Popular Mechanics USA - March 2015

how they make the new york times
24 hours in the Life of the Last Great newspaper

PAGE 70
The Solar-Powered Plane

Thats Flying
Around the World!
PAG E 1 7
H ow Yo u r wo r l d wo r ks
tool
rescue !
S U R V I VA L
SECRETS
THAT WILL
BRING
YO U R O L D R U S T Y
TOOLS BACK
TO LIFE
PAG E 89
IS IS
TH
R S,
MEYE
N ICK
REST
O
U. S . F I CE
S E RV
NC H E
A VA L A U E .
R E S C to B e
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contents
march 2015
THE BIG sTory
h ow
t h e n ew
yo r k
times
wo rks
page
70
Pages upon pages of

whats going on throughout
the world arrive on your
doorstep every morning.
How does the newspaper
of record pull it of
again and again
and again?
By Reeves Wiedeman
Each weekday at the papers
Queens printing facility,
300,000 copies of The New York
Times roll off the presses.
photograph by WILL StEaCy
P o P u l a r M e c h a n i c s _ March 2015
march
2015
contents
Letters ...................... 6
Your projects ......... 8
When to clean up
after your dog ..... 10
A letter from the
editor ........................ 1 1
Contests and
announcements ... 14
H o w Yo u r
w o r l d w o r ks 1 7
The first solar plane
to circumnavigate
the globe.
Your new digital
assistant.
How to use your
eyeball to access
your gmail.
A craft distillery
in the cradle
of prohibition.
The gigantic pool
where the coast
guard learns how to
save your life.
plus! great
unknowns: where
to tread on new
ground.
Cars
page
page
page
page
40 54 80 89
a Beautiful
thing
the casual
s u r v i va l i s t
a guide to
wat c h e s
the project
the results
of what happens
when two carpenters are also
skateboarders.
everything you
need to make it
through emergency situations
without having
to call yourself a
prepper.
a comprehensive
look at how the
finest watches
tell time. plus,
americas only
independent elite
watchmaker.
Yes, that old table

saw rusting in
the back of the
garage is still
good. well show
you how to bring it
back to life.
33
A $20,000 tricycle
youll want to ride.
The case against
saving fuel.
A big new small
truck.
The 2015 BMW X6
probably shouldnt
exist. Be glad it
does.
Motorcycles. Fast
ones.
skills 4 3
Your morning coffee can be so
much better.
The tape measures grandfather, the
story pole.
A YouTube music sensation teaches
you how to loop.
The very best in lawn edgers.
Dismantling the guts of a refrigerator.
How to restore a Car:

Pa r t 2 4 8
this month at the freedom high school
auto club: repairing dents.
a s k r oY 5 0
how to look good in safety glasses, caulk
a kitchen backsplash, and get your lawn
to bounce back after a harsh winter.
PoPul ar MeCHaniCs for
kids 100
a monster mask made from a mop.
on the cover:
nick meyers, director of the mount shasta avalanche center in mount shasta, california. photograph by ian allen. nicks essential mountain survival tips are on page 68.
March 2015 _ P o P u l a r M e c h a n i c s
letters
According to
one reader, it
hasnt been
played with
since.
The very first
Cozy Coupe
came off the
line in 1979.
how machines saVe tiny saLmon
Lets hope the Whooshh Fish Transport System

(The Salmon Cannon, December/January) means
that once again the Columbia River will teem with
salmon. One question, though: How do the juvenile
salmon, parr, get around these dams on their frst
journey from the stream out to sea?
roger w. hamel
Cedarville, Michigan
w h o hu rt you, Br e t t ?
I was not surprised to see the familiar Little Tikes
Cozy Coupe in your review of childrens toys (The
100% Wholesome Holiday Toy Guide, December/
January). Its popularity is evidenced by how it is
so prominently featured in family yards across the
country. But because I have never actually seen a
single child playing in one, I must conclude that in
calling it a classic, you are referring to its notoriety
as a quintessential American lawn ornament.
brett clemons
Hermon, Maine
The Answer: According to the folks at Whooshh

who invented the salmon cannon, on rivers like the
Columbia many of the dams have spillway weirs,
barriers that change the fow of water over the dam
near the surface, where the salmon naturally swim.
The weirs allow the parr to slip through and then
downstream toward the sea without getting caught
up in turbines. Meanwhile, newer hydroelectric
dams have turbines designed to let parr easily pass.
a Letter to steVe wozniak, amazingLy
not handwritten
Steve, Steve, Steve. Youre a genius, youve made

more money than I will in ffty lifetimes, and
Breakout is my favorite video game ever. But to
claim that the iPhone is somehow a greater inno
vation than the pyramids (Innovation, Defned,
December/January)? Come, come. Even though, as
Melville said, I shudder at the idea of the ancient
Egyptians, those structures defned a civilization.
If a smartphone is defning ours, we are in a very
bad way. A tool needs to be recognized as such, not
glorifed as a means in itself.
todd lundgren
Yakima, Washington
when did teachers get so pessimistic?
As freshmen in high school, my classmates and I

are often told that the world is a mess and were
going to have to fx it. Because of this, the future
isnt something I usually look forward to. But your
December/January issue, especially A Year of
Good Things, made me feel excited about the next
several years and the amazingly innovative stuf yet
to come. Thank you for making the world seem so
much brighter.
the JiBo controVersy, and the tooL argument,

continued
One of the statements in the story about Jibo and

its inventor, Cynthia Breazeal, is shortsighted and,
frankly, just plain wrong: Tools force you to leave
the moment. Ive worked with tools all my life, and
they always augment the moment, aggrandizing and
supporting whatever the focus is at the time.
jimmy colfer
dav e m i c h a e ls
Steamboat Springs, Colorado
Bedford, New Hampshire
Letters to the editor can be emailed to editor@popularmechanics.com. Include your full name and address. Letters may be
edited for length and clarity. Subscribe: subscribe.popularmechanics.com, 800-333-4948.
ABSOLUTE TOUGHNESS UNIVERSAL ACCURACY

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reader FOrUM
T h e ( N e a r ly )
CompleTe
W o r ks o f a
former air
forCe piloT
Kent Ashton,
67, of Concord,
North Carolina,
has been busy.
A truncated list
of his efforts
over the past
few years.
pRojEcT
of THE
MonTH
Built and got flying

a Rutan Long-EZ
airplane, a project
seven years in the
making.
Beginning this
month, well pay
you for your
original projects
and tips that
we publish. Turn
to page 11
for details.
Reconfigured a
boat trailer to haul
said airplane.
A HOMEMADE COFFEE ROASTER FROM

HOWARD FREILICH
Up until about six months ago, Howard Freilich bought his cofee like the rest of us,
preground and preroasted, of the grocery-store shelf. Then the former industrial
electrician, who now runs his own saw-blade sales business out of his home in
Richardson, Texas, learned that your typical canister of cofee is at optimal favor
for only two weeks after roasting. So he set about roasting his own beans. Two
prototypes later (the frst ones werent sturdy enough), he combined a heat gun
with its casing stripped of so as not to imbue the beans with a plastic favorand a
rotating canister on a twelve-volt gearbox. In about fourteen minutes his rig puts an
even, dark roast on eleven ounces of fresh cofee beans that he buys from a nearby
roasting plant. Enough to last him, yep, two weeks at a time. The man has devised
a way to create some of the smallest batch cofee right on his kitchen counter. Hell
probably enjoy our story on page 43, too.
B o N u s ! a N u N r e l aT e d T i p f r o m h o Wa r d
Before opening and stirring paint that has been stored for more than a week, turn
the can over and let it rest upside down for a few minutes. The paint solids that
had settled to the bottom will move toward the top. When you flip the can back
over and mix the paint, youll find you get a better consistency by stirring the
solids back down rather than trying to stir them up.
T h e e N d u r i N g B oa r d C h a i r
Way back in September we published
the plans for a simplified Adirondackstyle board chair that just about
anybody could make, and just about
everybody made it. Some of the best
examples appear at right. Send us the
results of projects youve completed
from plans in the magazine to editor@
popularmechanics.com, or tweet them
to us at @popmech, or tag us on Instagram using hashtag #popularmechanics.
Restored a 1974
BMW R90/6 motorcycle.
Retrofitted two
vintage Volkswagen Vanagons with
Subaru motors.
Installed new
capacitors on a
Heathkit amplifier
and on a set of
Acoustic Research
speakers.
Welded the aluminum tank of a BMW
K75 motorcycle
and a hydraulic
tube bender.
Built a raised
garden bed for
his wife.
Built a GrayHoverman HDTV
antenna.
JAMIE EHLERS
Virginia Beach, Va.
INSTAGRAM USER
@SVK28
MATTEO LOGRANDE
West Hartford, Conn.
Unsuccessfully
repaired a chainsaw and bought a
new one. It had
spark at the plug,
the timing was correct, and I rebuilt
the carburetor,
but I couldnt get a
cough from it.
Introducing
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calendar
M A RCH
2 015
What our editors are doing this month. And what you ought to be.
MONDAY
SUNDAY
1
TUESDAY
3
WEDNESDAY
4
THURSDAY
5
Remove the
lights I put on
my cherry tree
every winter,
and test each
strand before
putting it away.
8
15
Buy seeds
for and lay
out the
spring garden.
22
Ryan DAgostino,
editor in chief
Ezra Dyer,
automotive editor
Joe Bargmann,
special projects
director
You
WHO
WOULD
LAST?
A GAME TO PLAY
WITH YOUR
FRIENDS.
10
10
11
12
16
17
Fill out your

March Madness bracket,
if youre into
that sort of
thing.
23
13
18
St. Patricks
Day. Dont
wear green,
enjoy a
Guinness.
24
25
19
20
Pick up the
dog crap
thats been
buried under
the snow,
which has
finally melted.
The first day

of spring.
It probably
wont feel like
it, so clean up
the workshop
instead.
26
27
21
28
Tune in to the
launch that
will begin
Scott Kellys
yearlong mission aboard
the ISS.
Mow the lawn

for the first
time this
year. Spring
comes early
down south.
30
14
Clean the gutRon Howards ters in time for

seafaring
the rains. Any
epic In
leftover leaves
the Heart of
will come
the Sea
out easily in
comes out.
icy clumps.
Get the
driver-side
window on my
Bronco back
on its track.
Dust off
the window
screens.
Its gettin
warm out.
29
SATURDAY
Get in line to
Cook the last
see Chappie, lasagna of the
the AI movie
season. You
from District 9 never feel like
director Neill lasagna in the
Blomkamp.
summer.
9
Daylight
Savings. We
lose an hour
of precious
tinkering.
FRIDAY
31
Rent a
Pull out the hydraulic dump
trailer and
Honda rotoDewinterize
tiller and make top-dress the the boat, hook
driveway with
the garden
up a trickle
beds my wife fresh crushed charger, and
bluestone.
wants.
start her up.
After reading
our big survival
feature on page
54, use your
newly acquired
knowledge next
time youre at
the bar.
Deciding the order

in which your
friends would die
in an apocalypse is
easy. Theres the
obvious first guy
the one who refers
to a Phillips-head
screwdriver as
a plus sign. One of

you is on medication? Dead. Cant
walk up four flights
of stairs without
taking a break, or
needs ten minutes
to make up his
mind about which
mustard to buy at
the grocery store?
Sorry, both dead.
Having watched
a marathon of
Survivorman buys
you only a couple
of days, tops. The
real debate is in the
finalistsanyone
who took a NOLS
course, was a Boy
Scout, or grew up in
something called a
holler. For any ties
after that, it all gets
easy again: whoever
can run the fastest.
Since 1902
Ryan DAgostino
Editor In Chief
Design Director Rob Hewitt
from the editor
Executive Editor David Howard

Deputy Editor Peter Martin
Managing Editor Michael S. Cain
Editorial Director David Granger
Editorial
Special Projects Director Joe Bargmann
Senior Editors Roy Berendsohn,
Andrew Del-Colle,
Jacqueline Detwiler
Automotive Editor Ezra Dyer
Associate Editors Alexander George,
Matt Goulet
Assistant Editor Kevin Dupzyk
Editorial Assistant Cameron Johnson
Copy Chief Robin Tribble
Research Director David Cohen
Assistant to the Editor in Chief Theresa Breen
Art
Deputy Art Director Kristie Bailey
Associate Art Director Tim Vienckowski
Designer Jack Dylan
Photography
Director of Photography Allyson Torrisi
Associate Photo Editor Devon Baverman
Contributing Editors
Daniel Dubno, Wylie Dufresne,
Francine Maroukian, David Owen,
Joe Pappalardo, Richard Romanski,
Joseph Truini
Editorial Board of Advisers
Buzz Aldrin (Apollo 11 astronaut)
Shawn Carlson (LabRats)
David E. Cole (Center for Automotive Research)
Saul Griffith (Otherlab)
Thomas D. Jones (NASA astronaut)
Dr. Ken Kamler (microsurgeon)
Gavin A. Schmidt (NASA Goddard Institute
for Space Studies)
Amy B. Smith (MIT)
Daniel H. Wilson (roboticist)
Wm. A. Wulf (National Academy of Engineering)
Imaging
Digital Imaging Specialist Steve Fusco
PopularMechanics.com
Site Director Thomas Houston
Online Editor Andrew Moseman
Online Producer Carl Davis
How Is 2015 Shaping Up?

Twenty-ffteen is a coupla months old, but January and
February dont countits cold, and everyone just keeps
asking how your holidays were. Only now is the year starting
to develop any kind of personality, and its time to declare a
theme, at least here at Popular Mechanics: empowerment.
Anything is possible this year. Youre in control. You can
dream up a product, design it using CAD software, and learn
to print it on a 3D printer. And: You have a Home Depot or a Lowes within ffteen minutes of your home, so you can wander the million aisles, then
make or fx anything. And: You have a billion ways to tell the world about
your creations, most of which involve nothing more than the phone in your
pocket. We are living in the golden age of people who want to do stuf.
Heres all I ask: Tell us how we can help you.
This month you might notice that the frst bunch of pages after the
table of contents are mostly about you. Your letters. Your projects made at
home. The contests we hope you will enter to show your skills (and to win
prizes). The magazine opens with a veritable Popular Mechanics reader
marathon. And all our contact information is here, so you always know
how to reach us. Weve revamped our eforts on the Twitter and the Instagram and the Facebook and everything else, so were always ready to talk
and swap photos and conspire about cool things we could do together.
We hope youre fnding inspiration in every issue. This month we have
an expansive, highly informative, mostly serious, occasionally humorous
section about survival, starting on page 54how to get through impossible situations that will probably never happen. Theres also a fascinating story about how the worlds most venerable and important newsgathering organization, The New York Times, operates, starting with the
writer who writes the story and ending with the enormous presses that
print the paper night after night after night. What we learn from the story
is that the worlds most important news-gathering operation is just people
who have a common purpose, doing their jobs with care, day after day
after day. And I guess what we learn from that story, too, is that anything
is possible. What the Times does every day seems impossible, and what
the survival experts we interviewed do out in the wilderness seems impossible. And yet they do it. Ive found myself thinking about these stories
lately as I stare at some impossible-seeming task or another, at home or at
work. They are empowering. They make things seem possible. Happy New
Year. Go make a birdhouse.
Popular Mechanics Interactive

Producer Jeff Zinn
Published by Hearst
Communications, Inc.
Steven R. Swartz
President & Chief Executive Ofcer
William R. Hearst III
Chairman
Frank A. Bennack, Jr.
Executive Vice Chairman
Hearst Magazines Division
David Carey
President
Michael Clinton
President, Marketing & Publishing Director
John P. Loughlin
Executive Vice President & General Manager
Editorial Director Ellen Levine
Publishing Consultant Gilbert C. Maurer
Publishing Consultant Mark F. Miller
p h o t o g r a p h b y b e n s t e c h s c h u lt e
RYAN DAGOSTINO
EDITOR IN CHIEF
W r i t e t o u s, e a r n s o m e d o u g h .
if we find your original project and the photos thereof fit for these pages,
well pay you $100 for your efforts upon publication. And if you send us a
new and useful home, auto, or DiY tipand we decide to run itwell give
you $50. call it a little incentive for being an engaged reader. You can email
both tips and projects to editor@popularmechanics.com.
11
contests!
Imagine having
this beauty
standing next to
your grill. Summers
almost here.
Since 1902
Cameron Connors
Publisher; Chief Revenue Ofcer
Advertising Director
Adam C. Dub
Executive Director, Group Marketing
Lisa Boyars
Advertising Sales Ofces
New York
East Coast Automotive Director
Cameron Albergo 212/649-4159
Integrated Account Manager
Joe Dunn 212/649-2902
Assistant Jennifer Zuckerman 212/649-2875
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Integrated California Sales Manager
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Integration Associate
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Chicago
Integrated Midwest Director
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Integrated Sales Manager
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Integrated Sales Director
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Dallas
Patty Rudolph 972/533-8665 PR 4.0 Media
Direct Response Advertising
Sales Manager Brad Gettelfinger 212/649-4204
Account Manager John Stankewitz 212/649-4201
YOUR HOW TO MAKE

ANYTHING
SWE EP STAK E S WINNER
As part of our How to Make Anything
issue (September 2014), we asked you to
share your projects with us on Instagram
for a little sweepstakes. The winner of
said sweepstakes is Mike Kuhl of Lincoln,
Nebraska. What he made is a slick standing cooler rigged with interior lightingmaking bending over and fshing
for a cold one in the dark a burden only
our fathers will know. For his eforts,
Mike won a $145 Minimalist Lamp by
Meriwether of Montana, and, of course,
this mention here.
t wo quick Announcements
14
Some of you are anxiously awaiting the results of the first Popular
Mechanics Home Workshop challenge that we issued back in December
the one where we asked you to make something out of a single sheet of
plywood. We got some great entries: tables, puzzles, nativity scenes.
Were in the midst of judging. You can expect to see the plans for the winning project on this page in the April issue.
We are taking candidate submissions for Americas Most Popular

Mechanic right up until February 15. Let us know about the car technician
you and your vehicle cannot do without. Go to popularmechanics.com/
most-popular-mechanic and fill out the entry form there. Our selection for
the best mechanic in the country will be announced soon.
Marketing Solutions
Senior Marketing Director Jason Graham
Associate Marketing Director Bonnie Harris
Associate Marketing Director Amanda Luginbill
Integrated Marketing Manager Rob Gearity
Marketing Manager Michael Coopersmith
Integrated Marketing Coordinator Holly Mascaro
Administration
Advertising Services Director Regina Wall
Advertising Services Coordinator Aiden Lee
Centralized Billing Services Coordinator
Christa Calaban
Production
Group Production Director Karen Otto
Group Production Manager
Lynn Onoyeyan Scaglione
Associate Production Manager Karen Nazario
Circulation
Consumer Marketing Director William Carter
Hearst Mens Group
Senior Vice President & Publishing Director
Jack Essig
Associate Publisher & Group Marketing Director
Jill Meenaghan
General Manager Samantha Irwin
Executive Director, Group Strategy & Development
Dawn Sheggeby
Executive Creative Director, Group Marketing
Alison DeBenedictis
Art Director George Garrastegui, Jr.
Associate Art Director Michael B. Sarpy
Digital Marketing Director Kelley Gudahl
Executive Director, Digital Advertising
Bill McGarry
East Coast Digital Account Manager
Drew Osinski
Senior Digital Sales Strategist
Amanda Marandola
Senior Digital Sales Strategist
Kameron McCullough
Digital Marketing Manager Anthony Fairall
Senior Financial Analyst Naiobe Mayo
M-Pact
THE TOOL THAT FITS LIKE A GLOVE.

US: 800.222.4296
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digital assistants!
gin!
the coast guard!
hospitals!
underwear
THe Sun Pl ane

The Solar
Impulse 2 in the
middle of its
first test flight
on June 2, 2014,
near Payerne,
Switzerland.
Theyre the Amelia Earharts of clean energy:

This month Swiss pilots Bertrand Piccard
and Andr Borschberg will attempt to
become the first people to circumnavigate
the world in a solar-powered airplane. Their
twelve-leg, 21,748-mile trip will take five
months to complete, beginning and ending
in Abu Dhabi, with stops in North Africa or
southern Europe, and the United States.
We had a few questions. b y r a c h e l s t u r t z
17
How
big is this
thing?
av i at i o n
Solar Impulse 2
Boeing 747-400
Wingspan:
Wingspan:
Weight:
Weight:
236 feet
5,000 pounds
How comfortable is the

plane?
Not very, especially considering that it is unpressurized

and has no heat. Borschberg
and Piccard will have oxygen
tanks to deal with the altitude,
but theyll be forced to endure
temperatures that fuctuate between minus 4 and 86
degrees Fahrenheit with only
small warmers for their hands
and toes.
Because the cockpit seats
one, the plane will land every
few days to change pilots.
Who are these guys?
Bertrand Piccard (far right)

is an aeronaut who copiloted
the frst nonstop trip around
the world in a balloon in 1999.
In 2003 he teamed up with
Andr Borschberg (right), an
engineer and former fghter
pilot. With a crew of eighty
engineers and technicians,
the two devoted the next
twelve years to developing
one of the most innovative
solar-powered machines on
the planet.
Will this be their first
attempt?
At traveling around the world,

yes. There was an earlier
prototype, Solar Impulse 1,
that broke eight records, three
of them when Borschberg
few it for twenty-six hours
straight in the frst night fight
at e
U p d
How do they sleep?
They dont, really. Since

only one pilot can ft in the
106-cubic-foot cockpit at a
time, he is allowed just six
twenty-minute naps a day
while the plane is on autopilot. Both men have trained in
meditation and self-hypnosis
to rapidly enter deep sleep
and wake up alert.
Is there a bathroom?
in the history of solar aviation.

