Udderly chilly

Cowstick, a sticker kit that transforms a refrigerator into a cow.

Wooden Wagon Wheels

Solid steam-bent hardwood construction with solid wooden hub. This wheel also has a metal rim. This is the largest wheel we can ship UPS. Made by the Amish in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. About $100 and up.

The pretty bit

Designer Screwdrivers Not your everyday tool. This is a tool for the show circuit. Display them for all to see rather than hide them in a tool box. Made of billet and highly polished, these screwdrivers make a statement. A $35 hello.

Sequoia's Last Stand

Link


Look at the size of the 'chips' thrown out by the broad ax?

Link to pic of giant Redwood on a train in 1890. One train hauls one tree.


Link to gallery of sunny Fortuna near northern California's majestic redwoods. Scroll down for historic album.

Hand made quality

Beautifully crafted hatchet with scrimshaw-style engraving, Macarta handle - $700

Lights, Cameras, Quake

"Lights, Cameras, Quake: Wood Townhouse to Undergo Seismic Testing," a University of Buffalo news release which states that "the full-scale townhouse will be subjected to the most violent shaking possible in a laboratory -- mimicking what an earthquake that occurs only once every 2,500 years would generate."

Shock absorbers for wood houses

Tidal stream generator

What is so unique about this new tidal generator?

Most current tidal stream generators are essentially wind turbines turned upside down and made to work underwater. They often include complex gearboxes and move the entire assembly to face the flow of the water. For example, they turn a half a circle as the tidal current reverses direction. Gears and moving parts require expensive maintenance, especially when they are used underwater. This pushes up the cost of running the turbines, a cost that is passed on to the consumers of the generated electricity.

The Southampton design does not need to turn around because the design of its turbine blades means that they turn equally well, regardless of which way the water flows past them. The blades are also placed in a specially shaped housing that helps channel the water smoothly through the turbine.

“Backyard” Lumber Milling

If you want to mill trees into lumber, you have several choices: 1) do it yourself with hand-held equipment, like an Alaskan Mill or RipSaw ($1,000-2,500 investment required), 2) do it yourself with a bandmill, such as the Woodmizer ($5,000-25,000 investment required). via Saws n Dust

Wiring VoIP

Wiring VoIP to your phone jacks

"In today's How-To, we're taking the diagonal cutters to the Ma Bell umbilical cord and hooking up our voice over IP adapter so we can use our old phone jacks.

Sound cool?

ThermoAcoustics is a simpler, better and more efficient way to cool your food, your house, your car, and your computer.

A fire-hydrant-size apparatus called a "thermoacoustic freezer" made its debut at a Ben & Jerry's in Manhattan.

The event was a relatively quiet affair, which was no small achievement: inside the core of the steel cooling unit, which was attached to a standard ice-cream cabinet, a loudspeaker emitted a 195-decibel screech to keep quarts of ice cream cold.

From the outside, you could hear only a soft hum. How did it work? The freezer is based on the principle that sound alters the temperature of the air it travels through. Sound waves oscillate, compressing and expanding in rapid cycles: compression causes the air to get warmer; expansion causes the air to get cooler.

Any ordinary conversation might cause temperature to fluctuate one ten-thousandth of a degree, but crank the volume inside the pressurized thermoacoustic freezer and you create much larger temperature spikes.

The trick, then, is to capture the coolness... Thermoacoustics Corp.

Revitalization

If the last half-century can be described as the era of decentralization, perhaps the next half-century can be viewed as the era of recentralization.

In other words, the need today is to create downtown centers in largely residential suburbs that can provide local jobs, amenities, and essentials. Also critical is revitalizing the inner core of our major cities and incorporating infrastructure improvements into every master plan.

From the article, "A Brief History of Outer Space"

The key to our future is simple:
Revitalize our cities and recentralize our suburbs to create places where people can work, live, raise families, and access needed services without heavy reliance on the automobile. In short, traveling to outer space is simply becoming too costly for all of us.

Decorative Concrete

The Concrete Network’s purpose is to educate consumers, builders, and contractors on popular decorative techniques and applications including stamped concrete, stained concrete floors, concrete countertops, polished concrete, and much more. Over 750,000 visitors research The Concrete Network Web site each month.

Battery capacity tester

There is no better way to know whether or not a battery will fail prematurely than doing a true capacity test.

A CBA is the only inexpensive product that does a lab quality test that anyone can do. The computer does all the work.

