Making Do: In search of a cork borer

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.

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

In search of a cork borer

What's the point?

I need a cork borer, possibly two. The other option is to build a slide-ringing turn-table. Any sharp tube would do.

Someone sent some material to me some years ago, a small jar of "General Electric Silicon Gum, SE30". It is marked as non-toxic, and the use is for making little wells on microscope slides that can be covered with a coverslip, and kept for a long time with a drop of water full of protozoa and small aquatic (and marine) animals. The procedure is like this:

roll up a small ball of silicon gum, about the size of a pea
2. wet another clean slide, and smash the ball between the two slides
3. Flatten the material evenly.
4. With a cork borer or other means cut a circle clear though the pancake of silicon gum.
5. Peel away the hole to form a well.
6. Place a drop of water (or sea water) in the well with the organisms.

This material is permeable to air, so the organisms can potentially live for days. I recently kept a number of rotifers in a preparation made in this way, for over a week.

Solution(s) maybe to the need for a cork borer

This web page discusses some solutions from a broader perspective.
I may have to sharpen a piece of copper or brass tubing.
Maybe the bricoleur's approach: whatever happens to be at hand. (I have not found anything yet!)
Build a slide ringing turntable and use a sharp scalpel blade to cut a circle of the desired diameter.

Uses

I plan to apply Methylene Blue, a granule or two at most, or better a little bit of a dilute solutoin, to stain the nervous system of living rotifers.

Making Do

The Bricoleur: Making Do

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

In search of a cork borer

What's the point?

I need a cork borer, possibly two. The other option is to build a slide-ringing turn-table. Any sharp tube would do.

roll up a small ball of silicon gum, about the size of a pea

2. wet another clean slide, and smash the ball between the two slides

3. Flatten the material evenly.

4. With a cork borer or other means cut a circle clear though the pancake of silicon gum.

5. Peel away the hole to form a well.

6. Place a drop of water (or sea water) in the well with the organisms.

This material is permeable to air, so the organisms can potentially live for days. I recently kept a number of rotifers in a preparation made in this way, for over a week.

Solution(s) maybe to the need for a cork borer

Uses

I plan to apply Methylene Blue, a granule or two at most, or better a little bit of a dilute solutoin, to stain the nervous system of living rotifers.

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