Theyre now on to Solar
Impulse 2, which has greater
energy density in its 1,400
pounds of lithium-ion batteries
and improved 17.5-horsepower
electric motors that spin the
propellers with 94 percent
efciency.
The longest and most

demanding leg of the trip is a
fve-day stretch of continuous
fight over the Pacifc, so it
wouldnt be fair to expect the
pilot to wait for a rest stop.
The seat, which can recline
completely for naps and
physical exercise, also serves
as a toiletby removing the
cushion of the seat as you
might on a private plane.
If its a solar plane,
does that mean it cant
fly at night?
The plane uses stored energy

to fy in the dark. So as not
211.5 feet
394,660 pounds
to exhaust its reserves, Solar

Impulse 2 takes advantage of
gravity, gradually gliding down
to an altitude of 5,000 feet at
night. During the day the pilot
regains a cruising altitude of
28,000 feetwhere there is
lower air density and drag
and can reach a top speed of
eighty-six miles per hour while
the batteries are recharged.
Are they scared?
The plane has never fown in

inclement weather or periods
of turbulence. In case they do
run into trouble, the two have
been practicing parachute
landings and treading water
in the North Sea. If oxygen
runs low, if theres not enough
energy to fy through the
night, or if autopilot doesnt
work, well end up in the
water, says Borschberg.
Okay, so whats the point
of all this?
Although Piccard admits that

solar-powered commercial
fights may never happen,
we would be able to cut the
worlds energy consumption
in half if we replaced old technology with current technology, he says. They also hope
to inspire more businesses to
consider clean energy. Theyve
already heard from companies that want to use their
technology to replace satellites with cheap, unmanned
aerial vehicles for transmitting
telecommunication services to
developing countries.
Its all good news, with one caveat: We need Congress to extend
the solar investment tax credit in 2015. Even if that doesnt happen, solar prices are dropping rapidly on their own. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, the cost of solar panels has fallen by 84 percent in the past fifteen years. Plus, homebuilders
are beginning to install rooftop panels as a standard feature an option that is significantly cheaper
than adding them later. You can also buy into microgrids, community-owned islands of solar panels
independent of the national grid, that can be used to power your home. And Teslas new Gigafactory
is scheduled to begin producing lithium-ion batteries in 2017, with the goal of doubling the worlds
lithium-cell production and revolutionizing solar-energy storage. That would be great, if it happens.
18
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the upgrade: speakers that float

A little secret about Bluetooth speakers: Theyre all pretty much the same.
Some are clearer, some are louder, some are better at working after you
drop them into the pool, but for the most part you pick a price point and
you get music. Which is why speakers like the Crazybaby Mars ($189) are
following the example of the Om/One ($199) we covered in December, using
opposing magnets to foat above a base. Theyre no better than existing
speakers, but theyre also no worse. Theyre defnitely more interesting.
Tech
SIRI FOR
YOUR LIVING ROOM
Technology
you might forget
is on your phone
becomes useful
when you
take it home.
by alexander george
20
used siri once, to send a text in the winter

when I didnt want to take of my gloves.
After that, never again. And I dont
think Im alone. As good as voice recognition gets, aside from the occasional
party trick, most people I know seem to forget
its there. A few companies, however, think
they can change that. We just have to be in
the right setting.
Ubi ($299) is a Wi-Fi-connected, wallmounted speaker the size of a Wonder Bread
PB&J, with an always-on microphone that listens for your commands. (In what seems like
a move to keep pace, Amazon soft-launched
a similar product last fall,

the Echo, right, available
by invitation only.) Say
okay, Ubi, from within
eight feet, and it beeps
twice in acknowledgment.
From there you can ask
it anything. With practice it almost feels natural to pause your Netfix The Amazon
movie and ask, What Echo functions
was Charlie Chaplins frst much like Ubi.
flm? After a two-second It costs $99 for
pauselong enough to Prime members
query GoogleUbi will and $199 for
tell you it was Making a everyone else.
But you can get
Living, from 1914. Ubi
one only if youre
follows basic commands
lucky enough to
too. I asked it to play mube invited.
sic by Howlin Wolf, and
its twin three-watt speakers played tracks
from Grooveshark, the free music-streaming
service. After boiling water, I told it to remind
me in six minutes to check if my pasta was
al dente. You can also coordinate Ubi to work
with smart-home devices through IFTTT
(If This Then That, software that lets you
program a response to a trigger event, like
saving every photo you post to Instagram in
your Dropbox storage). After a few minutes
of setup, I could tell Ubi to change my Philips
Hue bulbs to red or to turn on a space heater I
connected to a Belkin WeMo switch.
Ubis most distinct advantage, however,
shows up when youre in a group. When a friend
and I were certain we knew the capital of New
Zealand, rather than removing myself from
the conversation and getting lost in my phone,
I asked Ubi. Everyone heard the answer. (Its
Wellington, by the way.) You get the immediacy
of the Internet without the isolation.
If only the experience were more consistent. Autocorrect and Google suggestions
can compensate for my infantile spelling,
but telling Ubi to turn of the light was met
with silence, since my IFTTT command was
listening for turn of the lights, plural. Plus,
over three days, several TV actors woke Ubi
by saying okay. But those faws can be fxed.
The real obstacle is us, and how quickly we
can come around to the idea of talking to
something that isnt human. The home, with
its inherent privacy, is a great place to start.
The Myris.
Reading irises
is up to 150
times more
accurate than
fingerprints.
Pupillary
Ruff
These ridges of
tissue emerge late in
embryonic development. Even identical
twins have different irises.
Color
The color of the
iris is determined by
pigment density. Myris
identification, however,
is based predominantly on visual
texture.
Aging
The architecture
and color of the
iris subtly change
with age, which could
affect Myriss ability
to identify you.
meanwhile, in
online securitY . . .
YOUR NE X T PAS SWORD:

YOUR E YEBA LL
People can hack your passwords.
But they cant hack your eyes.
by sarah z. wexler
Your Pinterest account is about to

be safer than ever. EyeLock, a
company known for making iris
scanners for security checkpoints
at banks, recently introduced
an at-home device called Myris
($280). It stores your passwords
locally, instead of in the vulnerable cloud, and encrypts them.
The only way to access them is
by scanning your eyeball.
Setup is simple: Plug the
palm-size Myris into your computers USB port and look into the
camera. Once it has identified and
logged some 240 unique points
in your iris, you can create a
username and add your pass-
words. After that you never have

to type a password again. Just
sign in with your eye when you
turn on your computer and all of
your passwords are automatically
input, except for time-sensitive
passwords for things like banking
sites, for which youll need a
rescan to access. When Myris
runs smoothly, you wait about ten
seconds and see a brief flash of
light. But when the device acts
up, which in our tests was a little
less than half the time, expect a
few retriesand to see spots for
a minute or so after.
Its impressive, and its allegedly unhack able. While finger-
prints offer about twenty points

of difference, the human iris
has twelve times that. Not even
identical twins have the same
iris texture. The only downside,
other than those pesky (but
temporary!) blind spots, is that
in order for Myris to work, you
need to have it with you. So if
you have your laptop but forgot
your fancy new scanner, or if
youre checking your email from
your phone, youll still have to
type in your password. Which
will be even harder to come up
with after months of not having
to remember it. (Hint: Its your
dogs birthday.)
The EKG
Password
The upcoming Nymi Band
($149) identifies
you with your
heartbeat, then
uses Bluetooth
to automatically
log you in to any
application.
You know CAPTCHA, the hard-to-read jumble of letters, numbers, and obfuscating lines that supposedly confirm your humanity every time you go to buy
Taylor Swift tickets? Well, its getting phased out. Besides being infuriating to real
people, especially those using mobile devices, CAPTCHA is no longer fooling the
robots. Succeeding it is Googles No CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA, a much simpler set of
boxes you click in answer to basic prompts (Pick your favorite color, Im not a
robot) that started rolling out late last year. The system analyzes your IP address,
browser cookies, and even the way your mouse moves. Its a way to prove youre
human, and its finally humane.
With thanks to Dr. Ivan Schwab, professor

of ophthalmology at UC Davis.
21
MAKERS
From gr ain
to gl as s
Where Prohibition began,
a distiller sets up shop.
When Paul
Hletko
decided to
make a derelict garage
the home of
his company
Few Spirits
four years
ago, he got
quite a shock.
The first time
I came in,
there were
two guys
stripping a
car, Hletko
says. It was
arresting.
by francine maroukian
he first distillery within the city

limits of Evanston, Illinois, Few
Spirits was founded in 2011 and
represents the grain and the
glory of the great American Midwest. We make grain spirits because were in
the countrys breadbasket, says founder Paul
Hletko, whose distilling philosophy is grain
to glass. Were able to source our corn,
wheat, and rye regionally, much of it from
farm cooperatives.
A former patent attorney, Hletko overcame antiquated laws in order to root Few in
Evanston, one of Prohibitions birthplaces. Today the alley entrance still evokes the feeling
of that eras hidden production. Located in a
former repair shop for cars of unknown ownership, Few has a 2,700-square-foot distilling
foor and a 400-square-foot tasting room.
Although the science of the distillation
process is relatively simple, the art is not,
and the approach of the distiller is the distinguishing factor. We do not buy a neutral
spirit base made elsewhere and then distill
it into our own, Hletko says. We make the
grain alcohol here. We control the ingredients, techniques, and equipment.
For his bourbon, Hletko mixes a bit of
Southern tradition and Northern style in a
mash bill, or grain recipe, of 70 percent corn,
20 percent rye, and 10 percent two-row malt
(a regional barley). The bourbon is then aged
in new white oak barrels, which Few sources
from a Minnesota cooper. Because the frostfree growing season is shorter there, the
tighter grains of the wood produce a better
balance of pepper and vanilla and make the
tannins more intense, he says. At the cooperage, a cooper places an open-ended barrel
over a superhot fame and torches the inside
How to PACKAGE
An AmEriCAn
CrAft sPirit,
2015
22
until it reaches the desired char level, which

for Hletko is on the heavier side. Darker chars
caramelize the wood sugars to create more
intense vanilla notes and a richer color.
Of the four spirits Hletko makes, the
American and Barrel gins share a link to his
old hobby: beer brewing. You cant just make
a good gin, he says. You have to make a good
gin that is diferent. Thats why Hletko adds
American-bred Cascade hops, which deliver
a citrus note that you wont fnd in other
gins. Hletko also ages his amber-toned Barrel Gin in oak barrels previously used for the
companys bourbon and rye, as well as in unused barrels. The gin from the diferent barrels is then combined to attain a balance of
favors and color. But after all that work, the
label can only say its barrel gin, because the
government wont allow it to be identifed as
barrel-aged. They say you cant put gin in a
barrel, Hletko explains. Although I tell them
that we do have the technology: We call it a
funnel. Out here in the heartland, where Prohibition got its start, Hletko understands that
not all laws are logical.
tHE LAbELs: Fews labels,

which replicate woodcut prints,
feature singular wonders from
the 1893 Worlds Columbian
Exposition in Chicago.
tHE LoCAtion: Evanston,

Illinois, a historically dry
town founded by Methodist ministers and home to
Northwestern University.
tHE CoCKtAiL: Few Spirits

Barrel Gin Negroni
Not quite a gin Negroni, not

quite a bourbon Boulevardier.
The orange bitters highlight
the citrus rind, and the bold
Barrel Gin cuts through the
bitter Campari.
ingredients
ounce Few Barrel Gin
ounce Carpano Antica
Formula Sweet Vermouth
ounce Campari
3 dashes Fee Brothers
Orange Bitters
1 orange peel slice
instructions
Stir first four ingredients in
a glass with ice, then strain
into a chilled cup. Twist the
orange peel to infuse the surface with oils, and discard.
tHE LAdy: Fews namesake,

Francis Elizabeth Willard (1839
1898), was head of Evanstons
Womans Christian Temperance
Union. Note the initials.
P h o t o g r a P h s b y lu c y h e w e t t
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RESCUE
The
Worlds
Wilde s T
Pool
At the Coast Guards

rescue-swimmer
indoor training facility,
the water is not fine.
Thats the point.
by stephen madden
oast Guard rescue swimmers sometimes have to rappel down

clifs and dangle from helicopters to save people from
churning seas. During big storms. At night. How do you get
people ready for such fearsome errands? You send them to
the services Aviation Technical Training Center in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, home to a $25 million indoor facility that can
whip up approximations of the waves, bellowing wind, horizontal rain,
and disorienting noise that rescuers will eventually face.
In that building over the course of a year, instructors literally wash
people out of the Aviation Survival Technician certifcation process.
Only about twenty-fve applicants annuallyout of 120, most of them
men between the ages of 18 and 25fnish the course to become certifed rescue swimmers. The facility gets a fair amount of the credit for
that attrition rateits built around two pools where instructors can dial
up a Category 1 hurricane anytime they want. This is the best we can
give them in a controlled environment, says Senior Chief Petty Ofcer
Jason Schelin, head instructor at the school. Heres a look inside.
The main pool 1 , which

is 25 meters by 50,
holds 1.2 million gallons
of water and is a uniform 12 feet deep except
for 4-foot ledges on
three sides. A movable
bulkhead with a massive
overhead curtain can
create two separate
training environments
for the classes that
come through. Every
weekday the swimmers
spend two hours in the
water working on their
conditioning. That means
endless laps in a mask,
snorkel, and fins, and
the occasional order to
pair up and move a brick
along the bottom of the
poolthe 82-foot length
of the poolwith one
swimmer at a time coming up for air.
An adjacent 250,000gallon pool houses the
Dunker 2 , a hoist that
can flip over accurate
mockups of a small
boat and a helicopter
so crews can practice
escaping from downed
Could you pass the entranCe exam?
Twin towers on either

side of the bulkhead feature platforms 5 fifteen
feet above the big pools
surfacethe height at
which swimmers jump
off hovering helicopters
during missions. The
platforms are equipped
with the same hoists
that are attached to the
MH-65s the Coast Guard
flies during rescues.
Two giant fans 6 create
everything from zephyrs
to seventy-knot winds,
while nozzles direct
water into the gusts
to produce driven rain
and spray. A fan above
the towers 7 simulates
propeller wash. And
roaring above those
fans: recordings of
helicopter props and
engines, thunder and
heavy winds, all played
at realistic volumes.
Swim 500 yards in 12 minutes
Do 40 push-ups and 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes each
24
or capsized craft 3 . The

entire room, including a wave machine, is
controlled from a single
panel on the hoist 4 .
Flashing strobes provide

simulated lightning. The
devices ramp up the
difficulty level in skill
trainingtowing a buddy
or trying to free a pilot
from his parachute.
Both pools have wave
machines that can
produce rough seas with
waves as high as three
feet. In the big pool
two high-volume fans
force air into a caisson
behind the building. The
caisson drops, pushing
water down. When it
rises again, so does the
water, creating waves.
In the smaller pool a
giant ball floating on the
surface is pulled down
on its moor line and then
released repeatedly
to create wave action.
Water levels are kept a
couple of feet below the
maximum heightthere
are no spill lanes like
those youll find in a
competition poolto
magnify the effect of the
roiling water.
Run 1.5 miles in 12 minutes
Do 3 pull-ups and 3 chin-ups without stopping
PhotograPhs by robb scharetg
H e a lt H
HOW TO MAKE
A SUS TAINABLE
HOSPITAL
Hospitals are energy hogs. They dont

have to be. b y k e v i n d u p z y k
n earthquake can have positive side effects. Like in

1994, when, in response to an earthquake that
damaged many hospitals in the San Fernando
Valley, California issued seismic safety regulations
specifcally for patient-care facilities. But they
were never instituteduntil last summer. Now a huge number
of California hospitals are being retroftted or completely
replaced, and ofcials are seizing the opportunity to address
sustainability by incorporating some of the most advanced
technology available. The result is a petri dish of innovation
and a model for the industry.
1 Plant a garden. Rooftop
gardens reduce storm-water
runoff and provide better
insulation, which can result
in an average savings of up
to 40 percent on heating and
cooling bills. Plus, research
shows that green space
helps the healing process.
University of CaliforniaSan
Francisco Medical Center
at Mission Bay features 1.2
acres of green in five rooftop
gardens, three of which are
accessible to patients.
Where: San Francisco
When: February 2015
2 Turn off the heat
selectively. El Camino
Hospital created something
of a connected home setup,
which integrates room-based
sensors, the hospitals HVAC
system, and patient records
to control heating and cool-
THINGS YOU MAY

ENCOUNTER AT THE
DOCTORS OFFICE
this month:
the eye
doctor!
28
ing. When a room is empty,

the system adjusts to the
minimum ventilation settings.
When a patient is present, he
can choose the temperature
through a program on his
TV. The program is saving
the hospital about $151,000
per year and reducing the
surprising number of injuries
sustained by patients who
leave their beds to change
the thermostat.
Where: Mountain View
When: June 2014
3 Replace the floors.
Hospitals are the last places
that should use even slightly
hazardous or carcinogenic
materials, so the new Oakland Medical Center installed
rubber flooring that can be
maintained without harsh
industrial cleaners. It has an
added advantage of reducing
both hospital noise and joint

impact. Good news if you just
got your knee replaced.
Where: Oakland
When: July 2014
4 Make your own power.
Sutter Regional Hospital meets
an estimated 70 percent of its
energy needs through on-site
fuel cells. The solid-oxide cells
are stacks of ceramic discs
painted with conductive inks.
Put oxygen on one side and
natural gas on the other and
oxygen ions flow between
them to produce electricity
clean electricity not from the
grid, and thus not derived from
coal or hydroelectric power.
Which means Sutter reduces
Autorefractor. Measures
cornea curvature as an object
shifts in and out of focus, then
averages those readings to
approximate your prescription.
PMS VERDICT: Easy, relatively accurate, especially good for kids.
its annual contribution to CO2

emissions by nearly 600,000
pounds, and water use by 1.2
million gallons.
Where: Santa Rosa
When: October 2014
5 Stop wasting rain. Lucile
Packard Childrens Hospital
captures rainwater, condensation from the HVAC system,
and any other spare droplets it can, and stores it in a
110,000-gallon underground
reservoir. That water isnt
sterile enough for patients,
but it can go toward irrigation,
lessening the draw on the
clean water supply.
Where: Palo Alto
When: December 2016
Optical coherence
tomography machine (OCT).
Provides a cross section of
the retina, often precluding the
need to have your pupils dilated.
PMS VERDICT: Great, but
requires a skilled operator.
i l lu s t r at i o n b y s i n e l a b
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g r e at
unknowns
Do you have unusual questions about how things work and why stuff
happens? This is the place to ask them. Dont be afraid. Nobody
will laugh at you here. Email greatunknowns@popularmechanics.com.
Questions will be selected based on quality or at our whim.
sures in the earth throughout the

Southwest known as slot canyons.
They may be thousands of feet deep
and are carved over centuries or
millennia by fowing water. Rudow
is credited with a hundred or so
slot-canyon frst descents, meaning
nobodys preceded him down the
canyonat least not so far as anyone knows. Exploring these features
safely requires superior physical
ability, along with signifcant technical skill and specialized equipment.
Assuming you possess none of these,
perhaps the dryer is your best bet.
Stop by anytime.
Is radiation from my cellphone

affecting my sperm count?
And if it is, would wearing that
radiation- shielding underwear
Ive seen actually help?
Q
Is there
any where
left In the
UnIted states
ThaT is so remoTe i could be The very

firsT human To sTand There?
There are plenTy of places. The inside of my cloThes
dryer, for instance. Im pretty sure nobodys ever
stood in there. Come on over and make history, Commander Armstrong.
Actually, while this is obviously an impossible
question to answer defnitively without a time machine
and a helluva set of binoculars, there is reason to
believe that such placessmall corners of our country
unsullied by the soles of mando exist. Possibly in
Alaska, but thats cheatingtheyre just not easy to
fnd in the contiguous states. The places left are the
ones that are really hard to get to, says Rich Rudow,
an explorer and board member of the Coalition of
American Canyoneers, and notably a man whose last
name Microsoft Word spell-check suggests be changed
to rubdown.
If anybodys stood on virgin ground in the lower 48,
its Rudow, who specializes in exploring narrow fsa
30
On the whole, cellphones have

been a boon to the male reproductive function, giving rise to such
modern courtship rituals as the
late-night booty call, bored-at-work
sexting, and, of course, the old I
think I dropped my phone down
your pants gambit. Even so, some
research does suggest that cellphone
use may reduce male fertility.
In assessing such matters,
researchers concern themselves
with three specifc measures: motility (how many sperm cells swim
upstream), viability (how robust
they are), and morphology (how
well-formed the cells are). A 2007
study at the Cleveland Clinic found
that all three fertility measures
deteriorated among 361 male
subjects as their reported cellphone
use rose.
However, other studies have
failed to demonstrate a correlation between cellphone chatter
and damaged baby batter. Settling
the question conclusively would be
extremely difcult for a few reasons,
including the challenge of assembling a true control group, namely, a
large enough pool of men who dont
use cellphones.
As for the underwear, while
apparently it does shield your junk
from radiation (its more than
99 percent efective, one study

reported), nobody knows whether
radiation is even the culprit,
assuming cellphones do, in fact,
afect fertility. What we do know
for certain is that announcing that
youre wearing antiradiation briefs
is 100 percent efective at preventing you from getting laid.
If it takes less refining to

make diesel, then why does
it cost more?
If a third-world factory can slap

together a TV set for 39 cents, how
come my last fat screen cost a
grand? Because how much something costs to produce has little
direct bearing on how much it sells
for. Indeed, Econ 101 teaches us
that market price is determined by
two factorssupply and demand.
(Though, for the record, the cost of
refning diesel has risen of late, due
to new regulations that require the
removal of sulfur from the fuel.)
Demand for diesel fuel in the
United States remains low by
worldwide standards. Truckers use
it, of course, but very few American
passenger vehicles do. In other
countries, conversely, they love,
love, love their diesel-powered
vehicles. Cant get enough diesel.
Mas diesel, por favor! Theyd wash
their dogs with it if they could.
The upshot of this is a double
whammy: U.S. refners are producing less diesel (because there is less
demand), and they are exporting
more of what they do produce
to countries where there is more
demand. This results indrumroll, pleasea reduced U.S. supply
relative to a low but stable demand
and thereforeanother drumroll,
pleasea higher price.
It is true that diesel carries a
higher federal excise tax than does
gasoline ($0.06 more per gallon),
but thats a minor contributor,
conceived as a way for the trucking
industry to compensate the rest of
us for the wear and tear it puts on
the highways, to say nothing of the
cultural damage inficted by the
Smokey and the Bandit movies.
i l lu s t r at i o n b y g r a h a M r o u M i e u
CONSUMER CELLULAR HAS

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2015 Consumer Cellular, Inc. New service activation on approved credit. Cellular service is not available in all areas and is subject to system limitations. Terms and Conditions subject to change.
Based on interpretation of Nielsens Mobile Insights survey data, which uses respondents self-reported rating (1 to 10 scale) of overall satisfaction with their carrier from a national survey of
approximately 90,000 U.S. mobile phone users during Q3 14.
AARP member benets are provided by third parties, not by AARP or its afliates. Providers pay a royalty fee to AARP for the use of its intellectual property. These fees are used for the general
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UP AHEAD:
34 Why stop/start engines need to go.
35 The best new midsize truck is . . .
37
The fastest motorcycle ever.
By Ezra Dyer
three wheels, no roof,

and 173 horsepoweran
insurers dream. but its
pretty safe, actually.
What in the Name of

Henry Ford Is That?
Its the Polaris Slingshot, and its street-legal.
2015 polaris slingshot

price: $19,999
available: noW
PhotograPh BY grant cornet t
he first time you see the Polaris slingshot coming at you, it looks like a set
piece from some big-budget Marvel moviethis is a mode of transportation for someone with a secret identity and superpowers. Theres that wide
arachnid front end skimming the pavement with spats and spoilers and
open-wheel fenders, a prototype racer from the future. Then the rest of the
machine comes into view, and it gets even wilder.
The back end tapers to a point, where a hefty swing arm carries a carbon-fberreinforced belt that drives a single tire. From the front seats forward, its like a car
bucket seats, steering wheel, GM Ecotec four-cylinder hooked to a fve-speed manual
transmission. From the rear its a giant mutant motorcycle. And that distinction makes
all the diferencethe Slingshots odd wheel count both defnes its identity and allows it
to exist in the frst place.
Because the Slingshot has three wheels, the federal government classifes it as a
motorcycle. That means, depending on the state, you might need a motorcycle license
and a helmet to drive it. Of course, its not really a motorcycle, but its certainly not a
33
THrEE THINgS THAT HAPPENED WHIlE I HAD THE SlINgSHOT

a woman driving in front of
me stopped her minivan,
got out, walked over, and
said, okay, what is this?
as i was putting a Captain

outside the grocery store,
america helmet on my kid,
six high schoolers stopped to
a guy who looked like Jack
take photos. i gave each one
Palance said, i like your style.
a ride around the block.
car either. At any rate, the motorcycle designation gave Polaris, maker of snowmobiles and of-roaders called side-by-sides,
the freedom to design a machine with no
doors, no roof, and no windshield (its an
option). Theres no climate control, no airbags. This is a minimalist transportation
experience1,725 pounds and the wind
in your face. The Slingshot makes a Lotus
Elise look fabby and decadent.
Whether or not you think the Slingshot is
quick depends on your frame of reference.
By car standards, its got a great power-toweight ratio, with the 2.4-liter four-cylinder
putting out 173 horsepower. Zero to sixty
is probably around fve seconds, and with
traction control disabled the Slingshot will
light up its rear tire. That said, Ducati riders
accustomed to ten-second quarter-miles
wont fnd that sort of thrill.

