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1 2 3 4

March/ My Pop Life From the Editor Deep Math Drinks

April Tips, gear picks, The stealth cooling A guess-free The secret to
2020 and confessions operation that shortcut for freezing crystal-
from our staff. powers the Mac Pro. solving quadratic clear ice for your
p.4 p.8 equations. cocktails.
p.10 p.12

5 6 7 8 9

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Researchers examine Lessons from A weapon so The efficient Your guide to
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// FE ATURES //
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// ON THE COVER // P HOTOGR A P H BY JOSÉ M A N DOJA N A

March/April 2020 3
 My Pop Life
1 Alexander George
// EXPERT H ACKS, GE A R RECS & LIFE-TESTED W ISDOM FROM OUR STAFF //
@jlorileman
JENNIFER LEMAN
News Editor
Never met a volcano
I didn’t like.
Favorite App
I just downloaded the
Flyover Country app.
You set your route and
then download a geo-
logic guide that explores
the features you’ll see
35,000 feet below.
CURRENT
PASSION PROJECT
This summer, I worked
part-time as a fry cook at
Fancy Nancy restaurant
in Brooklyn. I absolutely
loved it, and aim to bring
that energy into my
own kitchen. Lately,
I’ve been toying with
Ramen recipes.
The Best Money
I Ever Spent
I attended a volcanology
field camp in Russia’s
Kamchatka Peninsula
in 2017. Standing on the
precipice of an active
volcano—and learning
about the processes that
make it churn—was
worth every penny.
4 March/April 2020
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Matt Allyn Features Director;
Brian Dalek Director of Content
Operations; Leah Flickinger
Director of Content Creation; Lou
Mazzante Test Director; Suzanne
Perreault Editorial Operations
Director; Jesse Southerland
Creative Director
Baking DESIGN + PHOTO
Amy Wolff Photo Director; Colin
Hack McSherry Senior Art Director; Alyse
Markel Art Director; Eleni Dimou
To keep baked Senior Designer; Kory Kennedy
Digital Designer; Kristen Parker
treats like cookies,
brownies, or cake
Photo Editor; John Hamilton
Associate Photo Editor
from going stale, I EDITORIAL
Molly Ritterbeck Health & Fitness
pop a piece of bread Director; Tracy Middleton Senior
in the container. It Features Editor; Darren Orf Deputy
Editor; Tyler Daswick, Taylor Rojek
works every time. Associate Features Editors;
Andrew Daniels How-To Editor;
Courtney Linder Senior News
Editor; Hailey Middlebrook, Jordan
Smith Editors; Danielle Zickl
Associate Health & Fitness Editor;
PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW Jennifer Leman News Editor;
Daisy Hernandez, Paige Szmodis
Associate News Editors; Ezra Dyer
Automotive Editor; Katie Fogel
Social Media Editor; Drew Dawson
Gear & News Editor; Jessica Coulon
Assistant Editor; Leah Campano
Editorial Planning Associate; Amber
Joglar Administrative Assistant
Kit Fox Special Projects Editor;
Caroline Dorey-Stein Assistant
Special Projects Editor
TEST TEAM
Will Egensteiner, Jennifer Sherry
Associate Test Directors; Jeff
Dengate, Matt Phillips Senior Test
Editors; Roy Berendsohn, Adrienne
1 2 Donica, Brad Ford, Amanda Furrer,
Bobby Lea, James Lynch, Riley
Cognitive Rumpl Pride Blanket Missel, Morgan Petruny, Dan
Roe Test Editors; Jimmy Cavalieri
Surplus Mug Rumpl donates $5 to Image Editor; Lakota Gambill,
Trevor Raab Photographers; Joël
I bought this super the Trevor Project Nankman Logistician
durable canteen at the for every puffy Pride
American Geophysical blanket sold. It’s a great VIDEO
Josh Wolff Director; Pat Heine
Union Conference, and way to do good and Producer
use it every single day. stay cozy. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS
Joe Pappalardo, Kyle Mizokami,
Caroline Delbert, Daniel Dubno,
Wylie Dufresne, David Owen,
Richard Romanski, James
Schadewald, Joseph Truini,
Nicholas Wicks
EDITORIAL DIRECTOR
Bill Strickland
Popular Mechanics International
Kim St. Clair Bodden Russia, South
Africa•SVP/International Editorial
Director
Editorial Offices
3 4 3939 West Drive
Center Valley, PA 18034
Carlo Rovelli’s Acer Chromebook
T R E VO R R A A B (P R O D U C T S) ; L A KOTA G A M B I L L (H E A D S H OT )
Seven Brief Lessons Every time I travel for
HOW TO REACH US: Customer
Care Visit Online POPCustServ@
on Physics work, I travel with my CDSFulfillment.com; Phone 800-
333-4948; Mail Customer Care
A wonderful little Acer Chromebook. It’s Service Dept. Popular Mechanics, PO
write-up on some of no-frills but gets the Box 6000, Harlan, IA 51593-0128.
the universe’s biggest job done. LICENSING AND REPRINTS:
concepts. Contact Wyndell Hamilton, Wright’s
Media, at 877-652-5295 ext. 102 or
hearst@wrightsmedia.com.
ISSUE 1, 2020
MEET SANDWICH
This is my cat, Sandwich.
She’s an absolute menace,
but I love her. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
 Raise one
TO THOSE WHO NEVER
L E T Y O U D O W N.

Jim Beam Black® Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey, 43% Alc./Vol. ©2020 James B. Beam Distilling Co., Clermont, KY.

