Measuring Relative Humidity

Previously.

Recently I used my limited woodworking skills to fix a sticky door. When the humidity is around 55-65%, the door closes smoothly. When the humidity rises to 70% or more, the door sticks.

It's another example of how one can use their environment to judge the RH around them. Bowyers can measure the moisture content of wood with moisture meters (I don't), and they can check their RH with hygrometers (I do). But in the absence of those tools, you still have your senses and powers of observation.

How is your wood behaving? How does it smell, feel, or react to your tools? How is it behaving on the tiller? Those things will indicate how wet/dry your bow is. Your senses can tell you if your environment is too wet for successfully drying wood. My sticky door tells me the RH is hovering around 70% and my hygrometers confirm that. That's not great for drying wood. Fortunately, my wood is already dry and the RH averages out to 55-65% over the long term. But such information can be valuable depending on the stage of the bow's construction.

A good rule of thumb: Bows are like people; if it's too humid/hot/cold for you, then it's probably too humid/hot/cold for them.

Cops behaving badly

Tased in the taint!

"If you move again, I'm going to stick this Taser up your (expletive) and pull the trigger," one of the officers said. "Now, do you feel this in your (expletive)? — I'm going to Tase your (expletive) if you move again."

Police violated the department's use-of-force policy when the officers Tasered the man once in the back before he was handcuffed, and then in the buttocks after he was handcuffed,

"Officer No. 3 punctuated his offensive speech language by pushing the Taser between the complainant's buttocks and against his anal and genital areas," Murphy wrote. "Such speech combined with these actions was especially offensive."

File this one under: Kindly remove the jackboot from my neck

The Webley Fosbery auotmatic revolver in action

I mentioned the Webley Fosbery in a early post. Out of curiosity, I found this video of the weapon in action. Pretty fascinating.



As the narrator says, the Webley Fosbery answers a question that no one asked.

Book Review: "Shop Class as Soulcraft" by Michael B. Crawford.

I read an essay by Mathew Crawford and was intrigued by his new book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft. Crawford is philosopher, holds a PhD, and is a motorcycle mechanic. I’m not a manual trades guy. I fix what I can, do a little woodworking, and make bows.

But my father was an auto mechanic by trade. He also had a genius about most things mechanical. He’d get a gleam in his eye when something broke. I remember many weekends where my dad was either under a hood, behind a washing machine, under a sink, buried behind a furnace, or on his back pulling out the guts of a dishwasher. When wasn’t my dad lodged inside a machine?.

I suppose some looked down on him; grease stained, a mediocre student in high school, no college, and he went to trade school. But a guy who can fix the dishwasher, get the furnace going in the dead of winter, and get the car back on the road is a valuable asset to society. I was intrigued with a book that sought to give proper perspective and appreciation to the manual trades.

Society has been conditioned to look down on the manual trades. Remember all the jokes about shop class and those who went to it? Imagine the horror many parents would feel if their child elected to go to a trade school over college. The parents, and society would ask, “What went wrong?” and view that child as somehow failing in life.. or at least not living up to their potential. Is it right to view the manual trades as a lesser path? Mathew B. Crawford answers that question.

“Soulcraft” defends the value of the manual trades. This book is also an exploration into how many professions have been reduced to component tasks, with each worker doing one part of that task (“The Separation of Thinking from Doing”). The first job sector to be given this treatment was the assembly line and mass production. Now the same thing has happened with office work. Job roles have been reduced to component parts, and each office worker does a part of the process with little knowledge of the entire process itself. Rigid rules and “work processes” have replaced individual professional judgment.

The book criticizes the current theories driving corporate culture and “scientific” management and how those theories have resulted in, quite bluntly, a stupid workforce.

Crawford asserts that corporate managers have become masters of Soviet-era doublespeak while playing the role of pseudo-counselors as they make employees jump through the hoops of “team builders”. Employee coaching sessions focus more on the employee’s personality than their actual work.

Crawford goes on to write that all this has been done as the current theories of corporate management have claimed that a new “knowledge economy” is where success may be found; an economy where the “knowledge work” is the most satisfying (financially and mentally) of career paths. But all too often those who work in the office feel dissatisfied, unchallenged, and pigeonholed into a culture that is completely and totally counter-intuitive to common sense, rationality, and reason.

The manual trades, according to "Soulcraft," are rooted in rationality and reason. They require logical thought and skill. The manual trades offer intellectual stimulation and utterly quantifiable results (it’s either fixed or it isn’t). There is no need for abstractions, corporate psychobabble, or personality contests.

Is the book a total repudiation of white collar work? Not at all. It attacks the idiocies of “scientific” management and the current trends of corporate culture. It highlights the dangers of “The Separation of Thinking from Doing”. It points out that the manual trades, by and large, are immune to this. The manual trades can’t be dumbed down or outsourced. The author does this without mystifying the manual trades and the craftsman. Crawford does not entertain mystique. I think the book serves as a reminder to the positive aspects of the manual trades, and as a warning to what is wrong with the current theories of work management.

I enjoyed “Shop Class as Soulcraft” on several levels. I enjoyed it’s criticisms of the state of work. I appreciated Crawford’s putting the manual trades into a more dignified perspective. On a personal level, I can hear my dad when Crawford writes about how a mechanic thinks when diagnosing a problem.

Coffee, what can't you do?

An extract from coffee can inhibit the bacteria that lead to bad breath, scientists have discovered