The handling, as youd expect, is
somewhat diferent from a cars. Without
the stabilizing efect of dual rear wheels,
turn-in is instant, but a given corner could
require a few steering corrections. Still, the
body stays fat, and the ride is remarkably supple. Potholes, though, are a peril.
When you straddle a crater between the
front wheels, you can feel a mule kick from
the back a moment later as the centrally
mounted tire drops in. Such is the price of
three-wheel locomotion.
The actual price, however, is surprisingly reasonable: $19,999 to start. That
seems like a bargain for a machine that
delivers so much visual impact and sheer
visceral entertainment. Whatever the
Slingshot is, theres nothing else like it.
SlINgSHOT ANATOmy
DrIvEBElT the drivebelt

is reinforced with carbon
fiber to help withstand
the ecotecs 166 poundfeet of torque.
rOll HOOPS Forgedaluminum roll hoops above

each headrest help on the
safety front, but a helmet is
still a good idea.
ENgINE the general motors

ecotec 2.4-liter four-cylinder
makes 173 horsepower and
previously served in the saturn sky and Pontiac solstice.
WEATHErPrOOFINg
the seats are waterproof, as is
the whole interior. so dont be
afraid to park outside.
FrAmE the steel triangulated
space frame is minimalist,

with no doors or roof structure, helping keep dry weight
below 1,700 pounds.
TrANSmISSION the five-speed
manual transmission is also

from gm. No motorcycle-style
sequential gearbox here.
THE PETITION
Enough with
the stop/start
engines.
its a great idea, in

theory. your engine
shuts off at red lights,
stop signs, and busy
taco Bell drivethroughswhenever
a momentary
pause provides an
opportunity to save
some fuel. in practice,
stop/start systems are
annoying, pointless,
and sometimes
dangerous. your car is
barely using any fuel
at idle anyway, and
when it fires back up
its with a burp and a
shudder, like someone
startled grandpa
during his nap. and
thats if youre lucky
enough that it actually
restarts. weve had
three cars from three
different companies
execute the stop
part of the equation
and then fail to restart.
so on the plus side,
you save a thimble
of fuel. Downside:
enraged truckers
slash your tires as
your lane sits through
two traffic-light cycles
behind your wondrous
miracle of efficiency.
Fortunately, every
car with stop/start
comes with another
feature: a button to
turn it off.
PeoPle who like this story might also like:
The Sun Plane, page 17
34
Taking Things Apart, page 52
Shelter, page 64
i l lu s t r at i o n B Y h a i s a M h u s s e i n
a near-silent cabin
305 horsepower,
269 pound-feet of torque
7,000 pounds of towing
The Car of Trucks
Why I Bought One:
GMCs new small truck is just big enough.
ot everybody wants a
full-size truck. There

are people, believe it or
not, who need a pickup
but dont require 400
horsepower or 12,000 pounds of
towing capacity. This fact is illustrated by the second-generation
Toyota Tacoma, a 10-year-old design
that nonetheless notches consistent six-fgure annual sales, its only
challenge coming from the equally
ancient Nissan Frontier. The market
is ripe for some fresh competition,
and General Motors is bringing it
with the 2015 GMC Canyon and its
Chevy twin, the Colorado.
The Canyon is available with
either a 2.5-liter, 200-horsepower four-cylinder or a 3.6-liter,
305-horsepower V-6. Just like the
full-size trucks, theres an array of
cabs and trims, from a manualtransmission two-wheel-drive work
truck to a loaded 4x4 crew cab. The
Canyon starts at $21,880, including
alloy wheels and backup camera,
with prices nearing $40,000 for
a loaded SLT 4x4 crew cab. And
maybe that sounds like a lot of
dough for a midsize truck, but
with up to 7,000 pounds of towing

capacity, the Canyon can lug as
much as some full-size pickups. Its
fuel economy, which ranges as high
as twenty-seven miles per gallon
highway with the four-cylinder,
speaks to its lower weight and
smaller footprint.
The Canyon also provides a
polished driving experience, setting
a new bar for truck refnement. The
coil-over-shock front suspension
delivers a composed ride, while
triple-sealed doors ensure a hushed
cabin. Its a very car-like experience, which isnt an accidentGM
expects that many Canyon buyers
may be moving on from a car.
And therein lies the appeal.
The Canyon delivers the everyday
virtues of a car, but its still game to
haul some mulch or tow a boat. For
plenty of buyers, this will be all the
truck they need.
2015 GMC CanyOn
PrICe: $21,880
aVaILaBLe: NOW
MPG: 18/26
A Citizen Dispatch
The Buyer Breck Owens,

scientist, Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution
The vehicle
2015 GMC Canyon SLT 4x4

My wife and I are buying a
Canyon to replace our 12-yearold GMC Sonoma. The Sonoma
did a yeomans work hauling
brush and manure, but it only had
rear jumpseats, which became a
problem once we had grandkids.
I wanted to stick with GMC, and
the early Canyon reviews were
positive. Its a lot bigger than
the Sonomathe rear bench in
the crew cab were buying has
room for three car seats. Were
going to drive cross-country this
year, so we needed a vehicle
that can handle Vermont in the
winter and go out into the desert
in California, with our bikes
and gear in the bed. (Were also
getting a tonneau bed cover for
security and better gas mileage.)
The navigation and driver-assist
package will be put to good use
on the trip. I didnt even consider
a full-size truck.
35
ARBITRARY OBSERVATION ON ELECTRIC

VEHICLE PERFORMANCE
Phenomenal
Not bad
Eh
Tesla Model S
bMW i3
everything else
Gloriously Impractical
Nobody truly needs a BMW X6. But

plenty of people want one.
he original bmw x6, introduced in 2008, was a

shocking vehicle, a jacked-up four-door hatchback that created its own genre. BMW called it a
sports activity coupe, which is as good a description as any. The second-generation car, new for
2015, hews to the same formula: more expensive and stylish
than an X5, less practical.
BMW held the X6s international launch at its plant
in Greer, South Carolina, which builds X6s for worldwide
consumption. As such, the parking lot had plenty of forbidden foreign fruit, but I resisted temptation and drove the
xDrive50i. With its two turbos, the 50is 4.4-liter V-8 is good
for 445 horsepower. A new rear-wheel-drive six-cylinder
model will appeal to people who want an X6 but dont need
four-season traction. The rear-wheel-drive model starts at
$60,550, with the all-wheel-drive V-8 beginning at $73,850.
In keeping with those rather heady prices, the X6 puts on
a good show inside and out. The xLine package covers nearly
every interior surface with leather. The Bang & Olufsen stereo
system looks as good as it sounds. Nineteen-inch wheels are
standard, but the optional bigger wheels fully realize this
cars Paris-to-Dakar-by-way-of-Rodeo-Drive aesthetic. Active
cruise control works in stop-and-go trafc up to speeds of 130
miles per hour, where the X6 feels right at home. This is a
heavy, Autobahn-crushing fortress of a machine.
No, the X6 still cant justify its existence by any rational
measure. But the last one sold more than 260,000 units
worldwide and inspired copycats such as the Acura ZDX
2015 bMW X6
and the upcoming MercedesPrICE: $60,550
Benz GLE Coupe. Some of the
AVAILAbLE: NOW
most interesting cars dont ft
MPg: 19/27
into categories. They make
their own.
A Discerning
Mans Sport Sedan
Other CategoryDefying Vehicles
The Acura TLX

doesnt need to be
flashy to be great.
onventional wisdom
AMC EAgLE WAgOn
A 4x4 station wagon,

crude progenitor of
the crossover.
SubAru LEgACy SuS
SuS stood for

sport utility sedan.
Sure, Subaru.
CHEVrOLET SSr
The frst and still only

hardtop convertible
pickup truck.
nISSAn MurAnO
CrOSSCAbrIOLET
A two-door ragtopcrossover. Dropped

for 2015.
says that luxury cars

need rear-wheel drive,
as a matter of both performance credibility and
styling. Acura understands this, but
Hondas luxury brand sticks with
front-drive platforms as part of its
strategy, zigging when everyone
else zags. Its new TLX has other
tricks to win your attention.
The base 206-horsepower
four-cylinder model, for instance,
uses an eight-speed dual-clutch
transmission that also incorporates a torque converter. This
helps solve the riddle that plagues
dual-clutch transmissions
indecisive low-speed behavior. A
290-horsepower V-6 is optional,
and all V-6 models are available
with all-wheel drive.
Acuras aptly named SuperHandling All-Wheel Drive provides
torque vectoring at the rear wheels.
This gives the all-wheel-drive cars
fantastic agility by overdriving the
outside rear wheel in corners.
Four-wheel-drive models get
Precision All-Wheel Steer, a new
system that steers the rear wheels
independently, improving cornering
and aiding stability at high speeds
or when under braking.
More tricks: Active engine
mounts reduce vibration. Acoustic
foam kills noise. And every model
gets full LED headlightsunheard of
for a car that starts at $31,915.
Overall, the TLX comes across
as the ultimate Honda. And thats a
compliment.
2015 ACurA TLX
PrICE: $31,915
AVAILAbLE: NOW
MPg: 24/35
The Motorcycle,
Three Ways All of them fast.
The Rule Breaker

2015 KawaSaKi
NiNja H2R
Theres a gentlemens agreement

among motorcycle manufacturers:
In the name of sanity, nobody strays above 200
horsepower or a 187-mile-per-hour top speed. At
least that was the case until Kawasaki decided
to ignore rules, moderation, and possibly a few
laws of physics. The result is the Ninja H2R
(base price: $50,345), a track-only bullet bike
that takes two-wheeled performance to a scary
new place. The key ingredient is the motor, a
supercharged 1.4-liter four-cylinder that revs to
14,000 revolutions per minute and generates 300
horsepower. The supercharger is a new planetary
gear design created with help from Kawasakis
gas-turbine division, because existing suppliers
didnt have a blower that could handle an internal
speed of 130,000 revolutions per minute. The
bikes carbon-fber bodywork uses front spars that
look borrowed from a Formula One car, providing
downforce that riders will appreciate when
nearing the H2Rs top speedover 200 miles per
hour. The H2R isnt street legal, but Kawasaki
knows it cant prevent customers from adding,
say, lights and Department of Transportation
compliant tires. This is one case where a license
plate might be the wildest modifcation of all.
preview
The Deceiver
The Screamer
The Scout (top)

looks like a laidback cruiser, but its classic
styling conceals modern,
high-performance technology, courtesy of a new
fuel-injected, liquid-cooled
V-twin that kicks out a
hundred horsepower and
seventy-two pound-feet of
torque. Dual overhead cams
and four valves per cylinder
give the Scout (base price:
$10,999) big lungs at high
revolutions per minute,
while good old-fashioned
displacement1,133 cubic
centimeters of itprovides
plenty of torque. With an aluminum frame helping keep
weight down to 558 pounds,
the Scout has a better
power-to-weight ratio than a
Porsche 911 Turbo. So while
its happy to putter around
town looking good, it can still
boogie when it wants to.
Is a Harley still a
Harley without the
rumble? Thats the question
behind Project LiveWire, an
all-electric concept Harley
built more than twenty
examples of to gauge public
interest. So far, feedback is
pointing toward the green
light for production. With
instant torque and no shifting, the bike screams of
the line. Harley estimates
a zero-to-sixty time of four
seconds and a range of fftythree miles. Weighing just
463 pounds, LiveWire is agile
and extremely quick around
town. And while theres no
rumble, intentionally noisy
straight-cut gears mean
that accelerating toward the
ninety-two-mile-per-hour
top speed produces the keening cry of a spacecraft going
into warp drive.
2015 iNDiaN SCouT

tested
This Month in Lifesaving Technology
EVERyoNE DuMPS HiS biKE. its basically a rite of passage. and lets not forget about the
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why we like Spidis new Neck DPS Airbag Tex Vest ($600). Light, and loose enough to
ft over your own riding gear, the vest uses a Co2 cartridge connected to a tether attached
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sturdy airbags around your neck. you wont want to leave your bike without it.
i l lu s t r at i o n s B Y j o h n B u r g o Y n e
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inflatable Tex Vest.
37
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2015 by MacNeil IP LLC
A
BeAutiful
thing
The Maple Heart Longboard
40
in the shop
ou could call Warren Pieces
a carpentry company that

happens to make skateboards as easily as you could
call it a skateboard company that also takes on big
carpentry projects. The same
goes for the owners, Whitney
Phillips and Matt Groom.
Both grew up in Vermont and
were participants in the regions
action-sports scene, spending the
school years at a ski academy and
banging nails on construction jobs
during the summers to pay for their
winter lift tickets. After each served
a few years in corporate jobs, they
both came home, got back into
woodworking, and, in 2011, Groom
hired Phillips to restore the intricate
shelving of a wine cellar destroyed
by Hurricane Irene. They couldnt
believe the amount of leftover fine
hardwood scraps that were destined
for the incinerator after projects,
so they started collecting the spare
pieces of walnut, oak, maple, and
cherrymuch of it nativeand hauling
them back to their workshop in
Warren, Vermont. With a lull between
jobs, and Whitneys sons birthday
P h o t o g r a P h s b y M at t K i e d a i s c h
coming up, the two set to making the

kid a skateboard with the stockpile of
scrapped wood. Their two worlds
wood and action sportsfused.
Theyve been making skateboards, longboards included, ever
since. Theyve discovered along the
way that the type of wood they use,
its thickness, and the orientation of
the grain in the veneers they lay over
the bamboo bases impact a ride as
much as they do the boards look. For
instance, harder woods lend themselves to a stiffer board, whereas you
get a smooth, surfboard-like feel with
relatively softer walnut. Mistakes
made on one board inform improvements to the nextMatt or Whitney
or one of their employees tests each
deck on beer and food runs from the
studio to the center of town. In this
way, theyve perfected their own
brand of skateboard and, with their
mashup of extreme-sport passion
and colonial-style craftsmanship,
tapped into something uniquely
Vermont. MaTT GouleT
CoMPAny:
Warren Pieces
LoCATIon:
Warren, Vermont
oWners:
Whitney Phillips and Matt Groom
After lining up and gluing together layers

of fine wood such as maple, walnut, and
mahogany, Groom (left) and Phillips rip a board
lengthwise through its middle, creating two
thin pieces that when assembled side by side
give the finished decks their symmetrical look.
41
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A STRANGE
MEASURING
TooL
pag e
45
FIXING CAR
DENTS
pag e
48
U LT I M AT E
EDGERS
pag e
49
hack your
coffee
Forget latte art. Brewing cofee is science.

by francine maroukian
Despite what some baristas want you to believe, making cofee

is not an art. Its a mechanical process more akin to culinary
science, in which an ingredient is acted upon in ways
proved to produce the best-tasting, repeatable results.
As master roaster and resident palate at La Colombe
Torrefaction, the venerated Philadelphia-based cofee company, Jean Philippe Iberti takes a gastronomic approach.
I treat it like spiced water, he says. Cofee beans and
spiceswhich are extracted from bark, roots, seeds, buds,
and hard berriesare grown in similar climates, and both
require the application of controlled heat to release their
essential oils and unlock their endlessly variable favors.
Although specifcs vary with preparation method,
Iberti explains here the principles for the classic French
press, a laboratorial glass beaker with a plunger lid set in
a stainless-steel casement with Bakelite handles, the style
photographs by z ach desart
43
I f y o u r e s T I L L u s I n G a M r . C o f f e e Run one brew cycle with
just waterno coffeeto saturate the filter. This will remove the filters
papery taste, as well as eliminate surface irregularities and dry spots,
allowing the brewing water to soak the grounds more evenly. Now run a
second brew cycle with the coffee.
Coffee
popularized in Parisian cafs during the mid-ffties.

As with most culinary endeavors, practice plays an
integral part in the success of your fnal product.
Making cofee is a personal ritual, Iberti says.
Theres always a range within each step, a give-andtake in the process as you experiment to fnd your
own taste. Make cofee often enoughsay, every
morning and twice on Sundaysand your senses will
eventually take over: At some point, youll be able to
tell from the aroma and color when its done, producing caf-quality results at homeminus the waiting
in line and all that attitude behind the counter.
How to Make Coffee in a french Press
Coffee architects: La Colombe

Torrefactions Jean Philippe
Iberti (left) and brew
crew member Caleb Lewis.
T h e Te m p e r a t u r e
Bring the water to
a boil, 212 degrees
Fahrenheit, then
remove it from the
heat and let it sit for
thirty seconds so that it falls into
the 200 F to 208 F range. Any higher
and the heat will draw unwanted
elements out of the grounds, giving your coffee a slightly bitter
flavor and a silty quality that coats
the tongue. You can insert any
digital-probe thermometer to check
for this, but if you want perfect
accuracy, try the Bonavita Variable Temperature Digital Electric
Gooseneck Kettle. Its temperature
incrementsevery degree between
140 F and 212 Fallow for nearpathological levels of control.
T h e Wa t e r
Although I have
respect for the
coffee/water ratio,
when it comes to
making coffee in
the morning I am more caveman
than scientist. I eyeball it, adding
ground coffee to the beaker so it
looks like one part coffee to six
parts water volumetrically, Iberti
says. Dissolved solids from coffee
make up only 1.2 to 1.4 percent of
the final beverage, so what kind of
water you use is important as well.
Ibertis choice: bottled spring.
The Grind
Fine grounds have
more surface area
and will release
flavor more quickly
than coarse grounds,
so if you want uniform extraction,
you need uniform particle size.
(Imagine cutting a raw steak into
uneven pieces and then cooking them all for the same length
one more thing . . .
44
of timeno good.) To achieve

uniformity, use a conical burr grinder
instead of a blade grinder. The chopchop-chop of a blade grinder is like
hitting the beans with a machete,
and the heat from the motor can
activate the coffees essential oils,
producing wildly uneven results. A
conical burr grinder, on the other
hand, pulverizes the beans between
two abrasive surfaces, allowing
for more consistency. The Hario
Skerton grinder does this simply,
with a hand crank. Aficionados might
try the motorized Baratza Virtuoso,
which has a burr mounting system
that can produce uniform particles
in 40 sizes.
The Pour
A French press is
the only coffeemaker in which you
can actually see the
water acting as a
solvent on the coffee. On first pour,
cover the grounds by just an inch
of water. This is called the bloom
when gases rise, the top foams,
and aromas are created. After adding the remaining water, stir once
or twice with a long spoon to break
the top foam and create a homogenous suspension of the grounds
in the water; this is called a slurry.
Now put on the lid.
The Timing
Lid on, Iberti lets his
coffee steep for just
one more minute.
Let coffee sit too
long and it develops
flavors you dont want, like too
much char on a steak, he says.
This is why you should never keep
your coffee in a French press after
youve pressed out the grounds,
as it will continue to brew. When
its ready, decant your coffee into
a serving vessel.
If you like your coffee with milk, fill a clean French press about one-third of the way with warm
milk. Slowly insert the plunger and pump it (like a bike-tire pump) until the milk foams and expands
to twice its volume. The milk will be silky, frothy, and ready to pour into a caf au lait.
i l lu s t r at i o n s b y M a r k n e r y s
1"
1"
remodeling
the new old

tApe meAsure
use them to maintain the spacing of their courses.

Electricians use them to position outlets, fxtures,
and switches. My house is so old that it contains
almost no level surfaces or right angles; to orient
my ofce bookcases, cabinets, and desk, I used a
spirit level to draw a reference line on the Sheetrock at countertop height all the way around the
room, like an artifcial horizon, then used a story
pole to position elements above and below it. Ive
even used a story pole to hang pictures.
Story poles are easy to make, but if you prefer tape measures, compromises are available.
Lee Valley, a woodworking supply company, sells
blank tape measures called Precision Story Tapes:
You can make your own marks on them with
an indelible pen and end up with a permanent
dimensional record of each job. FastCap, another
woodworking supplier, sells hybrid tapes that
have conventional English or metric markings on
one edge but give you a strip of white space on the
other for erasable pencil notations of your own.
Each FastCap tape measure even has a built-in
pencil sharpenera feature still missing from the
rest of my high-tech tools.
What the heck is a story pole?

by dav id ow en
couple of yeArs After my wife and I bought

our house, I gutted an unused room and
turned it into an ofce. The project was
highly educational, in the sense that by
the time it was fnished I possessed many skills
I ought to have had before I began. Even so, the
ofce turned out pretty well, and in the course of
building it I became the owner of virtually every
kind of power tool.
I also acquired quite a few analog tools
including story poles, which Id learned about
from a carpenter friend. A story pole is a homemade measuring rod on which the only markings
are ones you make yourself, specifcally for the job
at hand. For many projects a story pole is easier
to manipulate than a tape or a fold-up ruler, and
because it contains no extraneous information it
acts as a check against careless errors.
To create mine, I squared of the ends of several long pieces of 1 x 2inch pine, then marked
each one with labeled lines representing the critical dimensions of the cabinetry I was planning
to build and install in the ofce: lengths, widths,
depths, spacings. Once Id done that, I didnt need
to remember that the bookcases on the north
wall were going to be 11 inches deep; I just
had to fnd the depth line on my north-bookcase
story pole, then transfer that mark to a sheet of
plywood and make my cuts. I also never had to
rest an elbow on my tape measure to keep it from
whipping back into itself as I groped for a pencil.
A story pole is rigid, and if you need both hands
you can clamp or tack it in place.
Story poles, in one form or another, have helped
builders of all kinds for aeons. Ancient Egyptians used them in constructing the pyramids.
Eighteenth-century house framers used them
to keep track of ceiling-joist heights (hence the
name). Masons, shinglers, and siding installers still
A T h i n g yo u
should know
2
Every story pole
is a map. This
one is for a bookcase. It includes:
a data block
with information
about the project
(1), the location
of the bookshelf
top (2), information about
the body (3), and
the bookshelf
base detail (4).
How to transmit tHE intErnEt tHrougH outlEts

Even if your Internet
came into your home at
the speed of light, your
Wi-Fi network would
still create a choke point
when everyone in the
family is online simulta-
PhotograPh by devon jarvis
neously. To solve this,

you can bypass Wi-Fi
entirely and use your
electrical wiring like
an enormous Ethernet
cable. Youll need a pair
of power-line adapters.
D-Link and Netgear sets

cost about $50. One
adapter plugs in to your
router and a wall socket;
the other plugs in to a
socket and the device.
This creates a new,
unshared data channel

for each Internet-enabled
item, which means youll
have only one thing to
blame for losing in Call of
Duty: your aim.
cameron johnson
45
how to
The arT
of The loop
A simple guide to a complicated

thing: layering instruments
and sounds over each other to
create music. b y k a w e h i
T IP!
There is a metronome built

into many loopers that
helps you keep time. Use it.
Timing is the most important
thing about looping. One
millisecond off and youre
starting over.
ve always been musIcal. My grandpa even

had a nickname for me as a kid: lekio. It
means radio in Hawaiian. At frst it was
keyboards. I always joke that, as an Asian
kid raised by Asian parents, it was either
violin or piano, and piano was less boring
to me. I started writing music soon after,
and eventually I picked up guitar. I moved to
Los Angeles to be a singersongwriter, but I was
like every other female musician with an acoustic guitar. I wanted to do something diferent, so
I learned to loop.
My frst looper was a tiny two-track called
the Boss RC-30. I went into the garage to learn
how to use it, and I sucked. My timing was terrible. Thats the most important part of looping.
If one thing is of, everything is of, and youre
left with a big pile of noise. But by the end of
the week I had my timing down. From there, I
was addicted.
You need a speaker, a mic, and a loop station,
a machine that records sounds, which you can
vary in pitch and tempo and play back through
an assortment of efects. A two-track loop station (they go up to fve) like the RC-30, whichll
cost you $300, is good for beginners. Tracks are
diferent sections, A and B, you can record. You
switch between them using a pedal. I always set
the verse as A and the chorus as B.
Drums are really the foundation. You could
use the real instruments, but a keyboard is the
easiest route. Or you could even try beatboxing. After I layer the drums, I put on bassone
layer for the chorus and a diferent one for the
verse. With those elements, you have a foundation for the entire song. From there you can
play along with a guitar or sing.
Kawehi (no last name, just Kawehi) is a bit
of a phenomenon. Her YouTube videosin
which she uses nothing other than her voice, occasionally a
guitar, and a looping machine to record covers and original
musichave been viewed millions of times each. You can
find out about upcoming shows, support her next album, or
just check out some songs (her cover of Britney Spearss
Criminal is a good tutorial in building a track) at kawehi.com.
our exPerT
46
PhotograPh by andrew eccles
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nnovation is the path to the future.

