Book of Errant Pages

For working in soft materials such as paper, softwoods, or plastic you may want to consider a scalpel instead of an X-ACTO knife.

The classic #11 X-ACTO blade has a thickness of 0.02” whereas the comparable #11 scalpel has a thickness of 0.015” making it easier to move though the material it has cut. This narrower blade also makes the scalpel a bit more flexible than the X-ACTO. My experience so far has shown the scalpel to be easier to use when making tight and detailed cuts. They also seem to last as long as my X-ACTOs in similar applications.

The attachment method for an X-ACTO normally involves using a screw to apply compression to the blade to hold it in place. If the user gets an X-ACTO stuck in a piece of material and pulls back with enough force to overcome this compression the blade will leave the handle.

 A scalpel attaches differently. It slides down a grove in the handle and snaps over the end ensuring it is not possible for the blade to come off of the handle without lifting the tab at the back.

Somewhat surprisingly scalpels can be had for cheaper than X-ACTOs. From Amazon a pack of #11 X-ACTOs with 5 blades can be bought for $4.05. The equivalent scalpel, also a #11, can be had in a 100 pack for $17. That works out to an X-ACTO costing $0.81/blade compared to a scalpel at $0.17/blade.

X-ACTO knifes have a numbering scheme similar to but not totally comparable to that used for scalpels. In both systems the blade number indicates the shape of the blade and not its size. Some blades in both systems refer to a similar profile.

The #10, #11, and #22 blades of both systems are comparably shaped. Some blade numbers do not match such as the #15 (which in X-ACTO is actually a saw) so be careful when acquiring direct replacements for your X-ACTOs.

Scalpels will come individually packaged in a sealed sterilized film. The sealed film alleviates the need for an oil film to protect the blade in storage (which is common with X-ACTOs) so there is nothing to clean off of a new scalpel before use.

If you want to give a scalpel a try go out and buy a #3 handle and some #10 (round point) or #11 (angled point) blades. There are many different profiles but most of the ones you will likely use in a crafting scenario will fit the #3 handle.  

There are many stories whose plot involves an object compelling its owner to use it. If the object were something like a sword you would likely have either a horror story or murder mystery. I often think this is very true for tools. Once you have a hammer everything starts to look like a nail and nails exist to be hammered. As I own a variety of tools I occasionally find novel uses for them. This weekend it was the micrometer I heard calling. As this is a measuring instrument I needed something to measure. I decided this would be paper.

There is much paper at the Barnes and Noble so there I headed early on a Saturday morning to measure their great stocks of it. The looks from both patrons and clerks was interesting. I enjoyed trying to imaging what they thought I was doing especially as they likely had never seen a micrometer before.

I had thought there would be a great variety in the thicknesses of the paper between volumes but was surprised to discover there was not. Conventional paperback novels are basically low resolution ink holders made of natural fiber paper and came in at 4 thou (four thousandths of an inch or .004”) with exceptional examples as low as 3.5 thou or as high as 5 thou. Black and white graphic novels are thicker with an average thickness of 6 thou. Color content seems to be mostly printed on glossier paper using synthetic fibers to achieve a higher resolution with better color fidelity and averaged around 3 thou. Black and white content printed on synthetic media also tended to average around 3 thou.

Larger format items such as color how to guides or coffee table books were more varied. Almost all are full color and ranged from 3 thou to 5.8 thou in thickness.

In hindsight I suppose this is not surprising to find the thickness of the paper tied to its application. Keeping standards for paper thickness also allows manufacturers of printing equipment to make reasonable assumptions about what their systems must accept.  

I do not cook, or bake, or execute any other from of food preparation beyond pouring cereal into a bowl milk. For this reason I am deficient in the realm of cooking implements. Thus when my sister arrived at my house with the intention of baking cookies in my oven I scrambled to find substitutes for the needed tools. The impending adventure led to some alternatives which I believed demonstrated greater usefulness than their traditional counterparts.

In the two years I had owned my house I had never used the gas oven. Little trust was placed in the oven’s metered dial indicating temperature and as there was no display of current temperature we would be unable to judge when preheating was complete.

My IR temperature gauge filled the role of thermometer admirably. In addition to the simple ability to register a temperature the meter may be aimed at different segments of the oven’s interior. This allows the user to find hot spots in the oven without laborious experimentation.

After the cookies were placed within the oven, whose preheating had been empirically confirmed, it occurred to us I was not in possession of any form of oven mitt. Various inferior and unimaginative alternatives were offered before I derived the ultimate solution.

Welding gloves being designed to protect their user from molten metal proved most effective. So great is the insulation of these gloves the user may maneuver hot surfaces at a leisurely pace. There is no haste necessary to drop a hot item before the heat becomes unbearable. As quality gloves may be had for $25 I cannot imagine a case in which a conventional oven mitt would excel them.  