My Pop Life
1 William Upton Associate
// EXPERT H ACKS, GE A R RECS & LIFE-TESTED W ISDOM FROM OUR STAFF //
The Best Money I Ever Spent
The purchase of Lady Borden vanilla ice
cream for my family when I was a kid. It wasn’t
entrepreneurial in the least, but it made me
feel good to share that with them.
PRODUCTS I’M USING RIGHT NOW
1 2
TUMI Alpha 3
Wheeled Briefcase
In a job like mine, you’re
working 24/7. The
TUMI Alpha 3 wheeler
allows me to take much
of my office with me.
3 4
Leave Something
on the Table
Why wouldn’t I like
Leave Something
on the Table? It’s my
book and my story.
6 March/April 2020
FRANK A. BENNACK, JR.
Executive Vice
Chairman & Former
CEO, Hearst
I was born at night,
but not last night.
W
The Best Thing
I Have on My Desk
A thesaurus. I write a lot, and because
I like to be a little more colorful, the
thesaurus is quite helpful.
Ralph Lauren
Purple Label Tie
As a director of Ralph
Lauren, I’ve gifted these
ties to family and friends
for years. It’s fun to hear,
Callaway Epic
Flash Driver
I’ve been a Callaway
fan since the first Big
Berthas. A good friend
gave me this driver, and
it tops all in distance.
CURRENT
PASSION PROJECT
I’m Chairman Emeritus of
NewYork-Presbyterian
Hospital and very passion-
ate about the development
of telemedicine here,
especially since I watched
my mother struggle with
health problems.
My Credo
Nothing is more import-
ant to a company’s
success than culture and
all of us being loyal to
the same objective. We
should always remember
to help colleagues when
they need it and care
about each other.
Socks the Terrier
We don’t currently
have a dog, but we do
have very fond memo-
ries of our departed
Jack Russell terrier,
Socks, who bit everyone
except for family.
Jack Essig
SVP, PUBLISHING DIRECTOR
Publisher; Cameron
Connors Executive Director,
Head of Brand Strategy &
Marketing; Samantha Irwin
General Manager; Chris Peel
Executive Director, Men’s &
Enthusiast Group, Hearst Magazines
Digital Media
ADVERTISING SALES OFFICES
NEW YORK: Caryn Kesler
Executive Director, Luxury Goods;
John Wattiker Executive Director,
Global Fashion & Retail; Doug
Zimmerman Senior Grooming
Director; John Cipolla Integrated
Account Director Spirits,
Entertainment & Travel; Kimberly
Buonassisi Account Director;
Joe Pennacchio East Coast
Automotive Director; Jake Heffez,
Samantha Wolf Integration
Associates; Caroline Hall Sales
Assistant; DETROIT: Marisa Stutz
Group Advertising Director, Hearst
Autos; Eric Drieselman Sales
Director, Hearst Autos; Toni Starrs
Integration Associate; CHICAGO:
Justin Harris Midwest Sales
Director; Autumn Jenks Midwest
Sales Director; Anne Merrill Sales
Assistant; LOS ANGELES: Stacey
Lakind Southwest Sales Director;
Anne Rethmeyer Group Sales
Director, Hearst Autos; Olivia
Zurawin Sales Assistant; SAN
FRANCISCO: William G. Smith,
Smith Media Sales, LLC; DALLAS:
Patty Rudolph PR 4.0 Media;
HEARST DIRECT MEDIA: Brad
Gettelfinger Sales Manager
MARKETING SOLUTIONS
Jason Graham Marketing Solutions:
Executive Director, Integrated
Marketing; Jana Gale Executive
Creative Director; Karen Mendolia
Executive Director, Events &
Promotions; Mike Sarpy Design
Director; Alesandra Ajlouni Senior
Manager, Integrated Marketing;
Jaclyn D'Andrea Marketing
Coordinator; William Carter
Executive Director, Consumer
Marketing; Peter Davis Research
Manager
ADMINISTRATION/PRODUCTION
Aurelia Duke Finance Director;
Regina Wall Advertising Services
Director; David Brickey Production
Manager
PUBLISHED BY HEARST
Steven R. Swartz President and
Chief Executive Officer; William
R. Hearst III Chairman; Frank
A. Bennack, Jr. Executive Vice
Chairman
HEARST MAGAZINES, INC.
Troy Young President; Kate
Lewis Chief Content Officer;
Debi Chirichella Executive Vice
President, Chief Financial Officer
and Treasurer; Catherine A.
Bostron Secretary
Gilbert C. Maurer, Mark F. Miller
Consultants
T R E VO R R A A B (P R O D U C T S) ; CO U R T E S Y H E A R S T (B E N N AC K)
300 West 57th Street
New York, NY 10019
 From the
2 Editor
// ALE X A N DER GEORGE //
The Stealth
Cooling
Operation
Inside the
Mac Pro
Hardware
A
S NEITHER A PIXAR
employee nor a You-
Tuber, I don’t need
a Mac Pro. Even the
base model is com-
plete overkill. Spend
a few (tens of) thou-
sands of dollars on options, and
you can get a 28-core CPU, and
1.5 terabytes of DDR4 memory.
Those numbers imply a level of
engineering I look at from a dis-
tance and say: That’s awesome.
Same as w ith a lmost any
product, industry-top perfor-
mance like that creates heat that
needs to be kept away from vital
components. Most high-grade
PCs do this with fans or pump-
driven water systems. But those
can be loud, and if you’ve used a
Mac in the last few years, you’ve
noticed that near-silent opera-
tion is a non-negotiable design
requirement. Which meant that
the Pro’s creators had to find
creative ways to exploit the laws
of thermodynamics.
A team led by Chris Ligten-
berg, Apple engineer and pilot,
handled the fans. “They’re still
8 March/April 2020
dy na mica l ly ba la nced, but
they’re actually randomized in
terms of their BPF [blade pass
frequency],” he says. “So you
don’t get huge harmonics that
tend to be super annoying.” That
means that audible but pleas-
antly pitched fan sounds can be
less noticeable than a measurably
quieter system. The randomiza-
tion technique he’s describing
came from research in car tires.
“There’s a bit of math behind it,
but you can create broadband
noise instead of total noise with
that technique,” he says.
The fans supplement an alu-
minum case, which has t wo
grids of precision holes, possi-
bly the most ornate examples
of passive cooling ever. Passive
cooling structures absorb heat,
away from vital components,
then dissipate that energy into
the air. The more exposed sur-
face area, the better it works.
Next time you see a motorcy-
cle, look around the engine for
a bunch of thin metal fins. That
busy design creates a lot of sur-
face area for a given volume of
space.
CLEAN YOUR Fins need to stay in one posi-
COMPUTER tion to keep air flowing through
their channels. But the Pro Dis-
When dust
blocks airflow, play XDR monitor had to be
computers save able to rotate 90 degrees, which
themselves from
overheating by would have trapped air. So Apple
slowing down. desinged the holes. “We wanted
Buy a microfiber
cloth, rubbing free flow through the channels,
alcohol, and some no matter the orientation,” says
compressed
air. Shut down, John Ternus, head of the Pro and
unplug, and hit Pro Display’s development. “[The
every opening
you can reach. pattern] gives us a lot of surface
Bonus points if area, which is hugely beneficial.”
you remove at
least one panel. Credit Apple’s ubiquity, at
least in part, to that kind of
detail obsession. It’s a controver-
K E L S E Y M CC L E L L A N
sial company. But however you
feel about its practices or prod-
ucts, few other places would take
temperature regulation this far.
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 Deep Math
3
// BY CA ROLINE DELBERT //

This Guy Found an

Easier Way to Solve
Quadratic Equations

S
OLVING THOSE PESKY
quadratic equations
from high school alge-
bra just became a lot
easier. Dr. Po-Shen
Loh, a mathematician
at Carneg ie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, has
derived an easier way to solve
the classic sequence of squares,
roots, and variables.
Q ua drat ic equat ions a re
often used in business to fore-
cast profits, find minimum and
maximum points, or determine
the trajectory of a moving object.
They include an x2, and teachers
use the equations to show stu-
dents how to find two solutions
at once. Loh’s new process, out-
lined in a video on his personal
website, circumvents traditional
methods like “completing the
square” and makes it simpler to
find the solutions in fewer, more
intuitive steps.
L oh, fou nder of a mat h-
and-science-focused learning
startup called Expii, said he
came up with the new process for improve the learning experience Dr. Loh also work out easily, with whole inte-
coaches
solving quadratic functions in for anyone trying to understand the U.S. ger solutions. Schools teach the
September as he pondered easier this topic, which is part of the International Pythagorean theorem the same
Math Olympiad
ways to break down the formula regular mathematical curricu- team. Under his way; most examples end up solv-
for middle school students. lum everywhere in the world.” guidance, the ing out to Pythagorean triples,
team won the
“I was very surprised, as this Quadratic equations man- competition
the small set of integer values
method was easier to understand ifest in precise forms within in 2015, 2016, that work cleanly into the equa-
2018, and 2019.
than what is typically written in e duc at ion . S t udent s b eg i n tion (like a 5-12-13 triangle).
textbooks,” he wrote on his web- solving them in algebra or pre- Q ua drat ic equat ions a re
site. “Adding this technique as a algebra classes, but the lessons polynomials, which are strings
standard method would directly feature spoon-fed examples that of math terms. An expression

10 March/April 2020 PH OTO G R A PH BY ROSS M A N T LE


like “x + 4” is a polynomial, but
polynomials can have one or
many variables in any combi-
nation, with their magnitude
determined by what power the
variables are taken to, like x2.
That means a quadratic equa-
t ion may b e w r it t en out a s
something like x2 – 8x + 12 = 0.
Dr. Loh’s method found a sim-
pler way to derive the roots of a
quadratic equation, namely via
a shortcut through the tedious
guess-and-check method used in
factoring. Students traditionally
try to guess for two numbers that
have a certain sum and a certain
product, by guessing what the
factorizations of the product may
be. Loh realized he could instead
focus on the desired sum, look-
ing for two numbers equidistant
from the desired average (or half
the desired sum).
“The individual steps of this
method had been separately
discovered by ancient mathema-
ticians,” Loh said. That includes
the Babylonians and Greeks.
“The combination of these steps
is something that anyone could
have come up with.”
Prior to Loh’s method, the
closest anyone had come to
explaining this strategy was a
math teacher, John Savage, who
published an article in 1989 in
the journal The Mathematics
Teacher that described a simi-
lar idea. Still, Savage’s idea used
different logic and an extra,
unnecessary step.
While it’s certainly deviant
from conventional math strat-
egy, Loh believes his method
brings a level of intuition that
will appeal to students, so long
as they remember some sim-
ple generalizations about roots
and how they relate within a
Dr. Loh’s Method
Suppose you have the following quadratic equation to solve:
x2 - 8x+ 12 = 0
( x-2 )
Need product to = 12 // Need sum to = 8
4 - u; 4 + u
“Normally, when we do
a factoring problem, we
are trying to find two
numbers that multiply
to 12 and add to 8,” Dr.
Loh said.
Those two numbers
are the solution to the
quadratic, but it takes
students a lot of time
to solve for them, as
they’re often using
a guess-and-check
approach.
Instead of starting by
factoring the product,
quadratic equation. It’s still
complicated, but it’s less con-
voluted, especially if Loh is
correct in thinking this will
help students tackle quadratic
equations that they’re more
likely to encounter in the real
world. That’s important. Mas-
tering quadratics is a precursor
to many precalculus courses.
Because outside of class-
r o om-r e a d y e x a mple s , t he
( x-6 ) =0
16 - u2 = 12 u2 = 4 u= 2
Solution = ( 2,6 )
12, Loh starts with When solving for u,
the sum, 8. you’ll see that positive
If the two numbers and negative 2 each
we’re looking for, work, and when you
added together, equal substitute those integers
8, then they must back into the equations
be equidistant from 4–u and 4+u, you get
their average. So two solutions, 2 and 6,
which solve the original
the numbers can be
represented polynomial equation.
as 4–u and 4+u. It’s quicker than the
When you multiply, classic foiling method
the middle terms used in the quadratic
cancel out and you formula—and there’s
come up with the no guessing required.
equation 16–u2 = 12. —Courtney Linder
quadratic method isn’t simple.
Real examples and applications
are messy, with ugly roots con-
sisting of decimals or irrational
numbers. As a student, it can be
hard to know you’ve found the
solution even in clean textbook
problems, but Dr. Loh’s new
method might bring simplicity
to both the learning environ-
ment and work environment at
the same time.
March/April 2020 11
 Drinks
4
// BY A DRIEN NE DONICA //