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How to
Automotive
fill a dent
Tips from the Freedom High School

Automotive Program.
Regardless of a cars age, if a dent is less than a
quarter-inch deep, its fine to use body filler.
If the dent is deeper, the metal must be straightened first, or you run an increased risk of the filler
cracking, chipping, or adhering poorly.
step one
PreP The denT
John Kempf, a
Freedom High
junior and auto
club member, uses
a linear motion to
sand body filler.
Before you start, clean

the damaged area with
a preparation solvent,
such as Pro/Base Low
VOC Surface Cleaner.
Use a swiping motion
to keep from spreading contaminants.
Then, if applying the
filler to a car with
paint, use 80- grit
sandpaper to sand the
surface down to the
primer. If working on
bare metal, abrade the
metal enough to show
small scratches. These
will help the filler stick.
The Kids in The GaraGe

How to strip, repair, repaint, and rewire an
old carwith help from an afer-school auto club.
Part two of a six-month series.
The sTudenTs we inTroduced lasT monTh from Freedom High Schools auto club
in Freedom, Wisconsin, are still hard at work on their project cars, a 1974
Oldsmobile Delta 88 and a 1981 Chevrolet Camaro Z28. Theyve fnished
stripping the paint and moved on to the next stage in the restoration project:
metal repair. Both cars had panels with enough rust and metal damage that
they needed to be patched or entirely replacedby welding and using plasma
cutters, much to the students enjoyment. But many of the panels had dents
the club could fx just with body fller. My favorite part is the bodywork, says
Cole Woods, a 16-year-old junior who owns the Oldsmobile project car. I
like seeing the progress of an old car from rusty to shiny-new. Its especially
rewarding when the car thats being transformed is your own.
step two
Fill The denT
Use a paint stick to

place the amount
of filler you need
on a mixing board.
Carefully fold in the
hardening cream (it

should come with the
filler) according to
the manufacturers
instructions. Then use
a body-filler spreader
to smoothly apply the
blend until the dent is
completely filled. Make
wide passes so that
the filler also covers
some of the metal surrounding the dent. This
accounts for shrinkage
and makes the coverage more even.
step three
sand
Using 80-grit sandpaper, cross-sand the

filler until it is level
with the rest of the
surface metal. Then,
using 180- or 320-grit
sandpaper, continue
to cross-sand the area
until the edges are
featheredthoroughly
blended into the surrounding metal. The
deeper scratches from
the coarser sandpaper
will help hold your first
coat of primer.
neXt month
BODY SANDING AND PRIMING
I l l - a d v I s e d f I l l I n g m at e r I a l s t h e f r e e d o m a u t o C l u b h a s f o u n d I n o l d C a r s :
newspaper
48
c ra t e f o a m
fiberglass
aluminum cans
a cardboard beer case
par ts of a screen door
PhotograPh by erich schroeder
PR
E-EDGER
PO
ST-EDGER
tool test
the indefatigabLe
edger
Unruly lawns, beware. b y
roy berendsohn
best
overall
Like a frame on a poster or a beard on a teenager, an orderly lawn

matures a house, making it look complete, self-assured, put
together. You dont need to hire a landscaping service to have
a lawn like this, but you do need a quality edger, the kind that
can cut an arrow-straight notch time after time without tiring
you out. To fnd such a tool, we gathered fve and put them to
work on acres of grass along hundreds of yards of pavement.
We emerged covered in dirt and clippings, but we found a few
favorites. And you should see the lawn.
AriEns 986103 $420
Engine: 136-cc
Depth settings: Four
Angle settings: Seven
Likes: This well-designed
machine easily took first
place. Its solid construction
virtually eliminates vibration,
even on deep cuts. Its 21-
HusqvArnA LE475
inch wheelbase (2 to 7 inches

longer than other machines)
improves its accuracy on
long, straight runs.
Dislikes: The graphics for
the throttle lever and the
start/run lever are difficult
to read.
PowErmAtE PwLE0799.1
$540
$250
Engine: 127-cc
Depth settings: Eight
Angle settings: Five
Likes: Solid and smoothcutting, even when plowing
a deep trench. It could serve
both residential and commercial customers without ever
wearing out.
Dislikes: The graphics for the
choke and gas-shutoff levers
are somewhat illegible.
Engine: 79-cc
Depth settings: Five
Angle settings: Three
Likes: The three-edge blade
provides a good cut, and
the simple start sequence is
gold: Just choke the engine
and pull the recoil start cord.
Dislikes: It could use more
power for deep cuts. And the
blade begins turning when
the engine catches.
PhotograPhs by gregg delMan
CrAftsmAn 247.762461
$300
Engine: 140-cc
Angle settings: Three
Likes: This great little edger
couldnt be simpler to start
(push the primer bulb and
pull the rope). To store the
machine, fold the handle
forward. There. Done.
Dislikes: Its blade begins turning when the engine starts,
which is a little dangerous.
YArD mACHinEs 52J

$300
Engine: 140-cc
Angle settings: One
Likes: Gas-engine edgers dont
come any simpler or more
compact than this. When youre
done, fold the loop handle
forward to store it. The whole
edger will fit in the trunk.
Dislikes: Once again, the blade
turns as soon as the engine
starts. Safety first, guys.
49
Send your toughest house

and yard questions to AskRoy@
popularmechanics.com.
The old-school safety glasses I grew

up with have begun reappearing
lately in fancy home-improvement
catalogs and Web stores. The new
ones have a dash of steampunk geekiness that the kids seem to like, but
they are absurdly expensive. Instead,
you can buy original horn-rim safety
glasses with wire-cup side shields
from Universal Industrial Supply.
Two pairs cost $24, which is much
cheaper than eye surgery.
ask roy
If Im not there to remind him, my son wont
wear his safety glasses when working in
our garage shop. Ive tried both bribes and
punishment. I even showed him a picture of
an eye injury I found on the Web. Nothing
works. He says he just forgets. Any ideas?
Behavior modifcation isnt my strong suit, but
I think I can help: First, make sure your sons
glasses are comfortable and ft him well. You
might even take him to the store and let him pick
out a pair he likes. If ft isnt an issue, maybe his
glasses fog easily. You could buy a fog-resistant
model such as those made by Honeywell Uvex. You
could also treat the glasses with Clarity Defog It, a
rub-on liquid that leaves behind a flm.
Then, of course, theres the cool factor. You
may just have a stubborn, budding fashion lover
on your hands. And I know just the thing for him:
W H AT S I N
ROY S
G A R AGE ?
Our columnist
on his favorite
new tool.
50
I seem to have caulked the

kitchen- counter backsplash
poorly. Less than a year later,
some of the caulk is peeling
away. What did I do wrong?
Probably several things. First, caulk,
glue, and paint have one thing in
common: They stick best to a clean,
dry surface. In the kitchen you need
to clean with a degreaser, such as
Krud Kutter, before applying caulk.
You may also have chosen the
wrong product. Caulk comes in any
number of formulations. In your case,
you should have used a high-quality
caulk labeled for kitchen and bath.
And you should have made sure it
stayed dry as it cured. The manufacturer specifes the necessary time, but
its typically about three hours.
Since youll be recaulking anyway,
heres how to do it neatly: Cut away
the old caulk with a utility knife and a
brand-new blade. Use a painters tool
(a putty knife with a hook-shaped
blade) to rake out any remaining
caulk. Next, snip the end of the caulk
tube so it produces as small an opening as possible that will let a thin but
steady stream of caulk through, no
larger than about 3/16-inch diameter.
Place the tube in a contractor-grade
caulk gun, which you can buy for
about $20, and apply the caulk in as
straight a line as possible.
We have a prefabricated woodframe garage sitting on gravel.

Its sill plate has completely rotted away, and it has some rotted
siding. Should we repair this, or
is the garage a goner?
Fixing this is going to be a big, backbreaking job. Its probably easier to
tear down the garage and build a new
one with a pressure-treated sill plate.
If youre not ready to rebuild just
yet, you can extend the life of your
current structure for up to fve years
by adding additional support. Position a 2 x 8 horizontally against each
solid wall, at least 3 inches above the
garage foor. These should be as long
as the wall itself. Using hot-dipped
galvanized lag screws, fasten each
board to the studs, making sure
youre sinking into solid, rot-free
wood. As you add screws across the
face of the board, make as much of a
zigzag pattern as you can. This will
create additional stability.
After the snow melts, my lawn
looks terrible until about the
middle of June. Please help.
Sorry to be the one to tell you this,
but it sounds like you blew it for this
year. The way to get a lawn to bounce
back in the spring is to fertilize it in
the fall. Fertilizers for this purpose
are labeled fall fertilizer or winterizer. The nitrogen in these fertilizers
helps the grass store carbohydrates so
that it will grow quickly when the sun
returns. The potassium improves the
grasss resistance to cold. Turf pros
call this cold hardiness. You can drop
that phrase at your next cocktail party.
Now for the good news: You still
have time to apply a spring fertilizer
or a combination fertilizer with preemergent herbicide, such as a Scotts
Turf Builder. It could gain you a few
weeks of nice grass, at least.
Whats great about buying a saw from a legacy tool company like Skil is that
you know what youre gettinga sturdy, comfortable tool from a company
thats proved itself for more than ninety years. So it is not surprising that
Skils newest circular saw, the SPT67WM-22, is solid, agile, and vibration-free,
with a sidewinder construction and a magnesium motor housing and shoe. Its
more surprising that it has a heck of a lot of new design flourishes, including
industrial-looking motor vents and ribbing reminiscent of the companys flagship, the Model 77, which was introduced back in the 1930s. Its never a good
idea to sacrifice substance for style, but in this case, you can have both.
P h o t o g r a P h b y b e n s t e c h s c h u lt e
Mark Harmon,
Stand Up To Cancer Ambassador
I AM MY OWN
SECRET WEAPON.
To learn more go to StandUp2Cancer.org
or CancerResearch.org/Dream-Team
Stand Up To Cancer is a program of the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization.
Photo by Kevin Lynch
The battle against cancer is hard fought and hard won, and often treatments are as debilitating as the disease itself.
But inside each of us is the power to fight cancer: our immune system. Stand Up To Cancer and the Cancer Research
Institute have joined forces in one of the most promising new research areas, using the science of immunology to get
our bodies own natural defenses to fight the disease. Immunotherapy has the potential to significantly change the
treatment of cancer as we know it. Stand Up with us. Together, we can impact millions of lives.
TA K I N G T H I N G S A PA RT
All the
stuff thAt
MAkes
stuff Cold
A lesson in fridge anatomy.

by roy berendsohn
A refrigerAtor is An unnAturAl thing:

a box of cold air made up of components that use electricity (hot) to
move heat (also hot). If you sit next
to one on a quiet day, you can hear
the appliance paradoxically workingthe whispery trickle of refrigerant boiling in the evaporator coil.
Looking at this literal black box, you
might be inclined to tear it to pieces
looking for answers. But you wont
have to, because repairclinic.com
technician Chris Zeisler helped us
do it for you. He disassembled a
standard Whirlpool side-by-side
refrigeratorfreezer with door-front
water and ice dispenser. He found
dozens of parts. None of which, it
turns out, is particularly mysterious.
EVAPORATOR
EXPANSION
VALVE
CONDENSER
yes, but how does it work?
If you want to make a hot space cold, you need to carry heat energy away from it. To do
this, a refrigerator uses a chemical called a refrigerant inside a length of sealed
tubing. This refrigerant absorbs heat from the freezer in a portion of the tube called
the evaporator coil. It then moves to the compressor and then to the condenser coil at the
bottom or back of the refrigerator and releases that heat into the air.
COMPRESSOR
52
PhotograPhs by josh scot t
5
7
6
8
10
11
14
12
17
13
16
15
18
In 25 years,
repairclinic.coms
Chris Zeisler has
never faced an
appliance problem
he couldnt fix.
19
20
1. Evaporator: Turns liquid

refrigerant into vapor, allowing
it to absorb heat from the
air in the freezer compartment.
2. Compressor: Compresses
refrigerant vapor.
3. Condenser: Receives compressed refrigerant vapor, condensing it into liquid, releasing
its heat to the surrounding air.
4. Water filter: Removes
impurities from water for ice or
chilled water.
5. Water-inlet valve: Controls
water flow to the icemaker
and chilled-water dispenser.
6. Defrost control board:
Regulates the defrost cycle
to melt ice that accumulates
around the evaporator
in the freezer.
7. Air damper: Shutters on the
damper control the airflow
from the freezer compartment
to the fresh-food compartment.
8. Condenser fan: Blows air
over the compressor and the
condenser coil, cooling the
compressor and increasing the
coils ability to release heat.
9. Dispenser push-button
switch: Controls on/off function
for dispensing ice and chilled
water.
10. Auger-drive motor:
Powers the auger that turns ice
out of the bucket, forcing
it down the dispenser chute.
11. Air-damper control and
thermostat: The two parts
i l l u s t r at i o n b y m a r k n e r y s
work together to control airflow

from the freezer to the freshfood compartment. The damper
control (on the right) and the
thermostat (on the left) allow
the refrigerator to respond
automatically to a temperature
that you set manually.
12. Evaporator fan: Blows
air over the evaporator coils,
increasing their heat-absorbing
capability.
13. Ice-crusher solenoid:
An electromagnetic coil that
controls the ice crusher.
14. Run capacitor: Energizes
compressor-motor winding to
provide a rotating magnetic field
within the motor.
15. Water line: Carries water
from the water valve to the

icemaker in the freezer.
16. Ice-crusher plunger: Pulled
in by the ice-crusher solenoid,
the plunger assists in dispensing
crushed or cubed ice.
17. Defrost heater element:
A resistance heater that melts
the ice that forms from
frozen condensation on the
evaporator coil.
18. Water-line connector: A
fitting that connects water lines
within the refrigerator.
19. Dispenser microswitch:
Energizes or de-energizes
the chilled-water or icedispensing circuit.
20. Crushing blade: Crushes
ice.
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Disaster
LeveL:
stabLe
Page 57
Worsening
Page 61
apocaLyptic
Page 63
Hard-core Tips, preparaTory advice, and illuminaTing insigHTs

For THe somewHaT concerned.
photogr aphs by Ian allen t ypogr aphy by Ist vn szugyIczky
54
e x pe rt
Nate Becker
Dog Musher, eagle, alaska
after spending his twenties and early thirties

as a firefighter and paramedic in Wyoming and,
later, for the National Park service in the grand
Canyon, Becker moved to eaglea town with a
population of 86in 2008 to lead dog-sledding
trips in the backcountry with Bush alaska expeditions. here, he shares his survival rules.
temperature is only minus 20, that

40 degrees makes a diference.
TRAPPING
On the trail
Becker prefers
to wear gloves
under his mittens, because
you can take a
gloved hand out
of a mitt and do
something like
chop wood or
set a trap.
GEAR
Always take a sleeping bag. You

never know when youll get stuck
out and have to spend the night or
just need a quick warm-up. And
I bring a preassembled emergency pack. Right on top is a pair
of warm mitts in a ziplock bag.
History is riddled with stories of
people who didnt survive because
their hands froze. You can walk a
thousand miles on frozen feet, but
you cant survive six hours with
frozen hands.
Also in my pack are blankets,
hand warmers, a big survival knife,
signaling devices, fre-starting
equipmentyou cant have enough
fre starter. One thing I absolutely
wont be without is a Leatherman.
I carry two. And then theres a fur
ruf, which lines the hood of your
parka. Even the stifest wind has a
hard time penetrating a ruf. Just
make sure its real fur.
T R AV E L
The easiest travel is on frozen rivers and creeks, because the land
is usually choked with brush and
trees. But remember that the ice is
dangerous. You have to know the
diference between good ice and
bad. Clear is bad. You want cloudy.
And you want cracks. Once ice

gets thick, the water expands as it
freezes. It has to give somewhere,
so the ice cracks. When you see
cracks in cloudy ice, its almost
always safe.
S E T T I N G U P CA M P
For me the number one priority is easy water. You can almost
always fnd enough frewood. But
it takes a lot of time and energy
to melt enough snow into water
for twenty dogs. To fnd the water,
just listen for it. When I get to a
spot that looks like it might have
water, Ill put my ear down and
listen. If I can hear the water, I can
get to it. If I cant hear itbecause
its under a few feet of snow and
another foot of iceI move on.
If its a true emergency, dont
worry about trying to build the
shelters you see in survival books.
You would never have time to
build most of them. As long as
youve got a sleeping bag, the best
and the quickest shelter you could
make would be to sandwich yourself with your sleeping bag inside
a tarp, kinda like a burrito, and
then fgure out some way to cover
yourself with snow for insulation.
When its 60 below and the snow
PREPPER JARGON dECOdER
56
If you can, set traps every quartermile to half-mile. Up here in

Alaska, a lot of us catch marten
using small leg-hold traps, which
are those spring-loaded metal jaws.
To set the trap up, frst fnd a tenfoot, small-diameter spruce tree,
preferably a dead one. Then tie it to
a big tree at a 45-degree angle from
the ground. On the end of that pole
you hang bait or a lure or both. A lot
of times well use a visual attractor
like a feather or something shiny.
Bait can be guts from other animals
or even a piece of hide. Once you
secure the trap to the spruce tree
just in front of the bait, open it. The
idea is to get the marten to climb
the pole and step in the trap.
S TAy I N G d Ry
Dont work up a sweat. If I fnd

myself exerting a lot of energy,
the frst things of are my hat and
neck gaiter to promote cooling. It
is far better to stay a little chilly
(knowing I can put clothes back
on to warm up) than to let yourself perspire. Moisture lessens the
insulating value of your gear, and
even the best moisture-wicking
fabric in the world wont eliminate
sweat. Once you get wet, you stay
wet until you get to the cabin or
tent at night to dry out.
RESCUE
I always carry high-visibility

material in neon orange or green.
This comes from my days working
on a helicopter crew as a paramedic. Its easy to miss someone
from the air, so you want to make
yourself as visible as possible. That
means movement and contrast.
A signal fare works, obviously.
But neon material called fagging can be tied to a tree. Then,
if a pilot fies over, he can see you
and which way the wind is blowing. That helps him if hes going to
come in and land to get you out.
as told to Peter Martin
BOB: Bug-out bag. The essential escape kit in case of emergency.
Genny: Generator.
Prepper
Casual survivalist
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PrePPing Lite
What preppers do, and
what you, a slightly less
paranoid citizen, can do.
a L PM
iv
ta b Le
CommuniCation
Food
Heat
Establish a dead dropa

secret place to deposit and
retrieve messages when
communications go down.
Tell only trusted confidants
about this place.
Practice hunting the animals

native to your area. Worth
noting: Domesticated rabbits
are less gamy than their wild
counterparts.
If the power goes out, a

woodstove is great backup.
Better solution: an outdoor
wood furnace that connects
to your homes existing heating system.
Get your ham-radio license.

Plenty of people still use
ham radios to communicate,
including FEMA. In a catastrophe, it might be your only
option. (See page 62.)
Nonfood items you should

have in your emergency
pantry: manual can opener,
Flintstones multivitamins,
Sterno (for cooking).
Store a couple of ceramic

flowerpots in the closet.
Two pots nested, turned
upside down, and propped
above a few candles make
an effective space heater.
HealtH
SHelter
Water
A properly equipped go bag,

or bug-out bag, is heavy.
Establish a training regimen
on various terrains, so that
you can flee without getting
winded.
Build an underground bunker. Ideally, for ultimate

secrecy, not on your house
property. But that might
also require a rather large
purchase.
Capacity of your cistern

equals (one gallon per
person) times (number of
people) times (number of
days of expected cataclysm)
times (tenjust to be safe).
Pick up a fitness tracker.

In a low-food situation, itll
track your vitals and even
count your calories. In the
meantime, youll just be
healthier.
Have a list of emergency

shelters. They should be
accessible and sturdya
public shelter, a church,
your neighbors basement,
which also has a pool table.
Keep a large water-filter

pitcher in your fridge. Good
for everyday use and as a
filtration system. At the first
sign of trouble, fill all extra
containers and the bathtub.
3
tHe FiVe SaFeSt CitieS
Taking into account nuclear fallout, natural disasters, extreme weather, proximity
to fresh water, and even violent-crime
statistics. Another benefit: Theyre all
quite lovely. B Y C A m e r o n J o h n s o n
2
1
eugene, oregon
SitKa, alaSKa
miSSoula,
montana
HurriCane,
utaH
WHeeling,
WeSt Virginia
Very mild climate. No threat

of hurricanes and
only a minor risk
of tornadoes,
earthquakes, and
volcanoes. Great
if you dont mind
ceaseless rain
or plaid.
The big advantage: Youre

already used to
being isolated.
Surprisingly
mild year-round,
despite being in
Alaska. An abundance of wild
food sources.
Surrounding
mountains keep
extreme weather
at bay. Very low
threat of natural disasters.
The Clark Fork
River runs right
through town.
Unfortunate
name, yes. But
its desert climate
will suit coldweather haters.
Two nearby reservoirs and the
Virgin River provide water.
Doomer: Someone who thinks total chaos and collapse will follow the oil supply falling short.
No major
hurricane,
earthquake, or
tornado threats.
Far enough south
to avoid lakeeffect snowfall.
The moonshine
keeps you warm.
tHe
eSSential
S u r V i Va l
BooKSHelF
ALIVE: The
Story of the
Andes Survivors, by Piers
Paul Read
The last discovery in
their search for new
tastes and new sources
of food were the brains
of the bodies which they
had hitherto discarded.
Canessa had told them
that, while they might
not be of particular
nutritional value, they
contained glucose, which
would give them energy;
he had been the first to
take a head, cut the skin
across the forehead,
pull back the scalp, and
crack open the skull
with an axe. The brains
were then either divided
up and eaten while still
frozen or used to make
the sauce for a stew.
ADRIFT:
76 Days
Lost at Sea,
by Steven
Callahan
Because if you have
common sense, a little
general knowledge, and
a lot of fear, you can
survive anything. And
because he punches
sharks in the face.
SAS
SURVIVAL
HANDBOOK,
by John Lofty
Wiseman
Everything you need
to know.
LIFE,
by Keith
Richards
TeoTWAWKI: The end of the world as we know it. Probably easier to
57
S u R v i vA l
DISASTER
LEVEL:
StAblE
t h e s i t u at i o n a l g u i d e
t o s u p e r F l u o u s s u r v i va l
Naked and Afraid Is the

Best Survival Show
Everyone else is just playing.
B y d av i d c u r c u r i t o
ear Grylls is a Wuss. Les Stroud (you may know him

as Survivorman) is just camping. Mick Dodgewell,
that guy is pretty badass, but hes a barefoot lunatic. And
almost all of the other hundred survival shows arent
actually about surviving, theyre about living in a warm
home deep in the woods (Im talking to you, Alaska: The Last
Frontier). The Discovery Channel is the only one that gets survival
TV right, with its simple, genius Naked and Afraid. Two complete
strangers, a man and a woman, meet completely nakedwithout
food or waterin a desert, swamp, or forest. Then they walk the
earth like God intended for a harrowing twenty-one days. Yes, its
the same damn show every episode: The two people get along,
build a shelter, struggle to make a fre, and then starve while eating an occasional snake or dead bird. Or: The two people hate
each other, build a shelter, struggle to make a fre, and then starve
while eating an occasional snake or dead bird. But my fascination
with the show isnt about skills or gender roles. Whats entertaining is watching people come close to death from exposure and
starvation. Its inspiring. And its good to know that if, say, your
Cessna crashes in the middle of nowhere, your body could actually
function for a good chunk of time on stagnant water and snake
meat. I could watch a whole episode just for the before-and-after
photos. What a great way to lose weight.
the
u lt i m at e
s u r v i va l
dog:
tHe German
sHortHaired
Pointer
During the gooD times, the preapocalypse,
you want a dog thats loyal, smart, and obedient. You also want a dog that barks like hell when
a stranger walks up your driveway. The German
shorthaired pointer has these qualities and a lot
more. The breed has pulled sleds, carried packs,
and gone into battle with elite U.S. forces. Its
webbed paws make it a good swimmer. It can be
trained to retrieve game that you killor to kill
small animals itself. The dogs versatility derives
from deliberate breeding: Spanish and English
pointers, the dalmatian, the vizsla, and a tracking
hound all went into making this crafty canine. Its
complex ancestry also makes it susceptible to few
ailments and likely to live up to fourteen years. So
maybe stock up on dog food too. Joe Bargmann
PREPPER JARGON DECODER
58
just say it.
ge
Stuff you
may not
absolutely
need, but, boy,
itd be nice to
have.
B y m at t G o u l E t
Youve got to
work in the dark.
With six superbright LEDs

embedded in the
handle, three flanking each side of
the knife, the SOG
BladeLight Folder
($85) pulls double
duty as a flashlight
and a blade.
You need to keep

warm during a
nuclear winter.
The waterproof
Westcomb Mission
Parka ($550) uses
synthetic and natural
down for maximum
insulation.
You want steaks,
but a cooler is too
cumbersome.
Made out of the same

durable material as
white-water rafts, the
Yeti Hopper ($350)
is incredibly tough,
leakproof, and can
keep contents cold
for two days.
Hardened electronics: Impervious to the effects of particle radiation or electromagnetic radiation.
I l lu s t r at I o n s b y P e t e r o u m a n s k I ; P h o t o g r a P h s b y F r a n n y & a l b e r t ( g e a r ) , I a n a l l e n ( m I t t e n )
ar
Your hands are in danGer

of GettinG frostbite.
Theres nothing warmer than
real animal fur from the arctic.
Wolf, beaver, wolverinein
terms of durability and warmth,
those hides beat anything
synthetic. Boundary Fur
Sewing will make you a pair of
beaver-fur mittens for $200.
When the temperature dips
below zero, youll realize its
money well spent.
Nate Becker, Dog Musher,
AlAskA (see page 55)
the definitive
Go baG
Labeled in order of
priority, for your
convenience.
Gear
Continued
You need to take shelter fast.
Building a shelter can be a chore.