With a CBA you will find out if you "got what you paid for" when buying batteries. With a CBA you can intelligently make your next battery purchase. Test your batteries before deployment to the crew. Unlike voltmeters or simple battery testers a CBA enables anyone, regardless of knowledge, to do a true lab. test of any battery. You will be able to tell at a glance if a battery meets specs, needs to be rejuvenated or should be thrown out.

With a CBA and a charger you may

• cycle,
• condition,
• balance or
• rejuvenate battery packs

and then see the results graphically displayed.

Any chemistry (type) any size (capacity) battery may be tested. The only battery limit that a CBA has is that the battery voltage must be less than 48 volts.

If you use batteries in critical applications, a CBA is a must have.
About $100 at westmountainradio.com

Nanotech treated wood

Untreated wood rots. Ask anyone who has put their foot through a deck. Pressure-treated wood eliminates that problem, but the metallic salts used to keep good wood from going bad can pose a health and environmental hazard.

---

Other, safer materials, such as the organic insecticides and fungicides used in home gardens, also have the potential to preserve wood. However, because they don't dissolve well in water, it has been very difficult to get them to permeate the lumber.

Now, Michigan Technological University scientists are using nanotechnology to solve the problem.

Pat Heiden, a chemistry professor, and Peter Laks, a professor in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, have discovered a way to embed these organic compounds in plastic beads only about 100 nanometers across. "Six hundred of them in a row would be about the width of a human hair," Laks says.

Suspended in water, the beads are small enough to travel through the wood when it is placed under pressure. "Wood has a very fine, sieve-like structure," Laks said. "You need particles small enough to fit through those very small channels."

The beads go right to the heart of the wood and stay there, protecting it from decay.

The technology has been licensed to the New Jersey-based company Phibro-Tech, which supplies chemicals to the wood preservation industry.

"This is an emerging area," said Jim Baker, Michigan Tech's director of technology partnerships. "It's nanotechnology being applied in a traditional industry that has used technology for some time but which isn't thought of as being high tech."

The technology may be tiny, but the advantages could be huge. "It allows the industry to use more environmentally friendly biocides," Baker said.

"In addition, nanoparticles reduce leaching, which will help protect the environment from whatever preservatives are used."

And, it could allow the industry to use even more benign chemicals, such as borax, which are effective but too easily washed out of wood when it gets wet.

92 percent efficiency

Takagi Industrial
Introducing, the Takagi Flash Model T-H1 - the industry’s first tankless gas water heater with an efficiency rating of over 90 percent in the United States. With gas efficiencies of 92 percent in natural gas and 95 percent in propane, this product can be applied to domestic hot water heating systems, and space heating for residential and commercial usage.

Nanomembrane filtration

Daniel Pelosi:

My vision of the future sees technological pollutants everywhere.

Humans will not be able to breathe fresh air, harvest the soil, swim in the ocean, dance in the rain, or bathe in the Sun for most or all of their lives. Ironically, as we struggle to extend human life with the assistance of increasingly advanced technologies, it is strikingly apparent that the world will soon lose the ability to sustain human life.

In response to our unfit environment, I imagine a future where a faith forms that sees a return to nature as the last hope for the survival of humanity. My design, shown above, deploys a nanofiltration membrane within an existing building that would serve this nature-worshiping community in New York City.

The membrane filters out all pollutants and enables non-polluted nature to be alive inside. The membrane prevents harmful light rays and air pollutants from entering the space; it also removes pollutants from rain, allowing clean rainwater to enter. To clean the filters, the membranes cough. Blowers pressurize the interior volume so that particles are blown off the surfaces and are returned to the city.

As worshippers move from entrance to exit, their ritual is guided by organic symbolism in the form of living organisms. They must enter through a long corridor tube that is filled with nanofilter membranes, and discard their clothes in the cylindrical offering chamber. As they struggle to interact with pristine nature, artificially sustained, their faith and devotion grow stronger.

Posted at: Nanoarchitecture.net
Permalink to this article

Nanotech paint

BEHR Paints has introduced a new Kitchen and Bath Enamel, the first paint of its kind to utilize nanotechnology to achieve superior physical and aesthetic qualities.

The paint doubles as an impenetrable safeguard against mildew and stains in high-traffic areas that are most susceptible—kitchens and bathrooms.

The key ingredients are reduced to nano-sized particles that enhance the performance of the paint, resulting in an extremely hard, durable finish.

The product offers outstanding water resistance, provides excellent scrubbability, easy stain removal, superior stain blocking resistance and improved application properties.

