Category Archives: DIY

DIY, Lifehacking

Why Is Sharpening a Knife So Hard for Me?

I’m having a really hard time learning how to sharpen our kitchen knives.

As all the videos on YouTube will tell you, this is not rocket science. It’s a matter of patience and consistency and a few elements of attention.

But month after month passes, I keep trying, but I’m unable to get our knives sharp.

I went so far as to send them out once (by mail) to a professional knife sharpener. (I think I got the name from Lifehacker.) The knives came back very sharp.

So:

  1. It can be done
  2. It’s not my knives

Slowly, however, they became un-sharp, and, when they did, I was unable to get them sharp or keep them sharp myself.

I’m embarrassed to say how many different sets of gear I’ve bought to do this. Each of them has a video or two on YouTube showing how easy it is to use this system.

And I use the system, and I can’t get the knives sharp.

Latest iteration, I’m using a Norton Waterstone “Starter Kit” I got on Amazon. Not cheap. I’ve tried to get two knives — my favorite, and my wife’s favorite — sharp.

After two weeks, no luck yet.

I whale away at the coarse grit for a while on one side. No evidence of a burr. Then I whale away at the other side. Ditto. I do the same with the 1000 grit stone. Both sides. Then I try to cut a piece of paper with the knife. It looks like I sort of can. I declare victory. But it’s not really sharp.

I am training myself to see it through, to be more patient, to keep at it until it works. It’s uphill work.

DIY, Lifehacking, Workhacking

Hack of the Week: SawStop saw

I saw this one in a Family Handyman email blast and it was a no-brainer for Hack of the Week.

Nice saw, and all that.  Kind of pricey.

But it’ll stop within five milliseconds of contacting human skin.  That’s fast enough to save your fingers.

When I was in college I worked one summer in a machine shop and came within an ace of losing a couple of fingers in a table saw.  The alert guy in charge of lab batted my hand away.  This saw embodies that alert guy.

As Family Handyman says, “how much are your fingers worth”?

Here it is on Amazon

 

Deep Work, DIY, Entrepreneurship

Themes for Study and Learning in May

Here were the April themes, together with April results:

So my project for April is to fan out from here and see what research can tell us (me) about the “success factors” for entrepreneurs.

At least some of them are:

  1. Effectual thinking and opportunities  I read maybe ten papers from the literature on effectual thinking, and I continue my strong suspicion that it’s a fundamental requirement for successful entrepreneurs
  2. Purpose and greed  Didn’t read much here.
  3. Always replace yourself at every step of the enterprise Didn’t read much here
  4. I’m almost through Schumpeter’s book on “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”  As one of my sources said, most of his wisdom is contained in a couple of very catchy quotes and a lot of the material in CSD is dated.
  5. Started to read “Ecce Homo” by Nietschze
  6. Finished “Burn the Business Plan,” by Carl Schramm (longtime head of the Kauffman Foundation).  Lots of ideas about what does and does not make for a good entrepreneur (he does not like business plans, ecosystems, or incubators, for example), but there is almost no pointers to substantiation for any of his points.  I’ve got a query in to him about research backing his conclusions, but haven’t heard back for a couple of weeks.
  7. Halfway through Herbert Simon’s “Sciences of the Artificial”
  8. Not for “study and learning”, but I read Ta Nahisi Coates’ “We Were Eight Years in Power” with great interest.  In particular, I was quite interested in the case he makes for the centrality of white supremacy and slavery in U.S. history.

I think the plan for May is

  1. Continue with the entrepreneurship readings: Finish Simon,  read “Built to Last” by Collins and Porras, and “Grow”, by Jim Stengel.
  2. I’m going to try to read “Origin of Species” by Darwin, because I really should before I die.
  3. I’m trying to do a raft of DIY projects around the house in May, so I’ll do plenty of task-oriented reading (or maybe mostly YouTube viewing) in pursuit of that.

Always welcome your thoughts and comments.