With ENOs JungleNest Hammock
($100), you get full coverage with
an integrated mosquito net and rain
guard, and it packs down smaller
and lighter than a tent.
Etn FR150 MicroLink AM/FM

emergency radio with built-in
cellphone charger, hand crank,
and solar panel. Essential.
Knife.
Maglite LED flashlight. Doubles as
a weapon.
Youve lost contact

with Your loved ones.
Extra batteries.
The GoTenna ($300) is

sold in pairs and uses
long-range radio waves
to transmit text messages and locations
through an app on your
smartphone. So when
service disappears, your
phone basically becomes
a walkie-talkie with more
than a mile range. In
emergencies the device
can also transmit a ping
of your location to every
GoTenna within reach.
Whistle. (See How To: Signal for

Help, page 62.)
Mirror.
Flint and tinder.
Multitool.
First PriOritY
Mylar blanket. Lightweight

and warm.
Extra pair of weather-appropriate
clothes.
Tarp, tube tent, or dropcloth.
Paracord (a hundred feet). Durable
and versatile.
Any necessary medication.
First-aid kit.
Nonperishable food, such as
MREs or canned goods. (See The
Dehydrated-Food Taste Test,
page 61.)
Water bottle with filter, LifeStraw,
or canteen.
Canteen cup.
Gloves. Thick enough but not
too thick.
Rain poncho.
Local maps, preferably topographical.
By detailing the handle and

sheath of their Freescape
Hatchet ($57) in neon green,
Gerber ensures you wont lose
this tool. The sheath slides
conveniently into the handle
for easy storage while youre
hacking away.
Youre short on fuel in the

middle of nowhere.
When the gas light flips on or your

generator starts to sputter, youll
want this. Magic Tank Emergency Fuel
($20 for a half-gallon) is nonflammable, has a ten-year shelf life, and acts
just like regular gas.
Potassium iodide/chlorine
tablets. A few drops decontaminates your water.
Collapsible shovel. For fire pits
and latrines.
sECOND PriOritY
Metal spork.
Insect repellent.
Toilet paper. (See How To: Loot,
page 63.)
Soap.
Sunscreen.
Garbage bags. Good for food storage or a makeshift poncho.
tHirD PriOritY
Watch. Glow-in-the-dark, if
possible.
Waterproof document packet:
ID, passport, birth/marriage
certificates, deed/lease, car title,
insurance information.
Stanleys Mountain Coffee System ($50)

is a complete coffeemaking kit nested
around a thermos that keeps drinks hot
for up to twenty-four hours. The cap
stores enough freshly ground coffee for
two cups.
You lost Your last hatchet.
Waterproof matches/butane
lighter.
Sunglasses.
Youve been foraGinG all daY and

reallY need a pick-me-up.
Youve Got to flee but want to

take everYthinG You own with You.
Eddie Bauers First Ascent Maximus

Duffel Bag ($169) uses rip-proof and
bombproof thermoplastic polyurethane. Closed, its the size of a book
bag. Open, it has 150 liters of storage.
Cash. Small denominations.

Twelve-hour candle.
Wet wipes. For hot wings.
Hand-cranked can opener.
Hand sanitizer. Bonus: highly
flammable.
PhotograPhs by Franny & albert
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.15
su
r
03
a L PM
iv
Disaster
LeveL
rsenin
the
GOurMet
survivaL
kitchen
Theres no point in stocking

delicious food if you cant
cook it.
by W ylie DufreSne
ve spent a lot of time
thinking about and preparing for disasters. To tell the

truth, I started out on the
fringe, buying enough military surplus Meals, Ready-to-Eat,
or MREs, to put me on a government watch list. But then about a
year ago, I realized my plan was
absurd: My kids wont want dehydrated veggie burgers. During the
apocalypse, your duty is to keep up
moraleand nothing is better for
that than a great meal. To make

one, you still need to be able to
cook. Here, a few essentials.
fire
Matches dont take up much

space. Keep them around. And
make sure the ones you buy are
storm-proof. (You can make your
own by dipping standard matches
in melted wax.) I also recently
discovered the Soto Pocket Torch,
which turns certain disposable
lighters into a minitorch. Its
great for mending a frayed piece
of paracord or, better yet, making
smores in your living room.
a ca M P s t Ov e
One of my favorite portable stoves

is the Jetboil Joule Cooking System. I like Jetboils in general, but
this one is serious: It puts out
10,000 British thermal units, and
the pot on top holds more than
two liters, which is good for when
you need to cook for a few people.
You should also have a PowerPot: The fve watts of energy it
creates while heating water (up to
1.4 liters) will charge any device
that plugs in to a USB.
The DehyDraTeD-fooD TasTe TesT
a WO r s t - ca s e s c e n a r i O s t Ov e
When times are

tough, nothing
lifts spirits like
gooey smores.
And booze.
If you are without matches or any

other way to produce a fame, you
can still make a hot meal if you
have the Barocook system. It works
the same way MREs do, by generating heat with a chemical reaction.
You simply pour water over the
heating pack, then put a tray of
food on top. So in the middle of the
worst, you can just pretend youre
at a really weird bufet.
by Kevin DupzyK
Dehydrated foods are perfect for emergencies: nonperishable, lightweight, and easy to prep (just add
water). but do they taste like actual food? One staffer ate them for a week to find out. Some highlights.
B r e a k fa s t
Backpackers
panTry organic
cinnamon apple
oaTs & Quinoa
Slightly better than instant
oatmeal, and the
quinoa ups the
nutritional value.
Lu n c h
mounTain house
Wraps BreakfasT skilleT
The eggs are fully
cooked and then
freeze-dried, so
texture is off. The
sausage and peppers help, though.
PrePPer JarGOn DecODer
Backpackers
panTry paD Thai
Delicious food for
the pretentious
prepper: international, vegan, and
gluten free. It also
has 460 calories,
which youll need.
Dinner
gooD To-go
herBeD mushroom risoTTo
Created by an
Iron Chef winner,
and it shows
perfect risotto
texture. Suitable
for dinner parties.
naTural high
BBQ Beef
WiTh masheD
poTaToes
Great idea, terrible execution.
Dry potatoes and
more BBQ sauce
than beef.
maD: Mutually assured destruction, e.g., nuclear war.
photograph by Z ach gross ( W ylie Dufresne)
Dessert
asTronauT
ice cream
sanDWich
Tastes exactly
like an ice cream
sandwich, cant
melt, and no brain
freeze. So, just
fantastic.
WRol: Without rule of law.
YoYo: Youre on your
p o p u l a r M e c h a n i c s _ March 2015
61
Consider the
Ham Radio
For emergencies or just idle

chatter.
By Jason FeiFer
his is KD4DYV, I said,
Rviv
based group. I still owned my old

handheld, and it seemed foolish not to
have it at the ready. So I renewed my
license for free and set about seeing
how ham has fared in the digital age.
The answer: quite well. There are
now almost 725,000 licensed hams
in the U.S., an increase of almost
200,000 since I bailed two decades
ago. In part this is because of new
technology that enables talk on previously inaccessible frequencies. And
to encourage newcomers, the FCC no
longer requires that hams know Morse
code. Theres also a new smartphone
app called EchoLink that patches hams
into transmission repeaters, devices
that receive weak signals and retransmit them with more juice.
With my radio busted, I downloaded EchoLink and found a repeater
near my Brooklyn neighborhood.
This is KD4DYV, I said again. Can
anyone hear me? This time a voice
rose from the static: It was Zane, a
dad who lives down the street, and
who earned his license two months
ago. Zane recommended buying a $30
Baofeng UV-5R. Im on this repeater
pretty often, he said, inviting me to
return. I will, with my new radio. Its
good to know I can reach a friendly
voice. Hopefully just to chat, but also
just in case.
announcing my ham-radio
call sign for the frst time in
twenty years. Can anyone
hear me?
Static.
I fddled with my handheld radio,
an old Icom IC-W2A, and tried
again. Nothing. The radio was all that
remained of a childhood hobby, back
when I also had a big, boxy rig hooked
up to a thirty-two-foot antenna in
my parents backyard, and a
Morse-code key for tapping out messages. The technical name for all this
is amateur radio, an old-timey pursuit
in which operators pass a test, acquire
a license and call sign from the Federal Communications Commission,
and then spend their days chitchatting
across the globe. The term ham was
once an insult, a name professionals
gave to amateurs with clumsy Morse
skills and mediocre equipment.
When I joined as a squeaky-voiced
12-year-old in the 1990s, it was like
discovering the Internet before the
Internet. Ham is built upon the thrill
of the contact: Operators routinely
hold contests to reach, say, someone in
every state, or they clamor to talk with
a fuzzy voice foating in from some farof island. To confrm conversations,
they send each other a personalized
postcard. I had hundreds on my wall.
But then I grew up. Now Im 34,
married, and with a kid on the way,
and last fall my dad found my expired
ham license. At frst I fled it away
as a memento. But then I remembered: When a disaster strikes, ham
radios are pivotal to survival. Operators become community lifelines, with
hams talking to each other and working with frst responders to relay local
conditions. Theres even the Amateur
Radio Emergency Service, a volunteer-
How
To
How To:
Make fIre wITH a GuM

w r a p p e r a n d a a B aT T e rY
SIGnal
for Help
If you have a
whistle, use a onetwo-three, pause,
one-two-three pattern. This is more
recognizable to the
human ear. Mirrors
are also important.
Nothing in nature
can be mistaken for
a signal mirror. Same
goes for brightly
colored construction tape. Thomas
Coyne, founder and
chief instructor,
survival training
school of california
1 Fold an open wrapper in half, width-wise.
Fully cut diagonally

from the open side to
almost the edge on the
folded side. Unfolded,
the two ends should be
wide triangles and the
connecting portion as
narrow as possible.
2
How To:
How To:
orIenT a Map
Align north on your
compass with the maps
vertical grid lines. Rotate
the map and compass
together until the needle
reaches north.
T u r n Yo u r C a r I n T o a G e n e r aT o r
Car electricity runs on direct current, but almost everything else is alternating current.
What you need: an inverter. Some cars have them built in, but you can get one at a store for
less than $40. Use the clamps to attach the inverter directly to the terminals on your car
battery. Let the car run at idle and you have 110-volt AC power for as long as you have gas.
With a 300-watt inverter, youll have enough amps to run a laptop or even a television.
62
3 Hold the foil

side of each
end on opposite
terminals of the
battery. The
middle section
will burst into
flames. Have
tinder ready.
own. No relation to YOLO.
EDC: Everyday carry. Can be a phone or lighter or a knife or multitool.
BallistiC
i l lu s t r at i o n s b y P e t e r o u M a n s k i
ap
How To:
Barricade
Yo u r H o u s e
From THe
inside
When bands of
marauders start
roaming the streets,
how are you going
to keep them out?
Tear down a few
walls, says Timothy Ferraro, a
twenty-five-year
construction veteran whos thought
about this situation
plenty while watching The Walking
Dead. Assuming the
attackers dont have
a battering ram, you
should be able to
keep them out using
the lumber and drywall already in your
home, he says.
DiSaSter
level
iC
|||
|||
.15
Su
r
PM
03
al
iv
C a ly p t
1 Cut your window covers.

Pick a bedroom, closet, or hallway
partition wall. Use a utility knife or
handsaw to cut out window-size
slabs of drywall. Its stronger than
you think, especially if you double or
triple it up.
2 Yank the studs.

Inside every wall is a stockpile of
lumber you can use to fortify your
entry points. Using a hammer, bat, or
shovel, knock the studs loose from
the bottom plate on the base 2 x 4,
and then yank them free from the top.
3 Lock down the entry points.

Nail your studs together in lengthwise pairs at a 90-degree angle to
form braces. This makes them stronger. Then run three or four braces
horizontally across every door,
hammering the nails from above and
below directly into the frame at a
45-degree angle. If you drive them
straight in, theyre easier to pop out
when somebody kicks the door. Use
more braces to secure the drywall
over the windows. Try to use longer
nails and leave a couple inches of
each nailhead sticking out for easy
removal. Clint Carter
How To:
s w i m a L o n g d i s Ta n c e
i n F r e e z i n g waT e r
Kimberley Chambers,
open-water swimmer and the
sixth person to ever complete
the Oceans Seven marathon
challenge.
BreaTHe.
You must control
your breathing and
relaxeven when
the freezing water
makes it feel like
theres a foot on
your chest. Panicking wastes energy.
Keep moving.
Even if you think
you are not making
any progress. As
soon as you stop,
you lose precious
body heat.
Wampum: A stockpile of ammunition that can be used for trade or as currency.
FLex Your Hands.

An early sign of
hypothermia: claw
hands. You can last
a long time after
this, so flex your
fingers closed after
each stroke to get
blood flowing again.
How To:
LooT
Dont bother
with the
fifty-inch
flat screen.
If the world ends,
everyone else
will be grappling
over water, gas,
candles, and
canned food, all
of which youve
wisely stored
in advance. So
take this opportunity to stock
up on useful
stuff they wont
think to take: lip
balm and lotion
for your soonto-be-wrecked
lips and hands,
Vaseline and cotton balls to use
as fire fuel and
kindling, vitamins, and all the
antibiotics you
can carry. Kevin
Reeve, CEO of
OnPoint Tactical
survival school,
recommends
grabbing the
penicillin, Flagyl,
Cipro, Zithromax,
and Augmentin,
as well as painkillers such as
Percocet and
Vicodin. Get
tampons if you
intend to bring
any women with
you, and cigarettes, alcohol,
and lighters that
you can trade
for whatever you
forgot. And take
everything they
have in the way
of toilet paper,
Reeve says. We
call it mountain
money.
Goblin: Someone who will start looting or committing other crimes in a
63
ap
DiSaSter
level
ic
|||
|||
.15
Su
r
PM
03
al
iv
c a ly p t
Shelte
Its the same with any
catastrophe around the
world: The displaced
are put up in tent cities,
decrepit stadiums, or,
if theyre lucky, given
vouchers for hotels
hundreds of miles from
home. But a company
in Austin, Texas, has
a better solution. A
lightweight, portable,
humane solution. And
they let me move in.
By Neal Pollack
p h o t o g r a p h s by J e f f W i ls o n
he generator in the exo went down at midnight.
One second I was sleeping in my bag on my cot, the

space heater and minifridge soothing me with their
chorus of electric hums. Suddenly the whole pod shook.
My phone, plugged in beside the cot, emitted a little
squirt of noise. There was a thunk as the electronic
deadbolt unfastened. Then it was dark. Without power,
the pods LED-illuminated, capacitive-touch panel, which operates the
lights and locks, had gone blank. The digital readouta four-digit number like an addresson the pods exterior, which sent a little glow through
the top of the skylight when it had power, had also been extinguished.
I considered not doing anything. It was snug in my bag, and the food
in the fridge would keep for a while. But then I felt the wall next to me.
A molded composite shell gets pretty cold at night in December, even in
Texas. I touched the foor. It was also chilly. The heater had been on high,
and it had kept the Exo just warm enough. In another hour my pod would
be an ice bucket, and I would be very uncomfortable.
I got of the cot, groaning like the middle-aged man I am. Lumbar support isnt a high priority for disaster-relief bedding. I pulled on my sweater
and hiking boots. Hot pain stabbed across my sacrum. Flashlight in hand, I
stepped outside into the Texas Hill Country and trudged the ffty or so yards
to the generator. The gas cans had those protective spouts on them. It was
a two-person job. But I didnt really have a choice. I was alone out there.
thirty-six hours earlier, id driven onto the field in the middle of
the game preserve where Id be living for the next two days. There sat the
Exo Mark 4 disaster-housing prototype, looking like a giant space egg with
a square top, or a distended version of the orgasmatron from Woody Allens
Sleeper, or perhaps a porta-potty from the future. An actual porta-potty
had been set up a few hundred yards down the road, past a cattle guard,
just far enough so that thered be no way for me to reach it after dark without spraining an ankle.
Michael McDaniel, the CEO of Reaction, the Austin, Texasbased
company that makes the Exo pods, was waiting for me, along with the
preserves owner. They were laughing. Id driven up in a Prius. A camper
Im not. But this made me a perfectly good test subject for the Exo. Its
designed for ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. Since I was
the frst noncompany employee to ever spend the night in one, my circumstances were extraordinary enough.
Emergency housing is in a wretched state. Millions of refugees who
have fed the Syrian crisis live in makeshift dirt-foor tents held together by
duct tape and cardboard. In Port-au-Prince, Haiti, years after a horrifying
earthquake, displaced people are still squatting in scrap huts. Our domestic
solutionsstadium housing and FEMA trailersare only marginally better.
McDaniel says he dreamed up the Exo after Hurricane Katrina, when
he saw how shoddily the refugees had been treated and housed. He cut a
door out of the bottom of a Styrofoam cup, and then spent the next decade
madly working on a unit in his backyard and garage, obsessedlike Richard
Dreyfuss sculpting a Devils Tower out of mashed potatoeswith creating
stackable, modular, efcient disaster-relief housing. Now he has millions
of dollars in seed funding and a growing staf highlighted by a chief engineer who most recently worked at Boeing on numerous airliners and who
had previously designed satellites for NASA. Before the molded composite has even dried on the prototypes, Reaction is preparing Exo for mass
production.
The pods come in two pieces: the shell, which is made out of a proprietary mix of materials as secret as a Texas pitmasters barbecue rub, and the
65
Each Exo,
seen here
in prototype
form, is fully
wired and has
a personalized
digital security
system. Future
versions will
be equipped
with air conditioning and
running water.
foor. The Exos base measures 9 feet 6 inches by 8 feet

4 inches, and the structure stands 8 feet 4 inches tall.
Altogether it weighs 400 pounds, though McDaniel
says they can get that down to about 300 pounds.
Regardless, the Exo can easily be lifted into place by
four people and assembled in about fve minutes, and it
comes as wired as the smartest of smart homes.
McDa ni el ha nd ed m e a rad i o - freq uenc yidentification (RFID) bracelet, like what Id get for
admission to a music festival. All Exos, even in the
most extreme scenarios, will have personalized digital
security, access to a power source, and built-in LED
lighting. I walked up to the pod and swiped the bracelet across a lit white circle next to the front door. The
circle swirled and turned green. The bolt unclicked. I
opened the door and stepped inside.
The Exo is fully modular, almost like Lego housing.
Theres a desk attachment available so it can become
a feld ofce, and theres even a version in the works
that could house a mobile surgical unit. Mine was more
of an extreme bachelor edition. Bunk beds had been
clipped to both side walls. The beds on the east wall
were folded up to ft a space heater and minifridge.
The pringles of emergency housing

Reactions Exo disaster shelters are
designed for easy transport.
One truck can

carry anywhere
from ten to
sixteen nested
Exo shells.
Each shell is
light enough
to be removed
from the truck
by four people.
66
The shells are

then placed on,
and attached
to, a base to
make a pod.
survival situation.
The pods interior felt generically futuristic, very

Starship Troopers. It could have used a nice print
or two, or even a One Direction poster. I turned on
the LED lighting, which gave the space a dystopian,
interrogation-room glow. There were electrical outlets
on either side of the rear wall. I plugged in my phone,
put my stuf down, and sat on the bunk.
Well, here I was.
On the frst night I drank a few beers, read, and ate
dinner. It was lonely, but I felt strangely comfortable,
securely locked inside my pod. The next morning was
damp and chilly. I drank some cofee and stretched out
on the foor, which was freezing to the touch and covered with a coat of fne Texas dust. Fortunately, Exos
are designed to be easy to clean.
After a nice three-hour hike around the ranch, I
returned to the pod, swiping my RFID bracelet. The
shelter was now sweltering. McDaniel says hes working
on a version of the Exo that has a built-in air conditioner, as well as louvered vents in the front. That also
seems like a needed innovation. It was only 65 degrees
Fahrenheit outside.
But these are just prototype observations. The Exo
has enormous potential. The units can be ft together to
form a multiroom home of sorts. A wet unit, containing
running water, is also in the works. Beyond its intended
relief mission, it could, and most likely will, be used
for other purposes: for workers in the North Dakota
oil felds, campers at a music festival like Bonnaroo,
or in dozens of other scenarios. The pods arent fancy,
and theyre not cozy, but theyre secure, fully wired, and
they have access to power. If Id just lost my house in a
disaster, Id be thrilled to get one. It sure beats a tent.
I tried to keep that in mind on my last night as I
stumbled grouchily in the dark toward the generator, lifted the heavy gas can, and dribbled fuel all over
myself. McDaniel says multiple Exos can run of a generator truck, portable solar panels, or can be hooked into
a power grid, if available. That would have been nice.
After twenty minutes or so of incompetent maneuvering, I got some gas into the tank. The generator
roared to life and the Exo lit up in the feld, glowing
like it was ready to be carried back to its home planet.
It looked oddly beautiful and delicate. I imagined
hundreds of them strung together, forming a village of
temporary modular housing, linked by a central computer system, shining in the night. That could happen.
McDaniel says that by the end of 2015 Reaction will be
making 500 Exos a month. Demand is that high.
For now, though, there was only my prototype. I
went back to bed, my hands stinking of gas. The only
soap was in the porta-potty, which was way back in the
woods. On the night of a full moon, I had no intention
of leaving the security of my cocoon again. I could feel
the cold metal of the bunk bed against my hand. But it
was warm enough inside the pod. The heater swiveled.
I went back to sleep, safe from whatever disaster might
befall me next.
BIB: Bug-in bag. Everything you need to ride out an emergency at home.
Marauders: People
s u r v i vA l
DISASTER
LEVEL:
ApocAlyptic
A F e w s u rv i vA l t i p s F r o m t h e
speciAl
Byron Kerns, former