To Make
a Better
Cocktail,
You Need the
Right Ice

I
CE MIGHT BE THE MOST OVER-
lo oke d i ng r e d ient of a ny
cocktail recipe. It keeps a
drink cold, ensures that it isn’t
too stiff, and even alters taste
perception.
Ask a good bartender about
ice, and they’ll tell you why a
particular shape or size is best.
These variables might sound
like minutiae, but they matter
to bartenders, who have to strike
a balance between ice’s chilling
and diluting effects. Ice cools a
cocktail as it melts, but the melt-
water also dilutes the drink’s
flavors. Some dilution is good—
it balances flavors and tames
high-proof liquor—but too much
makes concoctions taste watery.
The ideal combination of meltwa- chilling method than stirring, Crystal-clear ume. It melts more slowly than
ice starts with
ter and a drink’s other ingredients meaning shaken drinks are letting hot other types of ice. To reach full
is called full dilution. served more diluted (and colder) water—which dilution, stir your drink with
contains less
“The dilution and the tem- than those that are stirred. trapped gas several cubes for 30 seconds, or
perature are inextricably linked,” Size, shape, and temperature than cold— shake with one cube for about
cool to room
says Dave Arnold, author of Liq- impact ice’s melt rate, so some temperature 15 seconds. When you’re shak-
uid Intelligence: The Art and types of cubes make more sense prior to ing cocktails, “having the one big
freezing it.
Science of the Perfect Cocktail. than others to use under certain cube makes a huge difference in
“You don’t get to have a colder circumstances. But as long as you terms of the texture of the drink,”
drink and a less diluted drink. understand the fundamentals, Arnold says. The large cube aer-
You can have either a colder drink you can make a great cocktail with ates ingredients as it combines
L A KOTA G A M B I L L

or a less diluted drink.” any type of ice. them, resulting in a cocktail with
One factor that affects the Large-format ice, generally a thin layer of froth on its surface
diluting power of ice is how you cubes of 2 inches or larger, has a after you’ve strained it. The slow
use it: Shaking is a more efficient small ratio of surface area to vol- melt rate of large-format ice also

12 March/April 2020
This spring, join US for a day of curated DIY experiences IN

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 Drinks
4

1 2

makes it the preferred type for

serving with strong drinks such
as the Old Fashioned (bourbon
or rye with a sugar cube or simple
syrup, two dashes of Angostura
bitters, and an orange twist),
which are best served cold and rel-
atively undiluted.
Small ice chips, like those
that come from store-bought
bags or hotel vending machines,
3 4
have a greater surface area-to-
volume ratio. They melt faster,
which can result in overdiluted
drinks (bartenders refer to this
as “shitty ice”). The trick to pre-
venting such ice from trashing
your cocktail is to use as much
ice as will fit into your cocktail
shaker, then stir or shake for a
shorter amount of time—15 and
5 seconds, respectively—than you
would when using larger ice. Keep
in mind: Smaller ice isn’t always
bad. Many tiki drinks and swiz-
zles are served over crushed ice.
In these cocktails, the continued
chilling blunts the perception of
sweetness.
“Regardless of shape or clar- How to Make Crystal-Clear Ice
ity, the temperature of ice, I would It’s a big ol’ myth that trapped gases and impurities from cloudy ice negatively impact
say, is the most important thing,” a drink’s flavor. (Unless that ice is from a deep freezer that hasn’t been cleaned in ages,
says Jeffrey Morgenthaler, bar of course.) But to wow a crowd, there’s nothing like serving a Negroni over a crystal-
manager of Portland’s Clyde clear rock. “Anything that looks that awesome, I think, is going to make it taste a little
Common, a restaurant where more awesome,” author Dave Arnold says. Bartenders use professionally produced
clear ice, but at home, you have to put in a little extra elbow grease.
the bar program has garnered
six James Beard Award nomina-
tions. Although water freezes at (1) Fill a small the cooler’s size the rest will be ing the ice, tap the
32°F, ice is usually much colder. hard-sided cooler and your freez- clear. (3) Set the back of the blade
Ice purists might even go so far as with hot water er’s temperature. block on its side, with a mallet. The
from a faucet. (2) Remove the with the cloudy ice cloudy ice should
to set their freezers to the lowest
Let the water cooler. Let the ice facing left or right. break off cleanly.
possible temperature so that their cool, then place thaw slightly until Cut off the cloudy (4) Use the same
superchilled ice will cool cocktails the cooler in your it glistens, then portion by gently method described
faster and leave a less diluted end freezer with its invert the cooler rubbing a bread in step 3 to cut the
product. That said, even shitty ice lid open or off. onto a bar mat knife back and block into smaller
Allow the water so the ice frees forth on the top 1- or 2-inch cubes.
can’t screw up a cocktail too badly.
T R E VO R R A A B

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Just make sure you don’t skip ice completely, which may have formed an indent forms. or place back in
entirely. No one likes a room- takes one to three at the bottom of Then, while the your freezer until
temperature margarita. days depending on the cooler, while knife is still touch- needed.

14 March/April 2020
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 Science
5
// BY JEN NIFER LEM A N //

A Quantum nical challenges (for example,

gravity and the rotation of the

Leap in the Earth).

Inside the interferometer, the

Classical World team used a nanosecond laser

pulse of light to propel the mol-
ecules through an ultra-high

P
HYS I CI STS HAVE LONG
struggled with a per-
plexing conundrum:
Why do tiny particles
such as atoms, photons,
and electrons behave
in ways that bacteria,
bees, and bowling balls do not?
In a phenomenon called quan-
tum superposition, for example,
individual units (say, of light)
exist in two states at once. They
are both waves and particles, only
settling on one or the other if you
specifically test for it.
This is not something that
will happen to an object like
your desk. It won’t turn solid
when you set your coffee cup on
it, or liquid if you try to drink
it. Superposition has only been
observed in the smallest units
of matter, which made physicist
Markus Arndt of the University
of Vienna curious about where
the line is. Does quantum weird-
ness stop at some particular
size? If so, which?
To find out, Arndt and his
team created a souped-up version
of the famed double-slit experi-
ment (see below), which can show
whether individual particles are
also behaving like waves. Then
they worked their way toward
increasingly massive objects. The
synthetic molecules Arndt’s col-
leagues at the University of Basel
in Switzerland developed for the
study are the largest particles
ever tested in such an experi-
ment. Each contained as many as
2,000 atoms, according to research
published in the journal Nature
Physics. The molecules, which
have a mouthful of a chemical
formula (C707H260F908N16S53Zn4 ),
“had to be massive, stable, and yet
volatile enough to fly in a directed
beam,” Arndt says.
Next, the scientists built a
special instrument, a macromol-
ecule interferometer called the
Long-Baseline Universal Matter-
Wave Interferometer, or LUMI.
With a baseline length of two
meters, it’s the longest macro-
molecule interferometer ever
built and is specially tuned to
compensate for a number of tech-
vacuum tube, which shot them
toward a series of slotted barri-
ers to reveal patterns in a screen
behind. To Ardnt’s delight, the
mammoth molecules created
the same interference pattern
as smaller objects. Though they
were particles, they were also
acting like waves.
The push and pull between
what we know of the quantum
and classical worlds has per-
plexed physicists for nearly
a centur y. Concepts such as
superposition are cornerstones
of quantum physics. “And yet,
we never find ourselves in such
st at es t hat we col lo qu ia l ly
describe as an object being in two
positions at once,” Arndt says.
In the hunt for a connection
between the quantum and classi-
cal world, Arndt aims to push the
limits even further, testing larger
and more massive particles.
“Why not see how far you can
go?” physicist Herman Batelaan
of the University of Nebraska–
Lincoln, who was not involved in
the study, tells Popular Mechan-
ics. “It’s a beautiful motivation
to do this work.”

