-Williams P30, a primer– sealer. P30 adheres to bare metal and body filler, and you can spray it on or apply it with a standard paint roller. APPLYING AND LEVELING After prepping the area with a cleaning solvent, apply one coat of P30 over the body filler using a paint roller. When the…

Jack was a weatherbeaten framing carpenter on the first crew I worked on, almost forty years ago. I’ve forgotten his last name, but I haven’t forgotten his instructions, which were these: Lose your fear of hitting your fingers. You will. It’s going to hurt. Get over it. If you’re righthanded, place your left foot slightly in front of your right. Spread your feet shoulder-width apart. Bend your knees. When you need to swing with more force, grip the handle as close to the end as possible. For less force, choke up on the handle. Don’t use more force to drive a nail than you have to. You’re trying to drive the nail, not kill it. And establish a rhythm. Rhythm is what makes the work happen. If you bend a…

PETER’S METHOD If you can use a parking lot, you can load a dishwasher. Those tines, like parking spaces, are not suggestions. They’re guidance. Silverware is easy. Evenly distribute it among the baskets and vary the contents so that similar utensils don’t stick together. Everything should be pointed down, but if the baskets get crowded, you can fip the spoons over. Glasses go up top, each in the row that leaves the smallest gap between its edges and the tines. Bowls also go up there. Light things, like Tupperware, need to go on top, too, with lids pinned between two bowls to anchor them. The lower rack is obviously reserved for flat things, like plates. Cutting boards or large bowls are fine, but only if there are no more plates.…

I DON’T EVEN HAVE A GOOD EXCUSE. I WAS BORN AND RAISED IN DEARBORN , Michigan, the cradle of the auto industry. By virtue of my residency I should’ve had a working knowledge of clutch basics by the time I started walking. And my grandpa, the man who gave me, a 15-yearold with a learner’s permit, my first and only lesson in his little Mazda Miata, had been a driving school instructor back when every car had a standard transmission. His instruction didn’t take, though, and I went nearly thirteen years not knowing how to drive stick. In that time my automotive handicap went from a slightly amusing nonissue—“ Who has a manual car these days, anyway?”—to an actual detriment to my career—“Sorry, boss. I can’t take this Mustang GT…

HERE’S THE SECRET TO A GREAT ROAD TRIP: DON’T TRY TO PLAN everything. Lay out the structure, then let it happen to you. If you want a story you can tell for the rest of your life, you need conflict to drive it along. Failures of every kind are what make the road trip I took out of Las Vegas in my twenties my personal best. A blizzard in the Northeast canceled our discount fight five days before Christmas, so my boyfriend and I, too broke to get on another airline, rented a convertible and drove to Dallas. It seemed like a better choice: Four days, 1,300 miles, home just in time for the holidays. The first night the sun set over a panorama of scrubland so wild and barren…

ONE DAY IN 1991, WHEN I WAS 36, I WENT FROM HARDLY EVER thinking about golf to hardly ever thinking about anything else. A friend invited me to play nine holes and, even though I didn’t hit one good shot, something changed in my brain. Since that moment, golf has been my No. 1 preoccupation. Most of my friends today are golf friends, most of the trips I take are golf trips, most of my remaining ambitions involve my swing. When I began playing, I often wished I’d started in childhood, as my younger brother did. Within a few years, though, I realized that, in most ways, starting late had been an advantage. Unlike middle-aged guys who played in high school and college, I’m not haunted by how good I…

THE WHITMAN COIN FOLDER WAS BLUE AND LEATHERY AND FOLDED IN THIRDS, with rows of circular pouches that sagged unless they were pressed full of Lincoln pennies. My grandfather gave it to me when I was at one of those restless ages—8 or 9—when I was annoying the whole household by banging around complaining of boredom. He was an engineer, a man of order. He had a kingdom in the garage that included a coin collection I was not supposed to touch. To still my fitfulness, he showed it to me. Inside an old chest were dozens of books like the empty one he had given me, each containing copper Indian heads or silvery buffalo in rows like a college class portrait. He had square florins from Aruba and yen…

STEVE WHITE, owner, Brooklin Boat Yard, Brooklin, Maine Sailing is a lot like riding a bicycle: You don’t really unlearn. You can do it on vacation every year. The best way to start is to go out with somebody who already knows how and just watch. Then the experienced sailor will have you take the helm or the tiller of the boat and aim for a buoy or something. After that is when you start with theory: You can’t sail directly into the wind. You can only sail at so close an angle, otherwise your sails will flap and luff and the boat won’t go where you want it to. This can be frustrating at first, but in the end it’s what creates the joy of sailing. Once someone understands…

SOME TASKS ARE SO RICH IN THEIR DEMANDS THAT THE HOPE of mastering them leads to the pursuit of others, and then to others, and so on for life. When pursued with intensity, fishing works like that. Find someone who catches a variety of fish, season after season, year after year, in varied weather, habitats, and conditions, and you have almost certainly found someone who possesses a range of disparate but interlocking abilities. Being an expert caster, while a handsome competency, is nowhere near enough. Just as cats are not predators solely by claw, people who master fishing’s main goal—consistently harvesting fish—draw from a fuller set of skills. They can handle and work on boats. They read weather, currents, and tides. They easily tie a multiplicity of knots—in ropes, wire,…

QTY. Description ¼. × 24–inch poplar block 1 Package 1/2L beveled washers 1 ½inch-diameter birch tread wheel 1 Package (two pieces) ½inch brass cup hooks 1 ½inch plastic barbed irrigation fitting 1 3⁄16 × 48–inch poplar dowel rod 3 sticks of hot-melt glue 1 10-inch rubber band 4 old compact discs 1 Jumbo paper clip Instructions 1. Mark the outline of the car body (see right) on the poplar block. Using a 3⁄8-inch bit, drill two holes at the interior corners of the U-shaped rear axle cutout. Use a jigsaw to make a parallel cut to each hole. Cut between the holes to form the U. 2. Rip and crosscut the two blocks that will support the rear axle. Make diagonal marks on one of the blocks to find the…