U.S. Air Force Survival,
Evasion, Resistance, and
Escape (SERE) instructor,
and wilderness director
and chief instructor at
Byron Kerns Survival.
Forces
h ow t o cAt c h
m i N N ow s w h e N
yo u r e s tA rv i N g
1 Take a two-liter
bottle, remove the cap,
and cut off the top
quarter.
2 Turn the top upside
down and place it in the
bottom three-quarters
of the bottle.
3
If you have string,
yo u r e m e r g e N cy s h e lt e r , t wo wAys
Bugs, Not
Berries
Eat bugs instead
of berries or
plants. The wrong
plant could debilitate or kill you.
Bugs just taste
bad, and theyre
an abundant
source of protein.
But remember:
six legs or less
to avoid potential poisoning,
and roast them if
possible to cook
away parasites.
make a small hole at the

top of both sides and
tie an end of the string
to each. This is your
handle. If you dont
have string, use rocks
as an anchor.
4 Place bugs or other
bait in the bottle bottom
to attract fish.
The materials: a
tarp or dropcloth at
least 8 by 10 feet and
a minimum twenty-five
feet of cord (preferably
parachute cord).
tree
well
1 Crawl under the biggest evergreen you can find. Get right up to
the trunk.
2 Locate two trees roughly eight feet apart. Tie your line
around one of them. If its warm, the cord should be higher
off the ground to let in more air and vice versa.
2 Break or cut off enough

boughs that you have room to
move around or at least
sit up without being poked.
3 Secure the tarp to the

cord. If your tarp has grommets (holes with metal rings),
pull the line through them on
both sides. If it does not, use
a buttoning technique (bottom right) before tying the
cord to the other tree.
If there is snow, use a shovel or

your hands to dig it out. Pack down
the sides of the hole for walls.
4
sNAcKy
Orange and
watermelon
rinds
Fiber-rich,
pairs well with
chocolate.
tA r p
home
1
3 Use the branches you cut off, and

any other fallen branches or clusters
of pine needles nearby, to line the
ground for bedding and insulation.
LastResoRt Food,
in oRdeR oF
d e s p e R at i o n
huNgry
Tree bark
Remove the tender
inner layer, called
cambium, and boil
strips of it as you
would pasta or
grind to powder for
thickening soup.
FAmished
Leather
Avoid dyes or
treatments, if possible, and boil in
water to soften.
Can also be
roasted into chips.
Ro c K
4 Stake your tarp into the

ground. If you dont have
stakes, use heavy logs to
weight the corners.
dyiNg
Dirt/clay
Dig deep to avoid
pesticides. If able,
bake to kill bacteria, then boil
for 30 minutes
and strain. Dirt is
nutrient rich, and
clay is filling.
t h e p o s ta p o c a Ly p s e B i k e :
When society collapses,

a bicycle becomes
Spot Br and Cre am S S
the optimal mode of
transportation. The Cream ($8,700), a mountain bike made by Spot
Brand in Golden, Colorado, can handle smooth pavement and rugged
wilderness trails alike. Its also low maintenance. The frame is sturdy
titanium, and its a single-speed, so no gearing to fuss over. The drivebelt needs no lube and is nearly silentgood for keeping a low profile.
who collect guns rather than supplies. Their plan: to raid the prepared and eliminate the competition.
Buddy Burner: A homemade stove for cooking.
67
Nick Meyers in
full rescue gear
at Shasta-Trinity
National Forest.
68
Deep LarDer: Long-term food storage.
GoLDen HorDe: The mass of helpless city dwellers who will
PhotograPh by ian allen
s u r v i vA l
DISASTER
LEVEL:
ApocAlyptic
e x p e rt
Nick Meyers
D i r e cTo r , M o u n T S h a STa ava l a n c h e c e n T e r ,

M o u n T S h aSTa , ca l i f o r n i a
a fourteen-year veteran of the u.S. forest Service,

Meyers has been the lead climbing ranger of the
Mount Shasta ranger District since 2010. his team is on
call year-round to lead search-and-rescue efforts, averaging ten to twelve annually.
AvA l A n c h e s
An avalanche needs a few things

to happen: a slaba cohesive
mass of snowand a surface for it
to slide down, like a frozen crust,
hard old snow, or the ground.
It needs a slope of between 30
and 45 degrees. Less isnt steep
enough, and more will cause the
snow to slough of naturally. And
it needs a trigger, like a skier or a
snowmobilewhich is how you
get into trouble.
If someone gets buried, fnding him is no longer the hardest
part, thanks to avalanche beacons. Digging him out is. When
youve located him, use your
avalanche probe: Stick it into the
snow as a marker of his position and depth. Take one large
step downhill and dig from there.
Youll be digging in toward the
personnot down onto them.
k e e p i n g wA r m
If youre stuck out in the wild,

the frst thing you need to do is
avoid exposure. Wind saps your
body temperature and increases
the risk of hypothermia. Keep
moving to maintain blood fow
and retain body heat. No matter what, never go 100 percent.
Always leave a little gas in your
tank, because you never know
when youll need it.
geAr
We use a list called the ten essentials. Its not defnitiveI bring
a few extra pairs of socks and,
in the winter, a hat, a small bivy
sack, and a ground pad are also
crucialbut these things will buy
you time in a survival situation.
Map anD
CoMpaSS. Make
sure you know how to use them

(see page 62). A lot of people
substitute GPS. GPS can work
very well, but it has its limits. In
cold weather batteries dont last
very longand if they run out,
youre bummin.
3 firSt-aiD kit. You want to at
least be able to stop bleeding and
splint an arm. It doesnt have to
be giant, since theres not a lot
you can do in the feld anyway.
4
SunGLaSSeS anD
SunSCreen.
If you are someplace with a lot of

snow, like we are, snow blindness
is a real concern. And the snow
refects the suns rays.
6 extra fooD. They may be
smushed, old, and beat up, but
a couple of Clif bars can keep
you going for another twelve to
twenty-four hours.
7 fire Starter. There are a lot of
options. Try stocking your kit with
this: Take lint from the dryer, put
it into a paper cup, and pour wax
on it. Put it beneath some kindling, and light the whole thing.
8 extra CLotHinG. Avoid cotton.
Once it gets wet, it loses its insulation capabilities and doesnt
dry very fast. Synthetic clothing
is better. Always have some sort
of wind layer. People underestimate the chilling efect of wind.
It can be extremely hazardous.
On Shasta the wind is just brutal, and that can lower your core
temperature pretty easily.
9 MuLtitooL. It tends to have a
knife on it, so I steer toward that.
And it also has other tools.
10 HeaDLaMp/fLaSHLiGHt. In
every pack. You never know.
Where Im Going
The case for the eschatological
contingency plan.
By Jacqueline DeT wiler
f tHe worLD enDS, a lot of folks are going to
get very lost. Without email or smartphones,

families scattered across the country that
rely on long-distance communication will be
forced to fnd one another in real life again,
in a countrywide game of postapocalyptic Marco
Polo. Ive read Stephen Kings The Stand. This is
not going to be easy.
Assuming all goes well, my family will be better of than most: We got drunk at my moms
birthday dinner one year and unintentionally
chose our apocalypse rendezvous location. At the
time my brother Joe was living in Boston, and my
parents were in Beaumont, Texas. I lived in New
York City. With so much country in between us,
how would we avoid missing each other?
To start, we considered a familys needs: land
that would remain dry even if sea levels rose.
Fresh water. Vegetables. A city large enough that
we could fnd it but small enough that it wouldnt
be overrun. This was easy: Triangulating from our
homes cut a halcyon crescent of potential locations west of the food-prone Eastern Seaboard
and north of the food-prone Gulf Coast. We could
go to Memphis, Nashville, Roanoke, Texarkana,
Little Rock.
The harder part was coming up with a recognizable landmark to meet under. It would have to
be large, unmistakable, and still standing no matter what calamity befell the earth.
I helpfully announced that I had been to Louisville, which possessed just such a landmark (and
happened to be surrounded by warehouses of
bourbon). This was roundly met with expressions
of praise. And so, even though we initially chose it
in an inebriated thought experiment, Im going for
it: If the world ends, Ill pack up the good knives,
loot all the supplies I can carry, and make my
way to the Louisville Slugger Museum & Factory.
There, if Im lucky, my parents and brother will be
waiting, under its 120-foot decorative bat.
as told to Kevin Dupzyk
pour out of metropolitan areas in an emergency.
opSeC: Operations security. Sharing your survival plans with other people is weak OPSEC.
69
At the main
printing plant in
Queens, seven
presses run
between six and
eleven hours a
night to print
300,000 copies.
popular mecHaNics
VoL. cxcii . . no. 1,409+
How The New York

Times works.
By Reeves WIeDeMAN
Photographs by WILL sTeACY
1:35 a.M.
a tuesday
ERNIE BOOTH, THE OPERATIONS MANAGER OF THE MAIN
printing plant of The New York Times, is

walking the floor. The plant is a 515,000square-foot building in Queens, on the Van Wyck
Expressway, half a mile from LaGuardia Airport. Booth
is a big man with enthusiasm to match his heft, and
tonight hes wearing a collared shirt, sweater, and chinos
in various shades of beige. He glides through the place
like a small-town mayor, jabbing the noisy air with quick
chin nods, ofering ritual greetings to some of the 350
employees who work here each night.
Whats happening, Tom?
Hey, Andy.
All quiet, Dennis?
Dennis Daz, a coordinator in the control room,
responds that one section of the plants fourteen miles
of conveyor belts is not working.
Booth draws a breath and scans the control room, a
glass-walled ofce he compares to an indoor air trafc
control tower, overlooking the foor. You see all these
flashing things? he says, pointing to one of several
screens displaying diferent parts of the plant. Flashing things are bad. Flashing things mean we have a
problem. He appears to have a lot of problems at the
moment. But this night is not much different from
most, and Booths only real complaint as he circulates
continued on next page

71
popular mechanics
the foor is that hed rather be on his wheels: The plant

is so large that many employees travel from one area to
another on adult-size tricycles. (Booth has a trike and
a golf cart.) During daylight hours, when the plant isnt
in use, the Times sometimes rents it outin the most
recent Jason Bourne movie, it stood in as a crowded
factory in the Philippines.
Tonight, like every weeknight, the plant will print
more than 300,000 copiesdouble that on the weekendwhich by 3:25 a.m. have to be loaded onto dozens
of trucks. The straight trucks, which are already at the
loading docks, can ft eight pallets each, holding a total
of 14,000 individual copies. The trailer trucks carry
twenty-four pallets, a load of 50,000 copies. The trucks
will make about eighty departures from the plant by
tomorrow morning, fanning out to other distribution
points, from which the copies will be delivered to grocery stores, bodegas, ofce buildings, and newsstands
from New Haven to Albany to Trenton. Booth used to
spend his nights waiting for the trucks to arrivehe
had a Times paper route in the Riverdale section of the
Bronx starting in 1986, when his daughter was born
and he needed extra income.
Booth got here at 4 p.m. and will work until the
last truck leaves. Sometimes well get out at 3, sometimes well get out at 7, he says. Youre dealing with
night peoplewere vampires here. Tomorrow morning, most readers will think nothing of the fact that the
paper was at their door at the same time yesterday and
the day before that and the day before that. They may
also think nothing of the fact that, at the moment they
bend down to pick it up, some of the stories in the print
version have already been updated on their phones
and tablets, and new stories have been added, too: the
score of a double-overtime game that ended too late,
or news out of India that broke overnight. And all of
these stories, the total daily and nightly output from
all the desks at the Timesnews from Washington
and Ukraine and Sacramento and St. Louis and Staten
Island and Mexico City, reviews of movies that open
tomorrow and of TV shows that aired last night, opinion pieces, recipes, weekly sections on home design
and science and real estate and style and booksfeed
a larger world of news that never stops consuming.
The growing universe of digital news outlets includes
a great many amalgamators, recyclers of other peoples
reporting. Some report their own stories, but it is the
Times that provides by far the most coverage of the
most subjects in the most reliable way. The Times is a
monster, a sprawling organization, the most infuential print newspaper and digital news site in the world.
But it still makes most of its money by selling paper,
and the paper on which tonights edition is being printed
arrived, as it does each week, from four diferent paper
millstwo in Quebec, one in Ontario, and one in Tennesseewhere it was packaged into rolls large enough
to serve as the business end of a steamroller: 2,200
pounds each and fifty inches in diameter. Eighteenwheelers carried them to a Times storage facility in the
Bronx, where more trucks took twenty rolls each from
there to the plant in Queens, where manned forklifts
deposited each one in a four-story warehouse that can
hold 2,231 just like it. The rolls now sit stocked in eight
72
Matt Boggie
runs the
Times R&D
Lab, which
tries to
peer into
the future
of news.
One project:
figuring out
how to use
drones for
newsgathering in
ways that
dont annoy
anyone and
dont get us
sued.
rows on nine shelves, four deep, like soup cans in a grocery store for giants. Conveyor belts deliver them to the
paper-handler area, where the rolls are fipped sideways
and land with a deep boom, ready to be loaded into
press reels that feed them through slits in the ceiling.
The rolls of paper unspool on seven diferent presses
that will each run for between six and eleven hours by
the time Booth clocks out. A plant worker attaches the
end of each roll to the start of the next using giant pieces
of tape, so the press never has to stop.
In the plate room Sergei Primachenko waits for digital fles of each page to arrive from the Times midtown
Manhattan headquarters, ten miles to the west. (Ask
Booth how often the editors there meet their deadlines
and he will push his glasses down his nose and raise
an eyebrow.) Primachenko seems to view many steps
in the printing process as mission critical. (Having
the precise amount of ink is mission critical.) Upon a
fles arrival, a laser etches an image of the page onto a
piece of oxidized aluminum, which is then washed in
a sugar-based chemical like a roll of flm being developed. A diferent plate must be produced for each of
the presss four colorscyan, magenta, yellow, and
blackand because a single page might be printed in a
diferent form in various editions, the plant uses 3,000
plates to print some ffty pages each night.
From there the plates are locked onto the press,
and ink is put to paper. The presses can print up to
80,000 papers per hour, and its noisy as hell when
march 2015
Booth heads back out onto the foorthe decibel level

can reach 87, loud enough to cause hearing loss over
time. The paper zips up from the basement, zigzags
through the presswhich applies ink that sticks only
to the areas marked by the laserthen jets back toward
the middle of the room, where half a dozen pressmen
in ink-stained jumpsuits grab pages off the press so
that they can stare intently at a millimeter-wide box
in the top-left corner of the page. If the box is black
everything is in order, but if theres a hint of cyan of
one edge, the plate is out of register, and the
page must be readjusted. By the time a page
is deemed ready for public consumption
called frst good copy the plant is likely
to have printed several thousand copies that
go straight to the recycling bin.
Each page is simultaneously folded in half
by a machine and sliced apart, to be raced
along the miles of conveyor belts, as if rube
Goldberg had designed a clothing rack for
the worlds busiest dry cleaner. The goal of
the machine, one of only three in the world,
is to get each paper out the door without
being touched by a human hand. along the
way, various inserters open each copy, deposit
ads from macys or Target, stack papers into
bundles of ffty, strap them with plastic bindLydia POLGrEEN
ingsnap! snap! snap!with a speed that
deputy editor ,
international desk
would make a dominatrix blush, and pile
them on pallets to be rolled onto Timesbranded trucks, which start pulling away in
an order scheduled to the minute, bound for
one of ffty depots, where paperboys and girls
and men and women will pick up this mornings New York Times more or less the same
way Ernie Booth did twenty-eight years ago.
6:20 a.M.
a wednesday
LYDIA POLGREEN OPENS HER EYES,
rolls over in her bed, and grabs

her iPhone. her mind is already
several time zones ahead. Polgreen is the
deputy editor of the Times international
desk, which used to be called the foreign
desk until somebody pointed out that the
Times has readers all over the world. (as
Polgreen puts it, Foreign to whom?) She
Bill DIcKE
scrolls Twitter to see whats trending. She
scans the apps and websites of the Times
assistant editor , news
competitors. She reads the many stories
that some of her seventy-fve foreign correspondents fled while she slept. Then she gets out
of bed and makes cofee. She needs to be at the Times
headquarters for a 9:40 conference call with the editors in Europe.
The Times is one of a dwindling number of media
outlets willing to keep reporters in places where they
arent always wanted. Polgreen has worked as a correspondent in Senegal, South africa, and India and
knows the importance of being looked after. reporters
assigned to a country for the frst time are occasionally taken totally ofine for months or even a yearno
stories to fle, no ofce to report toso that they can
learn the language and culture, an expensive and

extraordinary commitment by the Times. In addition
to monitoring their stories, Polgreen also must monitor
the whereabouts and well-being of the reporters themselves. If they disappear for a really long time, well
defnitely be like, hey, whats up?
Sometimes the Times commitment to covering
the entire world has dire consequences. In early 2012
anthony Shadid, a Times correspondent who had won
two Pulitzer Prizes for his coverage of Iraq, was in Syria
for the uprising against President Bashar
al-assad. Shadid and Times photographer
Tyler hicks were in the country without the
knowledge of the Syrian government, having
entered Syria at night across the mountainous border it shares with Turkey, which is
strung with barbed wire for much of the 500
miles. They scrambled over a barbed-wire
fence, and guides on horseback, arranged
by Shadid through a network of smugglers,
picked them up. On the way out a week later,
Shadid suffered a severe asthma attack,
leaned against a rock, and collapsed. hicks
administered cPr for thirty minutes, but
Shadid never recovered. he was dead. When
a local doctor was fnally persuaded to arrive
on the scene, hicks picked up his friends
body, hoisted it into the doctors truck, and
took it back across the border into Turkey.
11:50 a.M.
election day
STACY COWLEYS EYES MOVE AROUND
her computer screen, bouncing between the Times home

page and a half-dozen open chat windows.
There is pizza coming later because its Election Day, and on Election Day at the Times
there is free pizza.
Election Day is like the high holidays
around here, cowleys colleague michael
Owen says.
Owen and cowley are the morning producers of NYT Now, the Times frst mobile
app that has a dedicated newsroom team
around the clock. It launched last april. This
jobrunning an appis like a growing number of jobs at the Times in that it didnt exist
six months ago. Owen, tall and reserved, and
cowley, with glasses and long dark hair and
desk
a well-cafeinated energy, sit near the papers
news editorsdiferent creatures living in
the same forest. While Owen perches at his standing desk scrolling the Web for whats making news,
cowley sits at her desktop using old-fashioned news
judgment and modern technologya program tells her
in real time how many people are clicking on any given
storyto help determine whats worthy of keeping
on the app this very second and what to replace with
something more view-worthy. Bursts of text stream
into her chat windows as editors jockey for position
on the app. Times journalists communicate largely
through a customized version of Gmail and a labyrinth
of private chat rooms like these. Until, like, six months
73
popUlar mechaNicS
MARCH 2015
the companys CIO, who oversees

ago we were literally communicatthe lab, says he has no idea how
ing all day with AIM chat rooms,
people will interact with the Times
Cowley says. Anyone in the world
in ten years, whether its on your
could have joined that chat room if
wrist, or your forehead, or you take
they happened to fnd it.
a pill, or its a holographic contact
Just af ter noon Cowle y is
lens, or a head-up display in your
greeted by a young man in jeans
vehicleor on your mirror in your
and a blazer who works for the
bathroom. The lab explored E Ink
Times Interactive News Team, a
before the Kindle even existed, was
group formed seven years ago to
responsible for delivering the eartrain and develop a team of develliest versions of the papers mobile
oper journalists, programmers
news alerts, and helped the Times
who code tools for the newsrooms
become the frst publisher with an
use. He has built a bit of code that
application on Google Glass. One
will deliver live updates to the
Lillie DREMEAUX
of the labs researchers recently
NYT Now app as election results
deputy editor , news desk
designed a brooch programmed to
pour in tonight. Cowley plugs it in
light up whenever a topic is mento the apps content management
tioned that matches something the
system, hits refresh, and watches
wearer read about online that day.
as . . . nothing happens. The developer exhales, sits back in his chair, opens a laptop, and What good would that do, exactly? Boggie answers
with enthusiasm, We dont know yet!
goes back to work.
Theres defnitely a little MacGyvering happening
here, Cowley says. Were gluing the hamsters and the
3:10 p.M. STEVE DUENES, THE GRAPHICS EDITOR, IS REVIEWING
shoestrings together to make this all work.
No one at the Times is under the illusion that pro- a Monday a series of thirty maps that illuminate the
ducing the worlds most ambitious print newspaper
ongoing crisis in Ukraine. The blinds in
alone will be enough to keep the company afoat. In the his ofce begin to lower automatically. (Theres a little
third quarter of 2014, print advertising decreased by 5 chimp, he says.) Duenes is tall, with close-cropped hair
percent. But digital advertising was up more than 16 to match the militaristic fervor with which he pushes his
percent, and there is an increasing willingness in every department, which has grown rapidly in recent years.
section of the paper to try anything. On the twenty- The Times employs approximately 1,300 journalists, a
eighth foor of the papers Manhattan headquarters, classifcation that now includes much more than writers,
around the corner from the company lactation room, editors, and photographers. There are videographers
is the Times R&D Lab, a huge, open room with com- and developerjournalists and graphic designers, who
pletely white walls and views that stretch deep into insist that you not call them graphic designers. Every
New Jersey and ceilings high enough to accommodate section of the paper has been afected by the Internet,
a small squadron of drones sitting momentarily idle on but the graphics department is hardly recognizable from
a shelf. The drones are for droning, Matt Boggie, the the days not long ago when, to accompany a story about
labs director, says. Hes been working with the compa- Borneo, for example, it would simply produce a small
nys legal department to fnd out how to use the drones black-and-white map of Borneo. Dueness desk still profor news gathering in ways that dont annoy anyone duces traditional newspaper graphics, but it also now
and dont get us sued.
employs thirty-fve people who have expertise in statisBoggie is preparing the lab for a visit from adver- tics, programming, cartography, 3D modeling, motion
tisershe gives tours of the lab regularly to business graphics, audio production, or video editing. At the
associates, school groups, and the likeand walks departments two long desks, designer Haeyoun Park
through the space messing around with various proto- combs through data on the racial breakdown of police
types. On one computer an earthquake tracker can forcesa story the graphics team reported without any
compose news-alert summaries of a story based on instigation from print reporterswhile nearby Matt
seismographic data. Next to it a computer tracks Bloch is updating the papers digital hurricane tracker.
various cyclesthe life span of a fad, the spread of a Tis the season, he says.
virusbased on how often certain keywords appear in
A breaking-news event might require eight memTimes articles. In the middle of the room, a PlayStation bers of Dueness team, who are otherwise free to focus
controller has been hooked up to a Mac to display all on the kind of in-depth reporting for which the Times
the trafc coursing through the Times website, with print reporters are generally known. Last August a
flying hexagons representing published stories and graphics editor who had been tracking police data
blinking parabolas tracing visitors to the site. I cant for four years discovered that the New York Police
control it because I dont actually know how to use it, Department had more or less ended its controversial
Boggie says. An assistant walks by and feeds a stack of stop-and-frisk policy, which some critics had described
papers into a shredder.
as racial profling. This was news to the reporters on
The R&D Lab opened nine years ago with the goal the Metro desk, and the editor there assigned a story to
of looking three to fve years into the future. (The Times go along with the graphics departments analysis.
declined to say how much it cost to build.) Marc Frons,
The story, and the graphic, ran on the front page.
74
a d d i t i o n a l r e p o r t i n g b y t o va c a r l i n
A DAY IN THE
LIFE
Clockwise,
from top left:
The page one
meeting, an
afternoon
ritual; Ernie
Booth, steward
of the nighttime presses;
a mock-up of
the next days
front page;
an aluminum
printing plate;
pressman
Steve McConnell; one of the
machines that
feeds paper
through the
ceiling to feed
the presses
upstairs.
12
pounds
Weight of the
September 13,
1987, Sunday
edition of the
Timesa record.
1,612
Number of pages
in the
September 13,
1987, Sunday
edition, also a
record.
27
Number of
printing sites
in the United
States.
36
Number of
printing sites in
the rest
of the world.
popular mechanics
4:00 P.m.
a tuesday
TOM JOLLY IS TALKING INTO A SPEAKERPHONE. THE
page one meeting is about to begin.
Washington, are you there?