Screen
Metal Sheet
In 1801, physicist Thomas Young conducted the
Light Source
THE DOUBLE SLIT first double-slit experiment, shooting a beam of
EXPERIMENT light toward a barrier with two slits in it. Instead
of forming two lines on a screen behind the bar-
rier—in the same way that particles might—the beam formed a pattern of interference
as if a wave had been pushed through the two slits. In 1908, Geoffrey Ingram Taylor
repeated the experiment using a single photon. Even though the photon was a single
particle, the wave interference pattern still appeared. That was strange enough, but
then it got really weird: When scientists tracked the individual particles as they move
through the slits, the monitored particles abandoned their wave-like state and showed
up as two separate lines on the screen. It’s as if they knew they were being watched.

16 March/April 2020
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 Games
6 & Toys
// BY W ILLI A M HER K E W ITZ //

AI Is Now the
Undisputed
Champion of
Computer Chess

I
T WA S A WA R O F T I TA N S Instead of deducing the “best”
you l i kely ne ver he a r d moves w ith a n a lgor ithm
about. One year ago, two designed by outside experts, it
of the world’s strongest learns strategy by itself through
and most radically differ- an artificial-intelligence tech- There’s a lot diate tactical
1
ent chess engines fought nique called machine learning. going on here, edge or some
a pitched, 100-game battle Its programmers merely tuned but focus on the other obvious
to decide the future of computer it with the basic rules of chess pawns. Mainly, recompense.
MOVE that AlphaZero But again and
chess. and allowed it to play several
16 has already lost again, this
On one side was Stockfish 8. million games against itself.
one on the g file, magician-like
This world-champion program As it learned, AlphaZero grad- and is sacrificing chess engine
approaches chess like dynamite ually pieced together its own yet another with makes early
handles a boulder—with sheer strategy. this jumpy rook sacrifices like
force, churning through 60 The head-to-head battle was move. (Stock- these as part
fish’s next move of an extreme-
million potential moves per sec- astonishing. In 100 games,
is a queen leap ly long-term
ond. Of these millions of moves, AlphaZero never lost. The AI to h2, gobbling strategy whose
Stockfish picks what it sees as engine won the match with daz- up White’s lone benefit won’t
ROOK
the very best one—with “best” zling sacrifices, risky moves, soldier on the become clear
defined by a complex, hand- and a beautiful style that was TO h file.) Run this for dozens of
position though moves into the
tuned algorithm codesigned by completely new to the world of G4
many advanced future. Eventu-
computer scientists and chess computer chess. chess engines, ally AlphaZero is
grandmasters. That algorithm British chess grandmaster and most will going to fill the
values a delicate balance of fac- Mat thew Sa d ler a nd math- tell you that gaps left by the
tors like pawn positions and the ematician and chessmaster with the sac- missing pawns
rificed pieces, with rooks, like
safety of its king. Natasha Regan are still piecing
AlphaZero is a double-barrel
On the other side was a new together how AlphaZero’s strat- now losing. shotgun. Those
program called AlphaZero, a egy works in their new book, So why is it pawns, AlphaZe-
chess engine in some ways very Game Changer. We’re break- doing this? ro apparently
much weaker than Stockfish— ing open two moves in just one Sacrifices are believes, are
very common worth less than
L A KOTA G A M B I L L

powering through just 1⁄100th of the games to show the aggres-

in chess, but the opportunity
as many moves per second as sive style, what it does, and what they’re almost to assault the
its opponent. But AlphaZero is humans can learn from our new always offered king from even
an entirely different machine. chess champion. up for an imme- more directions.

18 March/April 2020
 2 By move 42, Zero’s bishops
AlphaZero has control long
sacrificed even open diagonals
more pawns, directed right
MOVE and is marching at the king. Its
42 another poor, queen is one
disposable leap away from
sucker toward the fray. And
oblivion. But both rooks
this move seals are likewise
AlphaZero’s vic- staring down
tory. That final Stockfish’s
pawn is about defense with
to crack open unholy fury.
PAWN Stockfish’s In their book,
king’s corner Sadler and Re-
TO like a knife gan write that
F4 twisting open it’s important
an oyster. for chess mas-
Another key ters to embrace
element to early strategic
AlphaZero’s pawn sacrifices
style is its abso- despite the
lute obsession risk: “Don’t
toward attacks rush! AlphaZero
against the op- doesn’t attempt
ponent’s king— to deliver
rather than checkmate
focusing on immediately but
more delicate ensures that all
tactical plays. its pieces are
By move 42, joining into
both of Alpha- the attack.”

March/April 2020 19
 Machines
7
// BY K YLE MIZO K A MI //

A prototype of
SLAM’s nuclear
ramjet engine.

L
AST SUMMER, A SMALL
nuclear reactor exploded
on a military testing site
in Russia, killing seven
sion, President Donald Trump
revealed in a t weet that the
United States ha s “similar,
though more advanced technol-

The Most people and causing a

brief spike in radioac-
ogy” to the Burevestnik, some
times referred to as “Skyfall.”

Ill-Advised t iv it y i n t wo ne a rb y
cities. Even now, the details are
The problem? The U.S. already
looked into nuclear-powered
CO U R T E S Y L AW R E N C E L I V E R M O R E N AT I O N A L L A B O R ATO R Y

still scarce; Russia’s nuclear cruise missiles more than 50

Weapon in agency blamed tests concern-
ing “isotopic sources of fuel on a
years ago—and rejected them as
completely impractical.

U.S. History liquid propulsion unit.” But evi-

dence suggests the mysterious
Back in the 1950s and ’60s,
the U.S. Air Force wanted a third

Was Too accident was related to Russia’s

development of the Burevest-
nik, a nuclear-powered cruise
weapon in its arsenal in addition
to its intercontinental ballistic
missiles and strategic bombers
Dangerous missile that would offer a nearly
unlimited range, allowing it to
for delivering retaliatory strikes
against the Soviet Union in the

to Even Test fly much longer than conven-

tionally powered cruise missiles.
event of nuclear war. Enter the
Supersonic Low Altitude Missile,
Not long after the explo- or SLAM, which the Pentagon

20 March/April 2020
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 Machines
7
hoped to have ready for use by
1965. Had the U.S. actually built
this thing, it would have been
the most dangerous nuke ever
made—and possibly the last.
Aerospace g iant Convair
designed SLAM (also known
as “The Big Stick”) as an air-
breathing, low-f lying cruise
missile. A rocket booster would
launch it into the air and send it
to speeds where its nuclear-pow-
ered ramjet would kick in. Once
activated, the engine would give
SLAM a top speed of Mach 3.5.
The missile would then cruise
for days or even weeks, flying
unusually low for a missile of its
time—just 1,000 feet—to avoid
being tracked by enemy radar.
The supersonic shockwave was
projected to leave a trail of dev-
astation, flattening forests and
buildings, and killing anyone in
the missile’s flight path.
Despite being advertised as
a missile, SLAM was actually
more like an unmanned bomber.
Instead of a single warhead,
it carried up to 26 hydrogen
bombs, each hundreds of times
more powerful than the bombs
the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki in 1945. SLAM
could fly a predetermined route
over an enemy country or even
continent, dropping H-bombs
on destinations below. Once the
Big Stick was out of bombs, the
weapon would fly one last suicide
mission, running into a final tar-
get that would shower the target
zone with lethal radioactivity.
Of course, the U.S. never built
SLAM, because it was far too
dangerous to even test (although
most individual components,
including the reactor, were
successfully prototyped). The
military scrapped the weapon
22 March 2020
3 MORE
WEAPONS THAT
NEVER MADE IT
SLAM isn’t the only
weapons system the
military ultimately 1
scrapped.
1 / F LY I N G
PLATFORMS
(1950S)
A soldier could fire
from the air while on
the VZ-1 Pawnee, a
flying platform kept
aloft by two rotors in
a duct, and move the
craft by shifting his
weight. It was too slow
and small for combat.
2 / TAILSITTER
AIRCRAFT (1950S)
Tailsitters took off
vertically and turned
horizontally in the air,
reversing the process
when landing. But
when pilots couldn’t
pull that off, the Navy
pulled the plug. 2
3 / SPY AIRSHIPS
(2010S)
The Long-Endurance
Multi-Intelligence
CO U R T E S Y H I L L E R AV I AT I O N M U S E U M (1) ; I CO N I M AG E S/A L A M Y (2) ; CO U R T E S Y N O R T H A M G R U M M A N (3)
Vehicle was buoyant
like a blimp and aero-
dynamic like a plane,
packing a 2,750-
pound-sensor payload
and keeping watch for
weeks. Blame delays
for its early demise. 3
in 1964 amid concerns about its could deliver a thermonuclear
cost-effectiveness and viability. warhead against a target in Rus-
While the hazardous levels of sia in half an hour.
radioactivity unleashed by the SLAM was unofficially the
nuclear engine were a big plus in worst nuclear weapon ever devel-
some apocalyptic wartime sce- oped. And whatever Russia was
narios, the weapon couldn’t be really testing last summer in the
tested in the skies over the U.S. Arctic, it’s likely something that
SLAM was also supplanted by should have remained an unused
intercontinental ballistic mis- relic of the Cold War, just like
siles, which, for all their flaws, our Big Stick.
 Food
8
// BY DAV ID GROSSM A N // By the
Numbers:
How Ohmic
Heating
Saves
Energy