Among the various loots I transported home after visiting my family for Christmas was a cake of most delicious construction. On arriving home I decided to cut the cake and store the individual pieces in the freezer. At this point I realized I had no implement which would neatly cut the cake. This was not a surprise for my expansive collection of power tools is inversely mirrored by my nonexistent supply of cooking utensils.

After some thought I decided to use dental floss. If wire cutting works for cheese, which is nominally more dense than cake, floss should work for cake.

This worked very well. The floss cut the cake easily and as its length is easily varied it is possible to cut the entire length of the cake at one time.

My original intent was to press the floss through the cake and then thread it out of one side at the bottom, thus cutting in one pass. This produced a cut edge so fine the icing seemed to reconnect after the floss had passed and so I drew the floss back up through the cake thereby cutting with the floss twice. The image shows the result of this double cut.

 

Having multiple monitors makes working on almost any task easier. The additional displays allow a great number of windows to be visible concurrently thus obviating the need to waste time looking through the taskbar for them. There are a few disadvantages though the chief being the consumption of vast amounts of desk real estate. To address this issue I constructed a monitor stand to hold all of my displays above the desk. This allows the utilization of space under the monitor for something more useful than a monitor stand.

  This stand is constructed of 32 feet of steel U channel, 16 feet of angle iron, 4 triple jointed monitor mounts, and 73 bolts. The U channel is SuperStrut which may be found at Home Depot. The frame utilizes two 80 inch segments of SuperStrut as its primary upright members. These vertical members reside on the outside of the desk and connect via ½ inch bolts through the desk to parallel elements on the inside of the desk. Tightening these bolts compresses the back plane of the desk between these parallel vertical members. This lets the desk take the load transferred from the stand and distribute it over a larger area than would be possible with bolts and washers alone.

Three 60 inch horizontal members connect the outer vertical supports together via right angle brackets. This forms two rectangles above the level of the desk. Spaces within these areas are candidates for monitor mount locations. When the horizontal location of a mount is determined two strips of angle iron are attached via angle brackets to the upper and lower horizontal members which define the area the monitor is being mounted in. These strips run vertically and parallel to each other with a ¾ inch gap between them.

   The arms I choose to use for this stand each have 4 holes which would conventionally provide a means of mounting the arm to a wall. In my case they are mounted to the vertical angle iron strips. A rectangular piece of 1/8 inch steel is drilled to match the hole pattern in the base of the mount. The steel plate is placed behind the strips of angle iron while the mount is attached to it via bolts from the front. These bolts pass through the gap between the strips. When these bolts are tightened the mount and steel plate compress the sides of the angle iron securing the mount.

 In addition to the monitor mounts this stand has also been fitted with a pair of backlights. Four monitors put out a considerable quantity of light and the presence of a dark background behind them can be uncomfortable over time. These lights are simple 18 inch under cabinet lights normally used in kitchens. Plywood was cut, glued, and painted in the form of a J hook which rests on the center

horizontal member of the frame.  

I am fond of writing with my Mont Blanc Meisterstuck rollerball however my fear of it coming to harm prevents it from leaving my desk at home. So the idea occurred to me to attempt to replace my Pilot G2 Limited’s internal refill with a Mont Blanc refill.

The process of changing out the refill was disappointingly simple. In fact further study revealed many fine pen refills would fit my G2 Limited body with little modification(Mont Blanc rollerballs and ball points) or no modification(Pelikan rollerballs). In the case of the Mont Blanc rollerball it is only necessary to remove a small portion of the plastic nub at the far end of the refill. The shoulder of the pen will fit into the pilot with no changes.

I started writing with my Mont Blanc modified pilot at the office and after some time I began to notice difficulty in discerning between my modified pen and my conventional G2. Curiosity struck and I decided to conduct an ad hoc survey to see if the occupants of my office could tell a difference between the modified and conventional G2.

Fifteen people were presented with a silver G2 Limited which contained a Mont Blanc rollerball refill as well as an unmodified coal gray G2 Limited. Each was simply asked which they would prefer to write with and why. Eight preferred the conventional G2 with the balance more favorable to the modified pen. Of especial interest was the language used to describe individual preferences. Regardless of which pen was preferred it was described as smoother than the other.

Line preference was evenly distributed between the G2’s thicker line and the Mont Banc’s thinner line. To be technically accurate here I must comment that these pens both produce lines of a around 16 thousandths of an inch. The G2’s line appears thicker because it is darker due to its greater ink deposition rate.

Of additional interest were comments made of each pen’s weight. Several users immediately noted the greater weight of the modified pen doing so instantly upon lifting the second pen without going back to the first for comparison. The normal G2 has a mass of 24.6 grams while the modified pen comes in at 27.4 grams. While this makes the modified pen 10% heavier than its counterpart I was still impressed with the ability of an individual to detect a 2.8 gram difference in mass with such speed.

Presently I find myself alternating between them based on task. When taking swift notes I make use of the G2 while reserving the Mont Blanc for slower tasks.