The page one meeting used to be at 10 a.m., but now
the 10 a.m. meeting is simply called the news meeting because it covers so much more than whats going
to be on page one the next morning. So now the page
one meeting is at four oclock, and its four oclock now.
Jolly, the papers associate masthead editorone
of the most senior positions in the newsroomis sitting at a large conference table surrounded by thirty
editors in bright-green felt-covered chairs. For all the
Times investment in its digital momentum, page one
of the daily print edition is still the most coveted space
in The new York Times, and this conversation remains
the papers most sacred ritual.
Jolly worked at the Times for sixteen years before
taking over the news desk, which means hes in charge
of how the news is presented on every platform. He is
dressed like a hip professorblazer, cool glassesas if
attempting to bridge the gap between the papers gray
past and its digital future. To his left a screen is lowered to display both the Web and mobile front pages,
which refresh constantly. Various smartphones rest
on the table. One of Jollys responsibilities is to decide
when to send out a mobile alert to the 14 million people who have asked the Times to interrupt their lives
when he thinks the news warrants it, one more way
the sound of a newspaper landing on a driveway in the
morning no longer heralds the arrival of the days news.
(Weve almost entirely gone away from paying attention to any print deadlines, says Jason Stallman, the
sports editor.)
Still, reporters want their stories on A1. Jolly goes
around the room asking representatives from each
section to state their case. It is a mostly polite debate
when the obituaries editor ofers a remembrance of a
yoga pioneer, a gruf, male editor is ribbed for his surprising knowledge about the topicbut the editor from
Washington isnt shy about butting in. Jolly turns over
the floor to an editor from international, who has a
piece about the ransom demanded by Islamic State militants for James Foley, the journalist who had recently
been beheaded in Iraq. Its an obvious candidate for
the papers top storyfront page, top-right corner
but some editors have concerns. Are you talking about
the other side of it? says Ian Fisher, the papers deputy executive editor and previously the papers Rome
bureau chief. The Italians would always say, If youd
only stop paying, theyd stop taking Italians.
Dean Baquet, the papers top editor, is worried that
revealing too much about captives still under Islamic
State control might put their lives in danger.
Were not identifying their names and the amount
of moneywe can talk about the sourcing, the international editor says.
Lets talk after the meeting, Baquet says.
The Times is occasionally mocked for its staid
and deliberate pace, but it is in moments like these
that the seriousness with which it approaches every
aspect of its operation becomes clearest. There are few
organizations with the resources to spend such time
and consideration on stories that arent primed to go
76
viralthough search-engine optimization and other

tricks of the digital age do receive plenty of consideration. When the conversation turns to a vivid story
from Liberia, where Ebola has overtaken a particular
neighborhood in Monrovia, one editor proudly reports
that she believes the Times is the only outlet with a
reporter on the ground, which makes everyone happy
until another editor says, I think BuzzFeed actually
has somebody there. There is momentary silence.
The editors continue around the room. With Ebola
and the Islamic State, plus the story pushed by the
Washington editor and a national desk dispatch from
protests in Ferguson, page one is running out of space.
A metro editor advocates a story on jury selection
because it has a cool interactive element, while sports
pitches a piece on conficts of interest in the United
States Tennis Association. Art is a consideration, so the
lights are dimmed, and a photo editor cues up the days
best photographs on a projector: There are images of
a bombing in Gaza, a portrait of Foley, and a series of
pictures from a Times photographer embedded with
a group of Kurdish soldiers in Iraq. Attorney General
Eric Holder is in Ferguson, but the photo is pretty
boring. The most arresting image is a Liberian soldier
enforcing an Ebola quarantine with a rife around his
shoulder and a baton he is swinging in the direction of
a young girl. The next day it will run across two-thirds
of the front page.
After a moments deliberation, Baquet announces
that the last slot will go to the jury story, so we dont
have the worlds grimmest page. The room empties as
editors depart to relay the news to their sections, while
Baquet, Jolly, and a group of designers stay behind to
sketch out what the page might look like on a piece of
paper. It is one of the only times that day anyone in the
ofce uses a pencil.
6:00 P.m.
a wednesday
ANDREW KEH IS ONE OF TWENTY REPORTERS IN A
beige-walled room in the bowels of Madison Square Garden two hours before the
New York Knicks tip of against the Dallas Mavericks,
listening to Knicks coach Derek Fisher try to explain
why his team has gotten off to such a rotten start.
Reporters shout questions about injuries and lineups
while Keh stands to the side in an untucked plaid shirt
under a sweater, camoufage Nike sneakers, and black
jeans with a reporters notebook sticking out of the back
pocket. Because tonights game is starting late, Kehs
editors have asked him to file a story before the first
jump shot, so hes in the locker room hoping to talk to
Tyson Chandler, the former Knick returning to face his
old team. But when the locker room closes forty-fve
minutes before game time, Chandler still hasnt shown
up. We just wasted half an hour, Keh says.
Keh got his start covering high school hockey games
for The scarsdale inquirer, a weekly newspaper in a
suburb of New York, and joined the Times as a news
clerk, making copies and answering phone calls. After
Keh helped a sports reporter with legwork on a series
of stories about steroids, the paper hired him as a beat
reporter covering the New York Mets, and then the
Brooklyn Nets. Now his home is the Garden. Keh has
Architect
Renzo Piano
designed
the Times
headquarters in
Manhattan, which
opened in
2007. Its
near Times
Square,
which was
named after
the paper
a hundred
years ago.
32.8
million
size of the
Times mobile
audience in
november 2014.
half the digital
audience uses
mobile devices.
38.6
15.6
million
million
Total number
of Times app
downloads for
smartphones
and tablets,
respectively, as
of october 2014.
MARCH 2015
the next fight to New Mexico, where he

landed less than twenty-four hours later.
The woman agreed to the interview on
the condition that Keh complete the
Times crossword puzzle with her, which
he did.
At the Garden, Keh returns to the
media room to write an early game story
and fnds Scott Cacciola, another Times
reporter, at the next desk. Cacciola is on
an assignment from Baquet, who had
just watched a miserable Knicks game
and wondered what the heck Phil Jackson, their legendary and newly hired
president, was doing with the team. (The
Knicks were, at the time, 5-21.) Im supposed to stalk Phil, Cacciola says.
The game is a blowoutthe Knicks
lose by twentyso Keh has plenty of
time to fle a second version of his story
from his seat in the press box just after
the buzzer before hustling downstairs
for post-game interviews. After Fishers
press conference, Keh walks to the
Knicks locker room, tweeting quotes
from Fisher along the way. (The Times
doesnt require reporters to tweet, but
encourages it and ofers classes.) In the
locker room, Cacciola trawls for lesser
Dean BAQUET
Knicks players who might comment on
editor , the whole shebang
Jackson while Keh waits for Carmelo
Anthony, the teams star, who took fortyfve minutes to shower and dress before
to be at the press conference and in the locker room in showing up to talk.
Deadline looms, so Cacciola offers to record
case a fght breaks out, but the Times wants even its
daily beat reporters to pursue ambitious stories. Were Anthony while Keh returns to his laptop. At 11:07 Kehs
trying to separate ourselves from every beat reporter editor emails to say he needs the story in thirty-three
minutes. The article Keh fled when the buzzer sounded
who covers every groin strain, he says.
Even with a regular schedule of games, Kehs job was already posted on the papers website twelve minis not regular at all. He missed a game a few weeks utes ago after a quick edit by only one other set of
ago when he landed a strange scoop. With an assist eyeballsthere was a typo in the frst sentenceand
from the Times research department, he had gotten he plugs in his earphones to pull quotes from the interin touch with a woman in Santa Fe who owned the views. Cacciola returns with the Anthony interview. At
domain name Nets.com and had been demanding 11:42, two minutes past deadline, Keh fles his story,
that the Brooklyn basketball team pay her a seven- calls the copy editors to make sure it arrived, closes his
fgure fee for the URL. Kehs editor told him to get on laptop, turns to Cacciola, and says, Lets get a beer.
77
popular mechanics
8:30 p.m.
a WEdnEsdaY
BILL DICKE TAPS HIS DESK ANXIOUSLY, LEANS
toward his computer monitor, and stares

at the word quarantine. Hes trying to
write a headline for a story on the arrival of Ebola in
the United States, slated for tomorrows front page. As
assistant editor on the news desk, Dicke is among the
last pair of eyes on the papers front page and writes
a lot of headlines. Quarantine is the best word, but
at ten letters it has too many characters for a single
column above the fold. The papers frst deadline of
the night is in a half-hour. Dicke frowns. There are
seven pages for foreign, eight for national, and were
supposed to close them in some kind of order before
nine oclock, Dicke, who wears glasses and has a white
beard, mutters. None of the pages are even set. He
rolls up the sleeves of his blue oxford shirt.
Facing Dicke in another cubicle, Lillie Dremeaux,
a young woman with dark, curly hair, is considering
what to do about a casualty. An activist in Israel was
injured in an assassination attempt, and Dremeaux,
the deputy editor on the news desk, is trying to sort
out where that story should ft among the 300 articles,
videos, blog posts, op-eds, and interactive features the
Times will publish today. The Times website is the most
coveted digital news space in the world, visited by 28
million unique users each month, nearly twice as many
as The Washington posts. On this day Isabel Kershner,
a reporter in Jerusalemseven hours aheadhas just
fled a brief account of the shooting, and the home page
producer placed the story prominently. Dremeaux asks
the photo editor if they have a picture of the victim
they dontand, after considering it for less than ten
seconds, tells the producer to bump the story down. It
certainly could explode into a war or something, Dremeaux says. But hes not even dead yet.
The news desk is the center and the highest expression of the Times transformation from once-a-day
newspaper to twenty-four-hour news outlet. Its both
the slowest and the fastest part of the Times operationa place where Dicke can spend a substantial
portion of the evening considering a single word while
Dremeaux makes decisions in seconds. Most of the
Times editorial staf is spread throughout three foors
of the papers headquarters, and news is on the third
foor. (The headquarters is at 620 Eighth Avenue, just
of Times Square, which was named after the newspaper opened there in 1904. In 2007 the paper moved
into a glass-and-steel structure down the street, an
audacious addition to the Manhattan skyline. The
new building is sleek and efcientthe window blinds
rise and fall automatically based on the temperature
inside.) Some desks are covered in old newspapers,
others are clean and empty, a reminder that the Times
operates in a post-recession, Internet-saturated media
landscape where it still employs more reporters than
any other major newspaper but fewer than it once
did. (In December the Times ofered buyouts to one
hundred newsroom stafers. Dicke took the ofer.) A
studio in which a video crew flms short clips for the
website and mobile editions looms over the middle of
the newsroom.
As it turns out, Dicke doesnt need to fit quarantine on a single line after all. That night, the San
78
The newsrooms are packed with people and

paper, but not as many people lately. In December a hundred editorial staffers took buyouts.
But there are new jobs, too, in the R&D Lab, in
app development, and in video production.
2.5
million
average sunday
circulation,
print and
digital, for the
six-month
period ending
september 30,
2014.
1.1
million
pounds
836
Francisco Giants win the

World Series, thanks to a performance by pitcher Madison
Bumgarner so dominant that
Tom Jolly decides to swap in
that story and moves Ebola
to an inside page with a wider
berth for a headline. But Dicke
has other problems and stares
at his plus-size computer
monitor, which is flipped 90
degrees so that he can see
the digital page as if it were a
newspaper in his hands. Every
article on every page appears
highlighted in blocks of green,
yellow, and red, signifying
varying stages of completion
and, thus, increasing levels
of threat to Dickes deadline.
Elsewhere on the front page he
changes the lead of one story
because its too long, then moves to another about how
politics in Louisiana is becoming less eccentric. The
starter headline reads, Draining Color From Politics
in Louisiana, which Dicke doesnt care for. Its not a
very exciting headline, but it is sort of the point of the
story, he says, copying and pasting the text into a blank
document. Im gonna see if I can do any better. Five
minutes later, out comes Colorful Rogues Make Way
for National Issues.
Dicke meets his frst deadlinebarelybut 9 p.m.
is only the beginning. Deadline for the frst local edition is 10:45, followed by another at midnight, and a
fnal call half an hour later. When Dicke fnally packs
up to leave just after 12:30 a.m., Lillie Dremeaux is
still plotting out the next mornings home page and
preparing to hand overnight duties to an editor in
Hong Kong. In a previous era, after the last page was
sent to the printer, an editor would ring a bell, walk
toward the door, and holler Good night! to mostly
no one, because there was no one left to yell at. Dicke
looks around at colleagues midshift, their eyes pinned
to computer screens.
We no longer do that, he says.
thousand
pounds
amount of black
and color ink,
respectively, used
by the college
point printing
Facility in 2014.
2:55 a.m.
a saturdaY
NATASHA SMITH AND MICHAEL GORDON PARK ON A
cobblestone street on the Brooklyn waterfront as they do every morning. Theirs is

one of dozens of cars lining both sides of the street.
They stand with a group of thirty or forty other deliverymen and women inside a loading dock waiting
for one of Ernie Booths eighty trucks to arrive. The

Sunset Park Depot, as this cement room the size of
a high school gym is known, is one of forty Times
delivery centers throughout the New York area, and
on this night it is responsible for the safe deposit of
12,559 copies across 215 diferent paper routes around
the borough. Two hundred and thirty-three of those
papers are the responsibility of Smith and Gordon,
a husband-and-wife team that has driven a pair of
routes together for the past three years. When the
truck arrives at 3 a.m., the couple load fve bundles
of fifty papers each into a shopping cart and dump
them onto one of the many wooden tables in the
room, where they combine the front and inside sections. Smith tosses one copy aside after spotting a rip,
and watches out for missing sectionsI can tell just
from the weightwhich could result in a complaint
on the report card every carrier receives each morning.
(They get paid 50 cents per paper.) Smith and Gordon shove each completed paper into a blue plastic
bag and toss it into a pair of shopping carts. Deliverers
are allowed to show up anytimeSmith and Gordon
arrive early, because late arrivals often get stuck with
damaged copiesso long as they deliver their papers
by 6:30 on weekdays and 8:30 on weekends. (In the
suburbs, where commuters leave earlier, the weekday
goal is 5:30.) The busiest hour in the depot is around
4 a.m., and by 5:30 all the papers have been removed
and the door is shut, leaving a lone worker to fill a
shopping cart with the damaged and discarded copies left behind.
Times delivery
trucks make
more than
eighty departures from
the plant each
night.
Smith and Gordon load their minivan and deliver

all 233 papers in about ninety minutes. Nothing like
the cold to make you do it faster, says Smith, whos
wearing a leopard-skin sweater and navy-blue beanie.
On some blocks she and Gordon walk opposite sides
of a street, tossing papers onto stoops, while on others
they split upGordon carries an Ikea bag stufed with
papers as he walks down blocks with a high density of
subscribers, while Smith drives sparser streets nearby.
The longest stop is the fve minutes it takes Smith to
deliver six papers to individual apartments in a nursing home. One customer has asked her to hit his door
with the paper so he knows it has arrived. Another
customers dog waits on the step and barks when the
paper lands. At this moment, hundreds of thousands
of copies of The New York Times are fying out of peoples hands, a little action that starts a simultaneous
morning ritual: A newspaper lands with a soft thud,
and eventually someone opens the door and picks it up,
reads it, and knows what is happening in the world.
79
80
The
Popular Mechanics
Guide
Watc he S
To
W atch e s are ext raordina ry things. Fea ts oF e ngine eri ng

y o u can st rap to your W rist . W het her you choose
m e ch anic al or quart z, tr ad it ional or sma rt , yo ur Wa tch
h as an im port ant r ol e : it let s peo pl e kno W Who yo u ar e.
e ve n iF t hats just a guy Who Wants t o knoW t he
time Without re aching in to his pocke t.
The Last American

Watchmaker
T he grea Tes T Ti m epi eces i n Th e w o rl d co me f ro m

sw i Tz erl and. a nd ami sh co unTr y.
by
Josh Ozersky
photographS by
Rainer Hosch
n the corner of a nondescript block
in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, is a bank, or what used to be a bank. Now it is the

home of Roland G. Murphy Watch Company, the countrys only truly independent elite
watchmaker. Inside, Murphys son-in-law, Adam Robertson, is bent over an old watchmakers drill press that looks like it was made during the Korean War. He uses an abrasive bit to create burnished, circular perlage on the underside of the main plate of the
watch movement. He is focused and unmoving, his attention riveted to the plate, whose
decoration no one will ever see. Later hell hand-polish the bevels of screw holes on
the tiny bridge that holds the wheel-train gears in place. High-end watchmaking has
not, for the most part, always been something you fnd in Amish country. Or, for that
matter, in the United States. Typically, if

you go looking for horological greatness,
the kind of virtuosic craftsmanship asso
ciated with the greatest watchmakers,
you go to Switzerland. If you are looking
for scrapple, you go to Pennsylvania. But
Murphy, the 53yearold owner and sole
proprietor of the watchmaking company
that bears his name, is the exception.
Like some of the small European com
panies directed by a single watchmaker,
RGM makes fewer than 300 watches a
year. In contrast, the brands worshipped
by most enthusiastsPatek Philippe
or Vacheron Constantinproduce tens
of thousands a year. Rolex produces
2,000 a day.
Of course, Rolex doesnt operate in
a space that looks more like an Elks
Lodge than a watch manufacturer, with
a collection of vintage cameras flling
shelf after shelf, along with various
other mementos. But then Murphy
himself doesnt ft the bill of a classic
watchmaker. Burly, and with a thick
head of saltandpepper hair and a
bushy moustache to match, he looks
more like a Pop Warner football coach.
Like most watchmakers, he started out
doing repairs, and found himself drawn
to the silent, obsessive work of creating
tiny universes of absolute order. After
a few years of working on clocks, he
found his way to Switzerland, where he

made the horological equivalent of the
leap into the big leagues: training at the
Watchmakers of Switzerland Training
and Education Program, the Swiss watch
industrys ofcial certifcation pro
gram in Neuchtel. Not long afterward
Murphy landed at Hamilton Watch
Company, where he eventually rose to an
executive development position.
Hamilton, it ought to be noted, is a
famous American watch brand. But the
dirty secret of nearly all American watch
brands, Murphys excepted, is that they
82
Clockwise from above: Roland Murphy peers through a rose-engine machinean intricate
engraving toolduring setup for the carving of geometric designs in his watchs dials; the solidsilver dial on the rose engine; the craftsman works in front of a vault in the old bank building
that houses his business; a look at the bridges on the main plate of the RGM 801 model watch.
are either owned by the Swatch Group

outright or utilize movements built
and exported by one of its subsidiaries.
Most of the American watch compa
nies youve heard about are using Swiss
movements and Chinese casings. And
none even tries to produce the kind
of arcane complicationsa whirling
tourbillon that compensates for gravity,
say, or a precision moonphase subdial
associated with the Patek Philippes and
JaegerLeCoultres of the world. RGM
makes what are by far the most intricate
and ambitious timepieces produced in
the United States. But they

arent just clones of Swiss
watches either. Theyre
inspired by the tough,
durable railroad watches of
industrial America.
The paradox, of course, is
that this rugged practicality
is actually pure poetry. A
$40 Casio GShock keeps
more accurate time than a
Breguet; a hotpink Swatch
a fourthgrader wears in the
pool is more reliable than
a watch that costs more than her home.
When you think about it, theres no rea
son for anyone to create inhouse move
ments for an American watch. Murphys
quixotic commitment to craftsmanship
has no value to anyone but an equally
idealistic buyer.
Nowhere is this clearer than in
Murphys masterpiece, the Pennsylva
nia Tourbillon. A mechanical watch, no
matter how perfectly made, is afected
slightly by gravity. The rhythm of its
escapement, the part of the movement
that regulates timekeeping, varies slightly
Watches that can
take a Beating
The watch: MTM Silver Patriot ($500)

The wearer: Albert Vargas,
Los Angeles Fire Department
The evidence: The Patriot takes
constant abuse. There have been
times when Ive hit it pretty hard with
forcible-entry tools or the fourinch hose. It gets bumped when Im
carrying the SCBA, our breathing
apparatus. Its been exposed to house
fires hotter than 1,200 degrees.
gu
de
to watch
es
based on how the watch is positioned.

Not that anybody other than watchmakers would care or even notice. But the
gravity problem stymied them, and so in
1801, Abraham-Louis Breguet patented a
rotating cage to suspend the escapement,
freeing it from the efects of gravity.
Manufacturing a tourbillon is incred-
ibly hard, which is why almost nobody

does it. Its also why two or three guys
doing it in a Pennsylvania bank building
borders on the fantastic.
Two bridges hold the tourbillon cage in
place. Murphy and his master watchmaker, Benot Barb, bore tiny holes in
the bridges to mount the escape wheel,
pallet, and balance. They friction-ft a
gold ring inside each hole and a jewel
into each ring. The 90-degree angle
of the drilling, the depth of the holes,
and the ring-and-jewel fttings must
be precise to ensure the perfect relative
positioning of the parts. The slightest
variation would ruin the mechanism.
The completed tourbillon turns
360 degrees once per minute, driven by
a tiny spring coiled around the central
axis. All of this work, by the way, can only
be done by hand. A few of the parts can
be machined, but even those parts are
usually made by equipment the two men
created themselves.
Murphy doesnt build watches for himself or his buyer. He builds for an ideal:
that things should always be better than
whats necessary. We dont design on the
limit, Murphy says. Think about the
Brooklyn Bridge. How much weight do
you think it had to bear when they built
it? Some horse carriages? Some pedestrians? Today there are giant semi trucks
going over it all day, and it supports that
weight because it wasnt designed to the
limit. Thats something we take pride
in. And its something you wont fnd
anywhere else in America.
The watch: Luminox Navy Seal

Chronograph ($355)
The wearer: Pat LaFrieda, butcher
The evidence: Its gotten soaked in
blood. Its slammed against bone in
production and bounced off wooden
pallets in distribution. I wore it hunting
in 10-degree weather. I had it on when
I flipped my Polaris Sportsman 500
quad off a ridge. Still ticking.
The watch: Casio G-Shock

G2310R-1 ($99)
The wearer: Mark Clement,
contractor; cohost of MyFixitUpLife
The evidence: Ive raked the band
across flooring during installations,
rattled it digging postholes for decks.
The most brutal beating was last
winter, when it was 8 degrees. I was
plowing snow, running a miter saw,
and roofing. My phone battery fried,
but my G-Shock never flinched.
83
IF WE MAY . . .
Your Phone Is Not

a Watch
F
An Appreciation
The $14 ca sio
t took two weeks of

searching to find my
first serious watch, a
tide-reading, GPSenabled timepiece
that, for $400, would
make me punctual
and a better surfer. After
adding it to my Amazon
cart, I asked a friend, a
savvy waterman in Hawaii,
what he wore: Cheap
Casio. No mention of any
special featureshe just
appreciated its function. So I
ordered one of those instead.
Three months in and
the W800H-1AV sits on the
short list of near-perfect
devices Ive used. The digits
are big enough to see the
time and date with a quick
glance. Its body is thick
enough to find the LED
light button, even with
motorcycle gloves on, yet it
still fits underneath a shirt
cuff. I actually like it best
with a suitIm in awe of
the engineering wonders of
more expensive watches, but
the kitsch of a digital watch
with a resin strap feels
appropriately irreverent.
With its ten-year battery
and water resistance to over
300 feet, Ill probably lose
the watch before it breaks.
Fortunately, it wont take
two weeks to decide on a
replacement.
AL E X AN D ER G EO RG E
84
or generations, if you asked a man the time, hed snap his arm out to full
length so the cuff of his shirt pulled back a little, then bend his arm at
the elbow and glance down at the watch on his wrist. Quarter o four,
hed say. The whole thing took about a second. Here, too often, is what
he does now: He shoves his hand into his pants pocket, or into the folds
of the suit jacket beneath his overcoat, fishing for his telephone, which
he produces and holds in front of his face. Then he pushes the button and
the time pops up on the screen and he says, Three forty-six.
This is no way to tell time. Its inefficient. It wastes time, which is the
thing youre worried about in the first placeotherwise you wouldnt need
to know what time it is. Plus,
its inelegant. A man without
a watch looks unprepared,
like a man who has to check
his wallet to see whether he
has any cash. A man should
always have cash.
Your phone tells the time,
yes, but your phone is not a
watch. You need a watch.
The
Complications
The sm allesT deTails
ca n m ake The
big gesT d ifference.
Minute rePeater
A holdover from the pocket
watch, repeaters have
a lever on the side that,
when flipped, activates tiny
hammers that hit differently
pitched gongs. Three tones,
from low to high, signify
each hour, quarter-hour,
and minute, respectively.
Minute repeaters often
cost six figures due to the
complexity of installing the
many gears.
example: Audemars Piguet
Minute Repeater
PerPetual Calendar
Mechanical watches with
annual calendars must be
reset three times every four
years. (They count twentynine days each February to
account for leap years.) A
perpetual calendar, however,
accounts for leap years only
when they happen, requiring
correction just once every
hundred years, since each
new century not evenly
divisible by 400 (2100, 2200,
etc.) does not contain a leap
year. example: JaegerLeCoultre Master
Photogr aPhs by john l aw ton
WHEN WILL YOU GET
A sMArt wAtCH?
Give yourself two points for each attribute you possess, then check your results.
You own a watch.
You own a smartphone.
You own more than one smartphone.
You see no problem in owning more
than one smartphone.
You own a Nest thermostat.
You can program a DVR.
You have a 4K TV.
You prefer the Jetsons to
the Bradys.
You have referred to yourself, proudly,
as an early adopter.
Youve stood in line for a smartphone.
You have a friend with a smart watch.