More
Read the Warnings
via nanoarchitecture.net

Pellet stove makers

Pellet fuel is a growing sector.

COMPANY NAME	PHONE	BRAND NAME	URL
American Energy Systems	320/587-6565	Country Side	hearthdirect.com
APR Industries, Ltd.	204/452-9907	Kozi	kozistoves.com
Bixby Energy Systems	612/916-0642		bixbyenergy.com
Breckwell Hearth Products	972/606-8444	Breckwell	breckwell.com
Country Stoves Inc.	253/735-1100		countrystoves.com
Dansons Group, Inc.	877/303-3134	Glo Boy	dansons.com
Dell Point Technologies	514/331-6212		pelletstove.com
Earth Stove by Lennox Hearth Products	714/-921-6100		lennoxhearthproducts.com
Empire Products, Inc.	909/399-3355	Easyfire	empireproductsinc.com
England's Stove Works, Inc.	434/929-0120	Englander	englandsstoveworks.com
Even Temp Inc.	402/728-5255	St. Croix	eventempinc.com
Harman Stove Company	717/362-9080	Harman	harmanstoves.com
Invensys Climate Controls	310/638-6111		invensys.com
Lennox Hearth Products	714/921-6100	Whitfield/Earth Stove	LennoxHearthProducts.com
Mendota Hearth Products	319/365-5267		mendotahearth.com
NU-TEC Incorporated	401/738-2915		nutec-castings.com
Quadra Fire	509/684-3745	Quadra-Fire	quadrafire.com
Sherwood Industries	250/652-3223	EnviroFire	envirofire.biz
Stove Builder International (SBI)	418/527-3060		drolet.ca
Tarm USA	603/795-2214		woodboilers.com
Thelin Co. Inc.	530/273-1976		thelinco.com
Traeger Industries, Inc.	503/845-9234	Traeger	traegerindustries.com
Travis Industries	425/609-2500	Avalon/Lopi	travisproducts.com
United States Stove Company	423/837-2100	American Harvest	usstove.com

Hydrophobic nanotechnology

Moen is incorporating hydrophobic nanotechnology, supplied by Diamond-Fusion International, into their new line of luxury faucets and accessories for kitchens and baths.

Moen’s Vivid Collection will use the coating to guard against watermarks and deposits. Hydrophobic coatings repel fluids, causing them to gather into spherical beads and roll of surfaces.

link

OCEAN-BUILT HOMES

Simply put, Hilbertz has found a way to use sunlight to turn the minerals in seawater into limestone.

Autopia Ampere will begin as a series of wire-mesh armatures anchored atop a sea mountain. Once in place, they will be connected to a supply of low-voltage direct current produced by solar panels. Over time, electrochemical reactions will draw minerals from the sea to the armatures, creating walls of calcium carbonate, which is what us landlubbers commonly call limestone.

The fact that ocean-grown cities could stand on their own economically and become independent and self-governing entities poses what Hilbertz believes to be one of the biggest barriers to their creation. He says there is no legal precedent regarding national ownership of a newly formed island that is beyond a nation's territorial waters.

from Popular Mechanics via greg taff

King of Unfinished Projects

T-Shirt for the "Heavyweight" builder at Arty's

Measuring Tape Tape

This yellow and black measuring tape is used in the theatre and film industry to block off sets and stages.

We have found many additional uses for it and appreciate its striking graphic quality.

1/2" x 50 yards
Price $8.00 each.

Museum of Useful Things

Circular Kitchen

Added or relocated to any space, be it apartment, office, holiday home or factory, this component kitchen comes complete with all the facilities and storage space of a conventional kitchen.

There are no conventional cupboard doors, so access to the kitchen’s various components is by rotating the central unit through 180 degrees, or the top unit which rotates through 360 degrees.

The Circular Kitchen will cost between $6,500 and $15,000. Link via bituman

Beer Holster

You might not be an outlaw, but you can still do a quick draw from the hip with this leather beer holster ($30).

It slides onto any standard belt and holds a 12 oz. can or bottle.

The holster isn't just for laughs either — it'd be super handy for grilling and other outdoor activities.

via uncrate

Extinquisher styling

The Home Fireman does just that as a hidden cabinet with a standard fire extinguisher --

and a 40' firehose that connects to a cold water line.

Installed between two wall studs, it offers discrete protection for those with a clumsy cook in the house.

[via uncrate]

($300)