Electric Shocks Sure, the Ohmic

method saves

Might Be the energy—but just

exactly how much?
We tapped Sudhir

Secret to Better Sastry, Ph.D.,

professor of food
engineering at the

Gluten-Free Bread Ohio State Univer-

sity, to crunch the
numbers on how

W
ITH THE RISING POPU -
l a r it y of g lut en-f r e e
brea d, t here is more
demand. The catch? It
takes longer to make. But
scientists from the Insti-
tute of Food Technology
of the University of Natural Resources
and Life Sciences (BOKU) in Vienna,
much energy Ohmic
heating saves as
opposed to using a
a time suck that can make gluten-free
conventional oven
bread more expensive. to bake a loaf of
Ohmic heating also provides uni- gluten-free bread.
form heating to a loaf of bread. That
uniformity, along with the quick-acting
nature of Ohmic heating, could solve
OHMIC HEATING
several problems related to gluten-
free bread.
ENERGY NEEDED
“In order to really benefit from these PER LOAF:

Austria, may have come up with an
energy-saving fix: using electric shocks
to cook it from the inside out. They
believe a concept called Ohmic heating
could save energy and time during the
manufacturing process, according to a
paper published in the journal Food and
Bioprocess Technology.
Ohmic heating passes an electric cur-
rent through food to generate heat and
280 KJ
advantages and obtain best results, the
optimal process and product character-
istics had to be identified,” says Jäger.
EQUIVALENT
“Achieving such convincing results and TO POWERING
improving the efficiency of the process at A 100W
the same time was also surprising for us.” LIGHT BULB FOR
The Ohmic bread seemed to be supe-
rior in a cook-off against traditional 45 MIN
gluten-free bread—it had 10 to 30 per-
cent more volume, the team reports.

cook it. This is possible through what’s
known as Ohm’s Law, where electrical
energy is dissipated into heat
“The heat is generated instanta-
neously within the complete dough,”
Henry Jäger, Ph.D., professor of food
technology at BOKU and paper coau-
thor, said in a press statement in October.
“This is the main advantage of the Ohmic
heating technology. Conventional baking
in the oven requires more time, since the
heat needs to penetrate from the outside
toward the center of the dough.”
Gluten-free bread in general requires
around twice as much water as wheat-
b a s e d br e a d du r i ng pr e p a r at ion .
But more water can make the dough
thinner and give it a lower viscosity. Less-
viscous dough often takes longer to bake,
VS
The texture was also better. Crumbs
were “softer and more elastic,” and the
pores “were smaller and more evenly
distributed.”
And, as the scientists theorized,
Ohmic heating saved serious time and HOME OVEN
energy—as much as a two-thirds reduc-
tion on both counts. ENERGY NEEDED
PER LOAF:
“At the end, the subsequent appli-
c at ion of t h r e e d i f fer ent pr o c e s s
intensities with different holding times
6,210 KJ
proved to be the most suitable option,” EQUIVALENT
TO POWERING
Jäger says. “An initial baking step at
A 100W
two to six kilowatts for 15 seconds fol- LIGHT BULB FOR
lowed by one kilowatt for 10 seconds and
a final baking at 0.3 kilowatts for five 17 HRS
15 MIN
minutes is the recipe for the successful
production of gluten-free bread using
Ohmic heating.”

24 March/April 2020
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 Sci-Fi
9
// BY DA R REN ORF //

The 2020
Sci-Fi
Film Guide

T
H I S I S A VE RY GOO D
year for sci-f i. With
n o m aj or A v e n g e r s
blockbusters (thanks
to Thanos’s shenan-
igans last year) and
Star Wars going on a
cinematic hiatus, maybe, just
maybe, other films will be able
to have their own moment.

F E B R U A R Y 2 8 //
THE INVISIBLE MAN
Any adaptation of an H.G.
Wells classic is going to
grab our attention. Starring
Elizabeth Moss, The Invisible
Man takes Wells’s work and
modernizes it into something
that seems to be speaking to
today’s #MeToo movement.
Whether the film succeeds with
this update is hard to say, but
we’ll be watching to find out.
PRELIMINARY VERDICT:
Looks Promising

M A Y 2 9 // A R T E M I S F O W L
One of the bolder, more eclectic
YA stories to emerge in the
and a computer hacker who In The Invisible J U L Y 1 0 // G H O S T B U S T E R S :
Man, Cecilia
also happens to be a centaur. (Elizabeth AFTERLIFE
CO U R T E S Y U N I V E R S A L P I C T U R E S

wake of Harry Potter. Based on
a series of eight science fiction–
fantasy (our two favorite things)
novels of the same name, this
movie takes place in a realm
called the Lower Elements,
populated by dwarves, fairies,
Yeah, it’s that kind of thing. It’s
not a great sign that the film’s
original 2019 release date
was pushed into this year, but
we’re trying to stay positive.
PRELIMINARY VERDICT: Looks
Promising
Moss) fights Afterlife likely wants to
to prove her
deceased right the ship after 2016’s
ex-husband is Ghostbusters reboot. This
alive, invisible,
and violent. time, the story will be a direct
sequel to Ghostbusters and
Ghostbusters 2, rather than
Paul Feig’s misguided pseudo-

26 March/April 2020
 sequel. It could be good,
but we won’t hold out hope.
PRELIMINARY VERDICT: Skip
J U L Y 1 7 // T E N E T
Few things excite movie-goers
more than a new Christopher
Nolan film. Little is known
about his new project—until
this past December, we thought
it was going to be a full-on
spy thriller—but the recent
trailer hinted at so many sci-fi
elements (including some
timey-wimey stuff), we’re
pretty confident Tenet could
be one of the top sci-fi(ish)
films of the year. PRELIMINARY
VERDICT: Must See
A U G U S T 2 1 // B I L L & T E D
FACE THE MUSIC
We’re suckers for time-travel
movies, and we’re particular
suckers for Bill & Ted time-
travel movies. So, we’re eagerly
awaiting the return of the
Wyld Stallyns. Face the Music
arrives nearly 30 years after
Bill and Ted’s last adventure,
Bogus Journey. With both
leads being more dad than rad
these days, this will likely be
a slightly different film than
CO U R T E S Y T E S L A
what’s come before—but we’re the 2020 interpretation of one
ready. PRELIMINARY VERDICT: of sci-fi’s most holy texts. It’s
Must See shaping up to be an absolute
monster of a film poised to be
N O V E M B E R 6 // E T E R N A L S the Next Big Sci-Fi Thing. 
The Eternals have been part Set some 20,000 years into
of the Marvel Cinematic humanity’s future, when our
Universe (MCU) for a while race has spread across the uni-
now—you just didn’t know it. verse, an epic clash between the
In Guardians of the Galaxy, houses Atreides and Harkonnen
the Collector (Benicio del unfolds on the desert world of
Toro) described Celestials— Arrakis. The struggle’s outcome
gods, basically—with power will change the future forever.
to annihilate entire planets. Dune’s sprawl has def ied
The Celestials created cinematic interpretation for
the Eternals, the result of decades. The book was first in
experiments on early humans, the hands of filmmaker Alejan-
and also the sinister Deviants. dro Jodorowsky, then those of
Like Guardians, Eternals will David Lynch, who spun the text
bring a heavier dose of sci-fi into what is still considered his
to the Marvel film lineup and most divisive film.
will help illuminate some Hopefully, third time’s a
of the cosmic machinations charm as director Denis Ville-
that put the U in the MCU. neuve tries to wrangle author
PRELIMINARY VERDICT: Looks Frank Herbert’s epic imagina-
Promising tion into a manageable runtime
(though it's already going to be
D E C E M B E R 1 8 // D U N E be at least two movies). Ville-
Starring everyone (Timothée neuve’s proven himself this
Chalamet, Jason Momoa, generation’s sci-fi master with
Oscar Isaac, Dave Bautista, Arrival and Blade Runner 2049.
Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgård, Be prepared. Greatness is in the
Javier Bardem, Rebecca making. P R E L I M I N A R Y V E R -
Ferguson, Zendaya), Dune is DICT: Must See
A Sci-Fi Defense of the Cybertruck
So this is what happens when a Blade Runner fan also happens to be a multi-
billionaire. Released in November 2019 in Los Angeles, the exact time and
place of the 1982 movie, the Cybertruck is a cross between Doc Brown’s
DeLorean from Back to the Future and K’s far-flung Peugeot in Blade
Runner 2049. The future is very geometric, apparently, and Cybertruck fully
embraces angular sci-fi design. From a gearhead’s perspective, the newest
Tesla is completely perplexing. For a sci-fi fan? It’s love at first sight.
March/April 2020 27
 Hoax(?)
10
// BY K RISTIN A LIBBY //