Youve never made fun of that friend.
You feel anxiety when your phone is
more than five feet from you.
You do not need a manual to pair a
Bluetooth device.
You can reset your own Wi-Fi router.
You dont mind dictating text to a
phone or computer.
You love getting email.
You have to respond to a text within one
minute of receiving it.
You do not need reading glasses.
You have used a pedometer.

Youve considered buying Google Glass.
You get Battlestar Galactica jokes.
You make Battlestar Galactica jokes.
You can write code.
ansWer key
020. You are at least a year from buying
a smart watch.
2140. All itll take to persuade you is one
more friend with a good experience.
40 or more. You may already be wearing
a smart watch.
THREE GOOD OPTIONS

Apple Watch
Accelerometers
integrate with iOS
workout apps to make
it a practical fitness
tracker. Curved
touchscreen and
zoom-and-scroll crown
are Apple beautiful.
Downside: needs daily
recharge.
LG G Watch R
Notched bezel
provides a vintage
aviator feel as you
cycle through texts,
weather updates,
and calendar
appointments.
Downside: chunky
and slightly
conspicuous.
1.
2.
Garmin Vvoactive
Adds smart-watch
functionality to Garmins
existing and excellent
fitness trackers.
Waterproof to 160 feet
and has GPS, so you
can track your run, bike
ride, or swim.
Downside: poor
battery life in GPS
gu
i
mode.
3.
de
to watch
Know Your
es
MoveMents
What makes
your watch work.
QuarTz
Moon phase
Originally used by sailors
to track tides, the moon
phase, which shows the
visible portion of the moon,
is now just an aesthetic
element. It works by adding
a dedicated gear that
completes one rotation
every twenty-nine and a
half days, the length of a
lunar cycle.
example:
Baume & Mercier Clifton
Tourbillon
Although not technically
a complication, there is
no more beautiful feature
for your wrist. Or more
superfluous. Invented to
prevent timing fluctuations
caused by a pocket watchs
static vertical orientation, a
tourbillon holds the escapement in a rotating cage,
offsetting gravitys negative
effects. This is no longer an
issue, since a watch moves
with your wrist.
example: Breguet
Classique Tourbillon
Flyback
Chronographs require three
presses of the trigger to
stop, reset, and restart
the timer. With a spring
attached to the running
wheel, a flyback returns
the counting hand to twelve
oclock with one push and
almost instantly begins
counting again. The function
was created for pilots
timing turns while flying in
formation, where a fraction
of a second counts.
example: Tudor Grantour
Chrono Fly-Back
C o m p l i C at i o n s w at C h e s C o u r t e s y o f t o u r n e a u
A battery sends an electric current to a

tiny, tuning-fork-shaped piece of quartz,
causing it to oscillate at 32,768 vibrations per second. The watchs circuits
reduce that number to one vibration per
second, or one hertz, and those pulses
are translated into ticks by a tiny electric
motor. (This is why mechanical watches,
whose springs steadily release tension,
have smoother second-hand movement
than quartz watches.) Quartzs indiference to temperature fuctuations makes
it well-suited for harsh conditions.
Mechanical
A balance, or wheel, moves according

to the energy expended by the tightly
wound spring that powers the watch.
On manual-wind watches, that energy
comes from regularly turning the exterior crown to apply tension to the spring.
Automatic, or self-winding, watches have
a semicircular weight that pivots as your
arm moves, turning the gears that wind
the main spring.
85
HOW TO . . .
CHOOSE A STRAP
circa 3500 B.c.
The sundial is
invented. Not that
anyone really had
anywhere to be.
The benets and drawbacks of rubber, fabric, metal, and leather.
rubber
PrO: Casual,
comfortable,
washable (with a little
soap and water),
waterproof.
CON: Inappropriate
in most formal
settings.
FabriC
PrO: Casual,
de
to watche
gu
metaL
PrO: Durable,
formal, shiny,
sometimes
interesting from
an engineering
standpoint
(see below).
CON: Occasionally
pulls out arm
hairs.
MORE ON THIS
WATCHBAND:
The MTM Special
Ops Trigger uses
a first-of-its-kind
bracelet linked with
ball bearings instead
of pins, making the
band much more
flexible for a closer
fit and no more
pinched skin. The
face, too, is impressively engineered: If
you know youre going to be banging the
watch around, you
can rotate the bezel
to raise it slightly to
protect the crystal.
86
comfortable,
washable, easy to
swap out.
CON: Has a relatively
short life span, could
lead you to consider
matching your
watchband to your
clothing.
1953
Blancpains Fifty Fathoms

introduces a unidirectional
rotating bezelthe outer
ring that divers use to
monitor remaining airso
that, if the bezel is bumped,
the biggest threat to the
diver is surfacing with
more air than he expects.
2015
Leather
PrO: Classic,
formal, elegant, safe.

Smells nice.
CON: If you are prone
to perspiration, that
nice smell can be
replaced with a pretty
terrible one.
Filson partners
with Shinola,
expanding the
classic fieldwear
company to
include its first line
of wristwear.
Photogr aPh by john l aw ton
Great Moments in
Watchmaking History
1850s and 60s
1914
The first American

watch companies,
like Waltham Watch
Company, Elgin National
Watch Company, and
E. Howard & Co.,
are established near
Boston and in Illinois.
Radioactive radium paint is used

to make watch hands glow in the
dark. After clients and employees
lose teeth and develop cancer,
the radium is eventually replaced
by safe photoluminescent
materials like zinc sulfide and
strontium aluminate.
1940
1926
1917
IWC Schaffhausen
introduces the Big Pilots
Watch, designed with a
large onion crown (now
IWCs signature) that
allowed pilots to adjust
their watches without
removing their gloves.
The Rolex Oyster

becomes the first
water-resistant
watch after the
free-spinning crown
is replaced by a
threaded crown,
allowing it to screw
in to the case.
Louis Cartier creates

the signature Tank
watch, modeled on
the aerial silhouette
of the Renault tanks
he saw while fighting
for the French during
World War I.
1960s
1970
Deep-sea divers discover

that helium atoms can leak
into watches, building up
pressure and cracking the
crystal. In response, brands
like Doxa create escape
valvesautomatic, one-way
valves that release pressure
as the diver surfaces.
The first
digital watch,
the Pulsar, is
released by
the Hamilton
Watch
Company.
1980
Casios iconic
C-80 calculator
watch debuts.
2014
2012
2011
Bathys Hawaii
Cesium 133, the
first self-contained
atomic clockand
thus the only perfect
timekeeperdebuts.
The Pebble
smart watch
sells out
before its even
introduced.
Shinola opens in
Detroit, delivering
manufacturing jobs back
to a city that needs and
deserves themand
beautiful, accessible
American watches to
the rest of us.
87
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This ball-peen-hammer
head looked dead before we
removed the rust, polished
the bare steel, applied a
glossy enamel, and added a
life-affirming new handle.
Tool Restoration
Clinic
Deep in the drawer, everybody has old, worn tools that

could live useful lives again. To rescue one requires
patience, sturdy abrasivesand vision. b y r o y b e r e n d s o h n
neglected tool has an odd, magnetic power. It pulls you in. Pick it up and the
next thing you know, youre scraping away rust with your thumbnail,
trying to make out the manufacturers name. You vaguely recall how you
came by it: a tag sale, or your father-in-law, or a neighbor who was moving away.
Everybody has them, these little hidden jewels, says contributing editor Richard
Romanski, a fine woodworker and unrepentant tool collector. Restoring them is
pretty easy. We gathered a bunch of forlorn implements and went to work in
his studio, a cavernous former church in North Salem, New York. We found that
all it takes is some basic chemistry and a little work to salvage tools that look like
theyve been sitting on the bottom of the ocean for a century or two.
p h o t o g r a p h s b y b E N s t E C h s C h U Lt E
89
Tool Restoration Clinic

1
3
2
the machine
the restorers
the equipment
Craftsman table saw, circa 1980s, purchased at a church auction for $80.
Pictured in the photo above, from left: contributing editor Richard Romanski,
editor in chief Ryan DAgostino, and senior editor Roy Berendsohn.
Adjustable wrenches for disassembly, air compressor to remove debris, kerosene and a half-inch drill with wire cup brush for the rust, dead-blow hammer,
rulers, machinists square.
Target: RUSTY, WOBBLY TABLE SAW

Even a good machine can be rendered inoperative by a little rust
and parts that go out of alignment or calibration.
A table saw that earns its keep in an unheated garage, shop, or
barn will soon rust. Condensation forms on its steel and castiron parts because they are cooler than the surrounding air (1).
The rust makes it difcult to slide a piece of plywood across the
table, which should be smooth and nonabrasive. It also makes
it hard to raise and lower the blade or adjust its tilt. This early
1980s Craftsman saw cost $80 at a church auction. Its table was
90
rusty, and its parts had been thrown out of alignment.

The frst step was to move the saw to a warm, dry workshop.
We took it of its rolling stand and hoisted it into a Ford F-150,
then drove it down the street to Romanskis studio (2).
Next came disassembly. We unbolted the cast-iron wings
from each side of the saw and removed the motor (3). We
were pleased to fnd that the motor was a commercial-duty type
with twin capacitorsone to start the motor turning and another
to provide extra kick to the run winding. The motors shaft and
pulley were all in good shape. We used compressed air to blow
accumulated sawdust and cobwebs out of the saws cavity (4).
Next came removal of surface rust from the saws table and
wings. We wet down the surface with kerosene as a cutting

lubricant and left it alone to penetrate while we ate lunch. To buf
the rust away, we chucked up a variable-speed electric drill with a
2.5-inch abrasive nylon cup brush embedded with 240-grit aluminum oxide. At a low 500 rpm, with a back-and-forth movement,
the brush removed the rust without marring the surface.
We mounted the wings back on the saw and found that we
could align them with the saw table by fexing them slightly and
carefully tapping them into position with a dead-blow hammer.
After placing a new 10-inch carbide blade on the arbor (the
shaft the blade goes on), Romanski used a machinists square to
ensure the blade was perpendicular to the table. With the blade
at 90 degrees, the pointer on the saws tilt scale should read

0 degreesif not, the pointer is moved to the zero mark. Next we
adjusted the fence and its locking mechanism to make it snug,
a fussy trial-and-error process. With the saw blade raised to
its full height, we used a pair of steel rulers to check that the
fence was parallel to the blade at the front and back (5).
The tuneup was completed when Romanski reinstalled the
motor and used a long steel ruler to align its pulley with the pulley on the saws arbor shaft. We bufed on a coat of paste wax to
provide rust protection and bolted the saw to its stand. Once it was
in place, we made a few test cuts on some scrap pine to check for
alignment. It was perfect (6).
91
Target:
CORRODED HAND TOOLS
t h e to o ls
Various hammer and

hatchet heads, rusted
all to hell. Provenance
unknown. You achieve
an economy of scale
when you restore tools
in small batches.
Tools grow dull, and when they grow dull

they are set aside, and when they are set
aside they rust. And rust begets more rust,
until they look like these. Time to dig in.
Rusty tools turn up in the garden shed
of the house you just bought. A friend
gives you a boxful of them. Often their
handles are rotted away and their steel
is so rusty that you could get tetanus
just by looking at them (1).
To restore a pile of ball-peen-hammer
heads and a couple of hatchets, we frst
removed what was left of their handles.
We sawed of the handle stubs using a
handsaw, then clamped each head in
a machinists vise and used a punch to
knock out the remainder of the handle.
Corrosion removal began in earnest
when we submerged the heads in a
bucket containing 1 gallon of white
vinegar, an inexpensive supermarket
item. We covered the bucket with a piece
of plywood and let the parts soak. After
about four hours we took a few out
and tried scrubbing of the rust with
No. 1 steel wool (2), and wouldnt you
know it, a little came of. There was hope.
We dunked the tools back in the vinegar
overnight, then hit them again with
steel wool. (Steel wool is available in
eight grades of coarseness, ranging from
superfne, No. 0000, to extra-coarse,
No. 4. We had good results with No. 1
wool, but you may need to go more or
less coarse, depending on the amount of
corrosion.) The rust came of. We rinsed
the tools thoroughly in clear water
to remove any last trace of vinegar and
wiped them dry.
Severely pitted surfaces were then
smoothed out using a 100-grit abrasive
on a disc sander, and heinous damage
metal that had been peened over by a
hammer blow, for examplewas rectifed
by clamping the head in a machinists
vise and hand-fling the surface smooth.
Finally, the tools were wiped clean
with mineral spirits, primed with a rustpreventive metal primer (we used
spray-on Rust-Oleum), and painted with
a gloss alkyd enamel. Cutting edges on
the hatchets were hand-honed on a series
of water stones used for woodworking
tools. We completed each tool by ftting
a hickory handle (3) through the cavity
in the head.
92
the equipment
White vinegar,
No. 1 steel wool,
rubber gloves, disc
sander, hand
files for sharpening, mineral spirits,
water stones.
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case of the smooth plane pictured above,
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the paper to a workbench that has a deadfat laminate surface and slid the plane
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smooth, with only minor pitting.
Next we sharpened the plane iron on
a horizontal wet sharpening wheel and
even honed its back surface so that it was
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edge (2). This ensures that the chip breaker
will tightly mount to it and not allow wood
shavings to be trapped and torn of.
After sharpening, we took the lever
cap and the plane irons chip breaker
and bufed them out on a muslin bufing wheel with jewelers red rouge
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Wire brush, sandpaper, mineral

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Romanski has more than forty
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so he did the fnal inspection of
the plane iron (4). He followed the
machine honing with a careful trip
over his water stones, leaving the
plane iron with a mirror fnish. He
assembled and adjusted the plane
and took it for a test drive on a
piece of clear white pine. The result
was a tool that cuts perfectly, taking
long, silky-smooth shavings with
every pass (5).
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THE NEXT BIG THING

WEARABLE TECHNOLOGY
In partnership with the Paley Center for Media, in New York City, Popular
Mechanics co-produced and presented a thought-provoking program in
December about wearable technology and its impact on digital privacy,
e-commerce, entertainment, fashion, and transportation safety.
Special Projects Director Joe Bargmann led a lively panel discussion among
Nick DiCarlo, Vice President and General Manager of Immersive Products and
Virtual Reality at Samsung Telecommunications America; Bob Hammond, Chief
Technology Ofcer, Millennial Media; and Thad Ide, Senior Vice President,
Research and Product Development, Riddell, Inc.
After the panel, entrepreneurs from three innovative startupsSkully, inventor
of a Bluetooth-connected, head-up display motorcycle helmet; Voltaic Systems,
makers of portable solar power technology; and Viawear, creators of high-end
smart jewelrydelved into the technological challenges and potential growth
of their respective businesses.
The event, The Next Big Thing in Wearable Tech, is available for viewing on
paleycenter.org.
Nick DiCarlo of Samsung demonstrates the Gear VR virtual-reality headset while Bob Hammond of Millennial Media and Thad Ide
of Riddell, Inc. look on; Ben Isaacson, founder and CEO of Viawear, makes his pitch; Joe Bargmann of Popular Mechanics leads
panel discussion; Jeff Crystal of Voltaic Systems with About.com founder and Paley Center board member Scott Kurnit; Dr. Markus
Weller, founder and CEO of Skully Systems, which manufactures innovative, tech-laden motorcycle helmets.
p. 4 from left to right: Matt Kiedaisch,

Ian Allen, John Lawton, Ben
Stechschulte; p. 6 Little Tikes Cozy
Coupe by David Lawrence/Studio D;
p. 10 calendar by Getty Images;
pp. 1718 Solar Impulse 2 by Jean
Revillard/Rezo.ch; p. 20 man by
Getty Images; Ubi by Devon Jarvis/
Studio D; p. 21 iris by Getty Images;
p. 28 autorefractor by Getty Images;
OCT courtesy of Carl Zeiss; p. 45
illustration by George Retseck;
p. 46 hair and makeup by Ryutaro/
Halley Resources; wardrobe styling
by Kim Veera; dress by Free People;
shoes by Zara; necklace by & Other
Stories; rings by & Other Stories
and Top Shop; p. 48 illustrations by
Mark Nerys; p. 49 lawn by Laura
Nickelson/The Turquoise Home; p. 50
circular saw by Devon Jarvis/Studio
D; p. 58 German shorthaired pointer
by Shutterstock; p. 61 dehydrated
meals by Philip Friedman/Studio
D; pp. 7079 newsprint by Getty
Images; pp. 8687 timeline: sundial,
pilot, Renault tank, diver helmet, and
Shinola factory by Getty Images;
Waltham Factory courtesy of Waltham
Historical Society; Baby Ben clock by
Ted Kinsman/Science Source; p. 100
illustration by George Retseck
POPULAR MECHANICS (ISSN 0032-4558) is published monthly

except for combined July/August and December/January, 10
times a year, by Hearst Communications, Inc., 300 West 57th
Street, New York, NY 10019 U.S.A. Steven R. Swartz, President
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A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice Chairman; Catherine A. Bostron,
Secretary. Hearst Magazines Division: David Carey, President;
John P. Loughlin, Executive Vice President and General
Manager; John A. Rohan, Jr., Senior Vice President, Finance.
2015 by Hearst Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.
Popular Mechanics is a registered trademark of Hearst
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AS A SERVICE TO READERS, Popular Mechanics publishes
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Mechanics cannot assume responsibility for proper application
of techniques or proper and safe functioning of manufactured
products or reader-built projects resulting from information
published in this magazine.
HARBOR FREIGHT
QUALITY TOOLS AT RIDICULOUSLY LOW PRICES
How Does Harbor Freight

Sell GREAT QUALITY Tools
at the LOWEST Prices?
We have invested millions of
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cut out the middle man and pass
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R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
REG.
SAVE
99$649.99
PRICE
319
WITH ANY PURCHASE
7 FUNCTION
DIGITAL
MULTIMETER
Item
68056
shown
Weighs
105 lbs.
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
SAVE
99 45%
179
R !
PE ON
SU UP
MEDIUM CO
Item
68498
shown
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
2.5 HP, 21 GALLON

125 PSI VERTICAL
AIR COMPRESSOR
SAVE
$
70
Item 67847
shown
$149
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
Welder and accessories

sold separately.
SAVE
41%
LOT NO. 69340/60790

90305/61316
Item 69340 shown
34
REG.
99 $59PRICE
.99
LIMIT 3 - Good at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling 800-423-2567. Cannot be used with other discount
or coupon or prior purchases after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt. Offer good while supplies last.
Non-transferable. Original coupon must be presented. Valid through 6/10/15. Limit one coupon per customer per day.
100% Satisfaction Guaranteed

Over 25 Million Satised Customers
SAVE
60%
$2199
LOT NO.
65570/61884
62370
REG. PRICE
$54.99
t
be used with other discoun
calling 800-423-2567. CannotOffer good while supplies last.
or HarborFreight.com or by
LIMIT 4 - Good at our stores after 30 days from original purchase with original receipt.
customer per day.
6/10/15. Limit one coupon per
or coupon or prior purchases
must be presented. Valid through
coupon
l
Origina
le.
nsferab
Non-tra
No Hassle Return Policy

Lifetime Warranty On All Hand Tools
SAVE
60%
REG.
PRICE
$59.99
RECIPROCATING SAW
WITH ROTATING HANDLE
Item 65570
shown
40 PIECE 1/4" AND 3/8" DRIVE

SAE and Metric SOCKET SET
69874
61320
61913
61914
2899
R !
PE ON
SU UP
O
LOT NO. 94141 C
1999
4999
REG. PRICE $149.99
TRIPLE BALL
TRAILER HITCH
X-LARGE
SAVE
Item 94141 66%
shown
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
SAVE
$100
LARGE
REG. PRICE $219.99
MIG-FLUX
WELDING CART
Item 61840 shown
LOT NO.
68498/61359
99 $17999
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
LOT NO. 68146

61258/61297/61840
LOT NO. 68496

61363/97581
REG. PRICE
$11.99
LOT NO. 67847

61454/61693
t
customer per day.
be presented. Valid through
must
coupon
l
Origina
le.
Non-transferab
2500 LB. ELECTRIC WINCH WITH

WIRELESS REMOTE CONTROL
LOT NO.
68497/61360
REG. PRICE $299.99
t
customer per day.
be presented. Valid through
must
coupon
l
Origina
le.
Non-transferab
POWDER-FREE NITRILE GLOVES

PACK OF 100
LOT NO. 66619

69381/60338/62472
REG. PRICE $179.99
R !
LOT NO. 69039
PE ON Item 69039 shown 60727/62286
SU UP
O
C
$ 49
69381
shown
99
109
YOUR CHOICE!
80
$9999 $129
REG. SAVE
99$199PRICE
$90
.99
SAVE
$120
900 PEAK/
700 RUNNING WATTS
2 HP (63 CC) 2 CYCLE
GAS RECREATIONAL
Item GENERATOR
VALUE
SAVE
5 mil.
thickness
99
LIMIT 1 - Cannot be used with other discount, coupon or prior purchase. Coupon good at our
stores, HarborFreight.com or by calling 800-423-2567. Offer good while supplies last. Shipping
& Handling charges may apply if not picked up in-store. Non-transferable. Original coupon
must be presented. Valid through 6/10/15. Limit one FREE GIFT coupon per customer per day.
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
LOT NO.
68056/60706/62319
10 FT. x 17 FT.
PORTABLE
GARAGE
ANY SINGLE ITEM
LIMIT 1 - Save 20% on any one item purchased at our stores or HarborFreight.com or by calling
800-423-2567. *Cannot be used with other discount, coupon, gift cards, Inside Track
Club membership, extended service plans or on any of the following: compressors,
generators, tool storage or carts, welders, oor jacks, Towable Ride-On Trencher,
Saw Mill (Item 61712/62366/67138), Predator Gas Power Items, open box items,
in-store event or parking lot sale items. Not valid on prior purchases after 30 days
from original purchase date with original receipt. Non-transferable. Original coupon
must be presented. Valid through 6/10/15. Limit one coupon per customer per day.
$330
ITEM 90899
98025/69096
Item
90899
shown
RAPID PUMP
4 TON HEAVY DUTY
STEEL FLOOR JACK
LOT NO.
67831/61609
Item
67831
shown
FREE
20%
OFF
14
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
26", 16 DRAWER
ROLLER CABINET
1060 lb. Capacity

14,600 cu. in.
of storage
SUPER COUPON
SUPER COUPON
LOT NO.
47902
61328
Item 47902
shown
$ 99
REG. PRICE $9.99
R !
PE ON
SU UP
CO
SAVE
$140
1195 LB. CAPACITY

4 FT. x 8 FT.
HEAVY DUTY FOLDABLE
UTILITY TRAILER
LOT NO.
90154/62170
DOT certied
Item 90154
shown
25999
REG. PRICE $399.99
550 Stores Nationwide

HarborFreight.com 800-423-2567
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DesigneD by Roy beRenDsohn
Po
kids
Pular Me
A project to build with your children.
ic
han s fo
Monster
Mask
e Asy
reAsonAble
HArD
Difficulty:
Time: 30 minutes (or less)
Ages: 6 to 12
Materials
QtY.
Description
Pair flexible plastic safety goggles
11-inch PVC reducer fttings
brightly colored bungee cord
Cleaning pad
string mop
tools
hot-melt glue gun, scissors
Instructions
step-bY-step
1. Use a hot-melt glue gun to fasten the
reducer fttings to the goggles.

2. Cut bungee cord to length, then wrap and
glue the cords around each ftting, gluing

the ends to prevent fraying.
3. Use scissors to cut the cleaning pad into
two arch-shaped eyebrows. Fasten
them above the fttings with hot-melt glue.
4. Cut of a section of the string mop and
glue its supporting band to the goggles
top shield.
mop hair
goggles
scrub-pad
eyebrow
bungee
cord
reducer
ftting
kid-only
parent and kid
100
PhotograPh by Franny & albert

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how they make the new york times

24 hours in the Life of the Last Great newspaper

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March 2015 PopularMechanics.com

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How comfortable is the

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Who are these guys?

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They dont, really. Since

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