Having spent most of the last week staring at one of these I thought I'd post a couple of images of a nautical winch. These things are beautifully made, with a solid brass machined body, stainless steel roller-bearings and a loud, reassuring tick from the ratchet during use. Perfectly designed for their purpose and built to last a lifetime at sea.
Cutaway photo via www.arco-winches.com
Back soon
One of my photos taken using a Canon IXUS running the CHDK firmware to unlock some of the camera's deeper settings. These are ~1/10000 sec shutter speed exposures of a lighter being lit, with the flint sparks and igniting gas frozen in time.
My current object of desire is this Backcountry Boiler ultralight field kettle, designed and manufactured by Devin Montgomery. I'm particularly impressed by the way he managed to raise the funding to launch this product from online backing via Kickstarter.
Find out more about it at www.theboilerwerks.com
Pic via www.suluk46.com
Elegant little magnetic gizmo for keeping headphone cables tidied away.
Via www.core77.com. Pics via www.thesinch.com
Great animated short by Junaid Chundrigar about one man's love for his sheep. And aliens.
The pen and ink sketch shown above reminds me of the work of Quentin Blake, illustrator of Roald Dahl's books.
Via Laughing Squid. Pic via Sheeped Away
The wonderfully mad AquaSub DIY one-man sports submarine from 1978, shown here in a brilliant cutaway diagram.
"AquaSub was designed for cruising the near-surface underwater world in a dry, safe, shirt-sleeve environment". And best of all, plans are still available to build one yourself.
Pic and text from www.rqriley.com