T
IKTOK HAS YOUR could be allowing other nations
c h i l d r e n’s h o m e to attack the security of Amer-

Could addresses. The Face-

App ha s your photo
icans through geotargeting,
facial recognition, and pattern

TikTok Be and the ability to pre-

dict what you’ll look
like over the course of
projection. A smartphone has
the potential to be a more useful
weapon than a missile.
Spying your life. Your hotel check-in app
shows your travel destinations,
According to N PR , some
foreign nations, such as Saudi

on You? room preferences, and upcom-

ing stays. This might not seem
like a big deal, but all of this data
Arabia, use information shared
across apps to identify dissi-
dents and potential spies or to
hack into computers. Addition-
ally, the data collected through
apps ca n b e u sed t o creat e
psychographic models—group-
ings of people based on their
shared psychological charac-
teristics—that are deployed in
disinformation campaigns.
Apps like the wildly pop-
ular TikTok are particularly
vulnerable. Owned by a Chinese
company, TikTok utilizes an
algorithm that can be tuned to
distribute news or content that
sways public opinion—a form
of information control that has
proven societal impact. And
China’s 2017 national intelli-
gence law contains language
that requires companies to com-
ply with intelligence gathering
operations if asked.
“China has a very different
legal framework and perspective
on the rule of law,” says Andrea
Little Limbago, chief social sci-
entist at Virtru, an encryption
and privacy company. “TikTok
claims they do not store data
in China, but this is difficult to
validate and does not address
data privacy concerns prior to
February 2019. This is espe-
cially relevant as user data could
inform intelligence campaigns
targeting American citizens.”
(You might remember that in
Febr uar y 2019, TikTok wa s

28 March/April 2020 I LLU S T R AT I O N BY G R AY H O O D

 Ask All This to
Keep Data Safe
fined for its data privacy usage.) attribute cyberattacks or cyber-

Given China’s histor y of
data interference and its faulty
human rights record, Americans
should be concerned about data
weaponization.
Adira Levine, cybersecu-
1
spying operations to specific
WHAT DATA IS
foreign nations. It’s even more
COLLECTED?
difficult to make correlations
Allow as little data as
between apps and nation-state possible to be collected.
attacks. However, the growing The safest amount is none.
number of cyberattacks and the

rity fellow at the public policy
think tank New America, notes
that you should also consider
the permissions you are grant-
ing when you hit “agree” or when
prompted to change your device
settings. Such permissions cre-
2
increasing reports of apps with
potential for misuse should raise
a red flag.
Ask yourself if it’s really
worth giving away your personal
data to a company in China just
to pass the time with a mind-
HOW IS IT USED?
Many apps sell data to third-
party companies, who use
it for advertising purposes.
The best scenario is one
where the data is used only
by the app company.

ate pathways for other entities,
including companies and adver-
tisers, to access the data. The
more people who have access to
your phone and your data, the
less secure you are.
It ’s d i f f ic u lt t o d i r e c t ly
3
less app. And think about apps
before you download them. The
only way we’ll be resilient to
cyberattacks is for every indi-
vidual to be more critical of their
own phone, their own apps, and
their own safety.
HOW LONG IS IT
KEPT?
Data more than a year old
serves little purpose to
outside parties since the
most up-to-date info is
the most valuable. Seek
shorter timelines.

4
DOES THE APP NEED
YOUR LOCATION DATA?
A number of apps auto-
matically collect this, but

PROTECT YOUR DATA FROM UNSECURED very few actually need it.
You can generally turn this

WI-FI & BLUETOOTH CONNECTIVITY off in your OS settings.

You’ve probably
heard this before,
but using unsecured
wi-fi makes your data
vulnerable. It may be
tempting to log on to
free public wi-fi, but
try to refrain from
using it. If you find
yourself in a position
where you abso-
5
DOES THE APP NEED
ACCESS TO YOUR
bank and credit- you’re not using it. CONTACTS, CAMERA,
card accounts. If you usually leave OR MICROPHONE?
yours on, the data on
Most of these features
2 / DON’T DO ANY your device is open
aren’t necessary, but
ONLINE SHOP- to anyone with their
many apps still ask for
PING or purchasing own Bluetooth-
access. Granting these
where you’ll need to enabled device. All
permissions makes the
enter your credit card they have to do is
data on your device—
credentials or other connect and they can
like personal photos—
sensitive information. access your info.
vulnerable.

lutely need it, follow
these tips for secure
browsing:
1 / USE UNSECURED
WI-FI SPARINGLY
and refrain from
accessing personal
information such as
6
3 / TURN OFF AUTO- 5 / CONSIDER
MATIC CONNECTIVI- INVESTING IN A WHERE IS THE
TY so you’re in control VIRTUAL PRIVATE DATA STORED?
of when and where NETWORK such as Data laws vary by country;
you log on. ExpressVPN ($99.95/ reconsider sharing data
year), which offers held in nations that may
4 / REMEMBER TO 24/7 support and have incentive to use it
TURN YOUR BLUE- coverage across 94 for advancing political
TOOTH OFF whenever countries. agendas (like Russia,
China, and North Korea).

March/April 2020 29
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W H Y I’M BUILDING M Y OW N

32 March/April 2020
March/April 2020 33
 I’ I ’VE ALWAYS B E E N fascinated with
airplanes. I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria,
where there were barely any roads. The
main road out of our area wasn’t paved,
and during the rainy season it would
become flooded and muddy. When my
sisters and I walked along the flooded
road to school, I’d see airplanes flying
above us. I’d be envious of whoever was
in the plane because we were down on
the ground, walking in mud.
My family moved to New York City
when I was about 12. At that time,
I never imagined I would be f lying
planes. None of my friends or family
members encouraged my obsession
with planes, and still when I f ly, I
don’t see many pilots who look like
me. When I was in my twenties, after
I met my wife and we moved to Cali-
fornia together, opportunity arose. I
read about this 15-year-old girl who
flew herself across the country. I said
to myself: It’s now or never. That girl’s
story made me realize I had no more
excuses to give. I went up for the first
time the week of my 26th birthday, and
now I’m building my own airplane.
For most pilots, flying on your own
is unattainable because it’s really
expensive. Even just getting your
pilot’s license costs a lot of money. But
Ojo chronicles
his build on that’s nothing compared to buying
his YouTube your own plane. My dream plane—it’s
channel,
MojoGrip. actually on my dream board, this col-
lage of aspirational images I keep in

INSIDE MIKE’S KIT

SLING TSI KIT
The Sling TSi is a four-person,
single-engine plane from
The Airplane Factory, com-
plete with glass cockpit and
gull wing doors. It’s modern,
easy to fly, and packed with as
many cool toys as you’re will-
ing to install (the more, the
better).
ROTAX 915 IS
Even at max takeoff weight,
with four adults and a load
of fuel, the Rotes 915 iS
can lift the plane into the
sky at 1,000 feet per min-
ute and cruise at 155 knots .
Computerization keeps the
engine running at maximum
efficiency.
AIRMASTER CONSTANT
SPEED PROP
A constant-speed propeller
adjusts the pitch angle of
the blades to maintain speed
regardless of engine rpm.
This allows the plane’s engine
to create different amounts
of thrust depending on what
stage of flight you’re in.
GARMIN G3X TOUCH
This glass touchscreen dis-
play provides many of the
same avionics features the
big boys have, including flight
charts, airport diagrams, a
moving GPS map, and all
manner of aircraft-specific
gauges like fuel, flaps, trim,
alerts, and engine statistics.

