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.


Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Stainless Steel Staples & Related Topics

 This post was copied over froma 2008 post on My blog "Found Objects"

All of a Sunday Morning, I was a-searching about on the Internet for stainless steel staples. What did I find? I found Found the Early Office Museum . Monel staples are used in the archival departments of museums and libraries. 

Found a good discussion of archival document fastening at the U. S. National Archives. Another page listed supplies. Very good stuff. 

Stainless paper clips are de rigeur. 

A search led me to an old friend, I will not link to here---Light Impressions---for Archival treatment of photos. That's an expensive process. My family threw away several boxes including negatives that I had stored in special archival materials, that had never been printed of my first trip to Majuro and Kiribati. In particular, my first experiments in black and white in-water photography. 

Another page on the Office Museum site covers early Staplers, Paper Fasteners, Paper Clips. I am interested in the "paper welder." I have actually seen a broken one on Saipan, and I saw one once in Santa Barbara at an office supply, in Goleta. But I can't find on on ebay! They are just off the map on the Inet. Except at the Office Museum, where pictures can be found. There do exist paperless staplers that punch holes and loop and piece through to bind paper. Perhaps just as good? And cheap. Here's one on Think Geek. 

Monel Staples on Gaylord Supplies (library, archive, furniture, etc.) were about US$30-40.00 a box. One site was a bit cheaper. Interestingly, the mainstream staple producers produce monel staples only for staple guns and large, heavy duty staplers. Same for stainless. That's a pricey little corner of the universe to shop in. Anti-Entropy doesn't come cheap. 

 Thomas is the place to find manufacturers.

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