Making Do: May 2016

The Bricoleur: Making Do

Claude Levi-Strauss used the term "Bricoleur", referring to a maker, of sorts, who makes do with the tools and materials at hand. Terry Frohm, principle technician at the CRRF Chuuk marine laboratory in Chuuk in the early 90s, used the term "Making Do" in reference to appurtenances and contrivances, innovations he cobbled together in creating a functioning laboratory, with a minimum of expensive and specialized equipment or hardware.

I recognized, in Levi-Strauss's descriptions of the Bricoleur, the Micronesian fishermen's use---of necessity---of available materials to solve their own technical problems: Marshallese fishermen used a piece of broken glass or a sharp piece of Aluminum beer can to clean a catch of fish on the beach; spears were fashioned of discarded heavy iron wire from water-tank bands, straightened and sharpened; their slings made from old airplane inner tubes. Goggles were carved from wood---using possibly a kitchen knife sharpened on a piece of pumice that had drifted onto the beach, their glass from a

relict World War II airplane. Gillette's study of Tuna fishing in Tokelau features a demonstration by a Tokelauan elder: trapping an air bubble in the hand cupped over one's eye to provide an air-water interface through which to see fish clearly.

This Blog cannot adequately honor the resourcefulness of those men, but I have borrowed the words of Terry Frohm, to describe the purpose of this proposed collection of solutions and innovations of various kinds. These solutions are embarassingly rich in their reliance on modern materials. The intention is to develop a repository of cheap and easy solutions to problems that are important to me. I I hope it can serve as more than a collection. Rather, by example, a reminder that solutions are often at arm's reach, and not in catalogs.

Thursday, May 5, 2016

Scientific Glassblowing

3D Printing, oldstyle. This is not necessarily Making Do, in the sense that this is a complex, expensive, and technically demanding process; but it points the way to Making Do by cobbling together one's own equipment.

In an accidental google find, was a newsletter of some years back that contained a reference to the San Francisco Scientific Glassblowing Association. Who'd have thought? A new Google search led to several interesting hits, including a tutorial.

The American Scientific Glassblowers Society page links to an account of the History of Glass and of Scientific Glassblowing.

Wikipedia has a page.

The Scientific Glassblowing Learning Center is a good starting point, including an information page and links to some Scientific Glassblowing Societies.

Right here in Berkeley is Adams and Chittendon Scientific Glass. Their web site is an information resource on the art of Scientific Glassblowing, including this video of the making of a large glass flange on a lathe.