34 March/April 2020
my office—is a four-seater kit plane
from The Airplane Factory called the
Sling TSi. It’s a major financial com-
mitment—$200,000 to $250,000 if
you want all the bells and whistles—
but by building the plane yourself, you
save tons of cash. It takes about 1,500
man-hours to assemble the TSi. When
you build your own plane, you’re basi-
cally trading time for money.
The heart of any plane is its engine,
and the TSi comes with a great one. It’s
the Rotax 915 iS, a turbocharged 1.35-
liter four-cylinder unit that can provide
full takeoff power up to 15,000 feet. The
Rotax’s forced induction allows me to
get full power (141 horsepower) even at
altitude, where a standard engine might
see a significant reduction in how hard
it can push. The TSi is also strong on
fuel economy (7 to 8 gallons per hour of
standard automobile fuel) and comes
with all sorts of computer wizardry to
help me, the pilot. A Full Authority Dig-
ital Engine Control (FADEC) system
helps control fuel burn, blade angle, and
other aspects of engine performance,
which makes my life much easier. It has
room for four adults and can go 800 to
1,000 miles in one shot, and best of all
(depending on your point of view), you
get to assemble it yourself.
I looked at other kits, but the TSi
just felt right. I took a flight in one
with my wife, and afterwards she said,
“I can see you flying that airplane.”
You don’t need a ton of skills to build
an airplane, but it’s a good idea to take
a class or two. There are aviation work-
shops in most big cities, and when you
find the right people, the community
can be incredibly welcoming to newcom-
ers. The aviation community is also very
small, and you’ll always be able to find
people who have been through the pro-
cess. I’m using a build-assist program,
4 KIT
which adds some cost but gives me a ded-
icated facility to build the plane (it takes
PLANES
a lot of room!) as well as a lot of exper-
tise from experienced builders. There’s
TO TACKLE
no room for error in aviation, so having IN 2020
someone who has built a plane before to
hold your hand is a great comfort.
With my build, we started with con-
1 PIPISTREL
structing the empennage—the tail— PANTHERA
and worked forward from there. You The Panthera has
have to run electrical wires through retractable landing gear
every part of the plane, being careful to and a sexy, aerodynamic
route everything safely and avoid sharp shape. A glass cockpit
and extra-comfy seats
edges that could damage the wiring
make long journeys
down the line. You have to be particu- feel luxurious.
larly cautious when working with the panthera-aircraft.com
flight control surfaces, such as the hor-
izontal and vertical stabilizers at the 2 SABERWING
The manufacturer notes
back. Those are critical to safe flying.
that this plane is such a
After the body is assembled, we’ll quick build, you’ll “be sit-
wire up the avionics and electrical work, ting in the fuselage within
mount the engine, and set up the com- a few hours of opening the
puters, radio, antennas, and everything kit.” For those who can’t
wait to play with their new
else. I’m most excited for the avionics. I
toy. azaleaaviation.com
learned to fly behind the Garmin G3X
system, and that’s what’s going in my 3 JUSTAIRCRAFT
plane. I’ll be wiring it all up, hooking SUPERSTOL
up backup batteries, and connecting The SuperSTOL has low-
speed capabilities that
the autopilot.
allow it to land on short
Then there’s the parachute. The runways or small clearings.
TSi’s parachute is not like a skydiver’s It just needs 150 feet of
chute: It’s a giant ballistic parachute runway to take off.
that can bring the entire aircraft safely justaircraft.com
to the ground in case of a dire emer-
4 DARKAERO
gency. It’s reliable, but there’s one Darkaero claims this is
catch: I can’t test my parachute ahead the longest-range aircraft
of time. I just have to hope it works. you can build—1,700
So that’s one thing I absolutely have to statute (land) miles at 275
mph cruising speed. That
get right, because you literally only get
can fly you from Boston
one shot. to Houston. Production
The relationship between pilot and begins in 2020.
plane is always continued on page 80 darkaero.com

GARMIN G5 ELECTRONIC
FLIGHT INSTRUMENT
Pairing up with the touch-
screen, this instrument
provides the pilot a digital
attitude indicator essen-
tial for flying the aircraft. It
includes horizon-based pitch
and roll, airspeed, altitude,
and vertical speed.
GARMIN GTN 650
This unit combines weather,
terrain data, flight traffic
updates and the all import-
ant radios on a single device.
You can plot waypoints and
glide paths, and plan takeoffs
and landings to keep your-
self safe, stay informed, and
remain on course.
GARMIN GTX 45R
It’s important to communi-
cate where you are in the sky,
so this ADS-B transponder
talks to other aircraft and air
traffic controllers to establish
your location. It also provides
automatic traffic alerts and
weather updates to help your
situational awareness—crucial
to any safe flight.
STRATOS 07 BALLISTIC
PARACHUTE
In case of a catastrophic
emergency such as total
engine failure, this failsafe
pops out of the back of the
aircraft and floats the plane
to the ground, keeping the
pilot and any passengers safe
and sound.

March/April 2020 35
 5 PROJECTS THAT ARE BUILT TO LAST
By Popular Mechanics Editors and Contributors

AN HEIRLOOM
TOOLBOX
By Brad Ford and Roy Berendsohn

W
e designed this toolbox to be as attrac-
tive as it is durable, and capable of
holding and protecting some of our most
prized tools. But more than that, we
wanted to build something our children
might cherish long after we’re gone.
To do that, we created a desig n that
prioritizes precision and patience during
construction. The joinery for the corners,
handle, and uprights has to fit together tightly
to be structurally sound.
The box sides and ends are joined with dove-
tails— the strongest corner joint you can make
without fasteners or hardware in a home shop.
The uprights are inset into the box ends. Done
neatly, the wedging action of the joint is strong,
especially when glue is added, and this holds
the two pieces together firmly. Even more
strength comes from the tenon that connects
the handle to the uprights.
Lastly, note that the handle is composed
of three pieces—a lamination. This crucial
detail enables you to form an attractive com-
pound curve without a weak boundary area
created by the handle’s shape. At the point
where the grain is weakest, another piece of
wood with a different grain pattern reinforces
it. The difference between the two grain pat-
terns interrupts the forces that would normally
crack the handle.

36 March/April 2020 PH OTO G R A PH Y BY T R E VO R R A A B

March/April 2020 37
 The dovetails
used to join the
sides and ends
are the strongest
corner joint you
can make without
fasteners in a
home shop.

▶ How to cut dovetails

We’ve outlined the trickiest It’s possible to hand cut the dove-
parts here. To see the full tails, but it takes a lot of practice
instructions—including to make them fit well together.
recommended wood types
We used a Rockler dovetail jig to
and measurements—go to
popularmechanics.com/ cut the box corners. The jig will
toolbox. let you do it on your first try, and
templates are available to make
a variety of dovetail patterns (we
used Rockler’s Distinctive Template A for this box).
If this is your first dovetail joint, practice by making two or three test
cuts on inexpensive, knot-free pine. Then cut and dovetail together two
pieces of scrap hardwood, of the same type you’ll be using for the box.
Once you’re satisfied with the results, dovetail the box ends and sides.
Cut the box sides and ends to length and stand them up as they will
fit together once assembled. Label them so that they go into the jig with
matching corners routed together.
Cut the tails first (the part of the joint oriented on the long sides of the
box), then the pins (the pieces of wood that will fit into the spaces of the
tails). Cut the tails about 1⁄16-inch longer than they need to be, allowing
them to stick out of the joint. This ensures they won’t be too short. You
can trim them flush once the box is assembled.

38 March/April 2020 I LLU S T R AT I O N BY G EO RG E R E T S ECK

 THE
SIMPLIFIED
PROCESS
1.
Prepare your stock.

2.
Cut the dovetails.
(See instructions
on facing page.)

3.
Dry fit the box
pieces together.

4.
When everything
The mortise
should fit snugly fits tightly, glue and
into the tenon. clamp together the
box sides and ends,
and insert the
bottom panel.
▶ Making the handle a curve you like, making sure it’s high enough 5.
The handle is made from three pieces of wood to remove trays or bulky tools if you’ll be car- Glue the handle
glued together to form a single lamination. rying those. Draw the curve on one side of the lamination.
Rip and crosscut the pieces for the lamination center, then trace and copy on the other side
6.
slightly oversize, then glue and clamp them (or download our online handle template) to Cut the uprights
together. Drive screws into the lamination in be sure that it’s even. and fit to box ends.
areas that will be sawed off to pull the parts To make the tenon, carefully remove the
7.
more firmly together. When the glue is dry, wood around the area you have scribed with Shape the handle.
make one or more ripping passes on the table a table saw, making it slightly oversize (by (See instructions
saw to ensure the long edges are parallel. about 1⁄64-inch). You’ll want the mortise-and- on this page.)
Mark the location of the handle tenons tenon to fit snugly together, and you should
8.
on the short edges of the lamination using a always fit the tenon to the mortise, not the Dry fit the uprights
square, a marking gauge, and a sharp knife. other way around. (It’s very difficult to trim to the handle.
Dry assemble the box sides, ends, and uprights. wood evenly from inside the mortise.)
9.
Rest the bottom edge of the lamination on the Complete each tenon by working down to Glue and clamp the
top edge of the box ends. Lean the lamination the scribe lines using a rabbet plane, block handle and uprights
against the uprights with an equal amount of plane, and a chisel. in place.
overhang at each end; using a sharp pencil sim- Once the tenons are complete, cut out the
10.
ply draw a line on the lamination at the inside rough shape of the handle on a band saw. Build tray(s) and
of each upright. Remove the lamination and Mark the shape of the handle on the shoulder blocks to fit the
scribe on the pencil line with a knife. That knife of each tenon—this will give you a target as interior dimensions
line will mark the inside corner where the han- you remove material. Remove equal amounts of the box and the
tools you intend
dle tenon meets the upright. Mark the tenon’s of wood off the corners, until the handle pro-
to carry.
width, thickness, and shoulders on the short file is roughly octagon-shaped. (We used a
edge of the lamination and scribe with a knife. variety of planes and chisels to shape the han-
Next, design the shape of the handle. Mark dles.) Remove material on the corners, down
the center of the long side of the lamination— to the outline on the tenon shoulder. Sand by
this will be the middle of your handle. Create hand until smooth.

