Reading time: 2 minutes
Welcome to the weekend!
Possibilities catalogued
What is a tool?
According to this compendium of more than 1,500 tools, a tool (specifically a “cool” one) is:
Anything useful
That increases learning
Empowers individuals
Does work that matters
Is either the best
Or the cheapest
Or the only thing that works.
This enormous book is a spin-off from the long-running Cool Tools podcast (now available in video “show-and-tell” format). The tools herein range from traditional tools in the narrowest sense (recommendations on the best screwdrivers, pry bars, saws and sanders for instance), to homesteading and cooking, to storage and car maintenance, to photography, podcasts, games and psychedelics. And books, lots of books.
Arranged thematically, all recommendations come with descriptions, reviews, prices and QR links.
One could image that a printed catalog would quickly become outdated, however the clue to the real intention of the endeavour lies in the book’s subtitle: “A Catalog of Possibilities”. As the book’s intro states:
The real interest lies not in the utility of the tool itself but often knowing that a specific tool is available can:
encourage you to try a new task yourself
inspire a new way of doing an old chore,
give you an idea of something no one has ever made before,
reside in your mind for future use.
A different selection & more condensed version of this widening of possibilities can be found in the second book Four Favourite Tools.
Two of the most well-thumbed books on my shelves.
Meet The Bead-les
Sometimes called fuse beads or thermobeads, and sold under a range of brands, Hama beads are tiny plastic beads, available in a huge range of colours, which can be arranged into 2D patterns on a pegboards and fused together with the application of heat.
Like those other good things, Lego and the dry-cell battery, Hama bead were invented in Denmark.
With thousand of patterns available in published books and online, a vast range of colours and interlocking pegboards for a larger canvas there is no limit to their versatility. Above are my attempts at the Yellow Submarine-era Beatles and below some of the creatures form the Universal Monster movies.
However for the true ambitious, the 1,680,200 bead picture currently housed in Stockholm Airport and measuring 4.65m by 8.70m is the worlds largest.