March/April 2020 39

A begin roughing out the basic shape of the knife.
HANDCRAFTED
KNIFE
By Alex Hollings
Getting started
Knife making can be complex, but it doesn’t
have to be. You can create some incredible
pieces using things you either already have
lying around or that are available for cheap at
your local hardware store.
While there are lots of companies out there
that specialize in selling high-quality steel
forged specifically for knife making, a more
affordable place to start is at the bottom of
your toolbox, says Paul Brach, a knifemaker
40 March/April 2020
for more than 30 years. Old tool files, in partic-
ular, make for great knives because they tend
to be made out of higher-quality steel and are
already formed in a workable shape.
Plus, there’s something special about work-
ing with what you have. “There is a certain
satisfaction that comes from giving new life
to these things rather than letting them go to
waste,” Brach says.
▶ Design your blade
For your first attempt, Brach recommends a
standard survival knife shape similar to the
Marine Corps Ka-Bar design. This shape’s
long cutting edge is bolstered by a tapered edge
on the top of the blade, making it well suited
for both cutting and piercing. The steel of the
blade extends through the handle (commonly
referred to as “full tang”), and it retains its full
thickness along the spine of the blade, making
it very strong.
Sketch out your shape to scale on paper by
tracing an existing blade or drawing freehand
using a reference image. The sketch doesn’t
have to be perfect, but it should resemble the
profile of the knife you intend to make. Cut the
drawing out and trace it onto your file using
a permanent marker. Save the cutout—the
marker will fade under heat, so you may need
to redraw lines as you work.
▶ Grind the profile
Put on your safety glasses and either clamp
the file to a sturdy table or place it in a vise.
Use the cut-off wheel on your angle grinder to
Cut straight lines that are slightly outside the
curved shape of the blade.
Once you’ve removed as much material as
you can, swap in the grinding wheel. Begin
shaping the steel into the final profile of the
blade and handle.
▶ Center-scribe the metal
Lay the knife flat on your workbench or table
and lay the drill bit next to the blade, with the
tip of the bit facing what will become the knife’s
sharp edge. Leave the bit flat on the table as
you press its tip into the edge of the metal,
and scrape a line down the length of what will
become the cutting surface of the knife.
Now flip the knife over and repeat, scratch-
ing another line down the length of the blade
using the drill bit. If your bit is the same width
as the metal, both lines will overlap. If the bit
 isn’t an exact match, there will be two lines. detail-oriented you choose to be. It could take
In that case, the space between the two lines 20 minutes (for a rough-cut utility knife) or
will be your centerpoint when grinding out the several hours (for a finer piece of cutlery).
blade’s edge. When you’re done grinding, you’ll have a
knife that could handle a number of jobs—but
▶ Grind the edge until you treat the steel properly, it won’t offer
HERE’S WHAT When shaping your blade’s edge, Brach recom- the longevity or resilience you’d expect.
YOU’LL NEED mends holding the angle grinder tight to your
1. sides and moving your body at the hips, rather ▶ Heat the blade in your DIY forge
An old tool file than your arms, as you grind. Start near the Light the charcoal in your grill. Feed the nose
handle of your knife and grind toward the tip of of the hairdryer into one end of the pipe and
2.
A drill bit that’s
the blade, being intentional and careful not to stick the other end of the pipe next to the burn-
about the same slip the grinder off the blade and cut yourself. ing coals. The combination of high-temperature
thickness as your Leave the blade edge about as thick as a dime. charcoal and forced hot air will create embers
file (usually ¼ or “It’s important to keep your grind symmet- hot enough to heat-treat your blade. Hardwood
1⁄3 inch) rical, removing the same amount of material lump charcoal will be hot enough to work with—
3. from each side,” Brach says. Otherwise, you’ll more than 1,500°F—in around 15 minutes and
Hardwood lump increase the chance of a significant warp will burn at that heat for about an hour. (You’ll
charcoal and a during heat treatment. have to add more charcoal once or twice during
charcoal grill
This step will take some time, depending the process.)
4. on the power of your angle grinder and how Using your tongs or continued on page 82
Hair dryer and
around three feet
of metal pipe wide
enough to blow the
dryer through

5.
Metal tongs or
pliers with
extended handles

6.
Clamps or a vise

7.
Angle grinder with
a flapper wheel
and heads for
metal cutting and
grinding

8.
Eye protection

9.
An empty 5-quart
metal pail

10.
A gallon of
vegetable oil for
quenching

11.
Paracord or
leather strips and
slow-set epoxy
ALEX HOLLINGS

March/April 2020 41

Mortise-
and-
tenon
joints
A
200-YEAR
SHED
I
n 1989, my father-in-law taught me to
smoke meats and cheeses. I was a timber
frame builder—I have my own company,
called OakBridge Timber Framing—and I
wanted a home project to help me unwind
in the evenings and on weekends. I com-
bined my passion for building with the skills
my father-in-law had given me and I built
my family an old-fashioned timber-frame
smokehouse.
My design is strong but simple. A timber-
frame structure isn’t just slapped up. Compared
to a stick-built home, it uses more substantial
cuts of wood and is fitted together with unique
joinery like mortises, tenons, and wooden pegs
as opposed to studs. The latter might not be
able to withstand heavy winds or storms, but
I’ve seen timber frames survive tornado hits.
They just won’t fall. My smokehouse shed will
be around for my family and the younger genera-
tion after them. Plus, the timber-frame method
isn’t only for smokehouses—it can be the heart
of almost any structure.
My smokehouse isn’t just functional: It takes
me back in time. I go in to check my bacons and
it’s a step back 100 years. Sometimes when I’m
out there banking the smokehouse for the night,
I wonder why I’m working so hard on something
so old-fashioned, but it’s worth all the time and
effort once you have everyone enjoying the
things you’ve made. —Johnny Miller, as told to
Matt Allyn and Tyler Daswick
For a full list of steps and materials, visit
popularmechanics.com/timberframe.
42 March/April 2020
Rafters
Brace
beams
Corner
posts
Sill Tie
beams
CONSTRUCTION STEPS
Decide what type of wood to use. A lightweight
wood like poplar or pine will make it easy to lift
the timber into place, but if your timber will
be exposed to the elements in the absence of
siding or roofing, opt for white oak, Douglas
fir, or cedar.
Cut your beams, rafters, roof boards, and
siding boards to size, then cut the joints. Start
with the mortises and tenons. A standard mor-
tise is 4 inches deep and 1.5 inches wide to
accommodate a 3.75-inch tenon. A mortise
should be a quarter-inch deeper than the tenon.
The bird’s-mouth joints on the rafters should be
1.5 inches vertical by 6 inches horizontal. You
can use a circular saw for most of these cuts and
a 1.5-inch drill bit for the mortises, but a corner
chisel makes a nice tenon, too.
A timber frame’s sill supports the walls and
secures them to the foundation. To ensure sta-
bility, drill two anchor bolts up through the
foundation into each beam of the sill (one at
each end of each beam, for eight bolts total).
The bolts should reach all the way through the
sill so you can secure the nut, but if you’d like to
hide the hardware, drill a 2-inch-deep hole in
the sill to meet the anchor bolt before it peeks
above the wood, attach the nut, then plug the
hole with a wooden peg.
Assemble the frame for the front (the taller)
and back (shorter) walls with your materials
laid on the ground, rather than standing on
the sill. Fit the horizontal tie beams between
I LLU S T R AT I O N BY G EO RG E R E T S ECK
the corner posts before locking in the diago-
nal brace beams between the tie beams and
posts. Then, raise the completed walls onto the
sill. Attach the front and back walls together
by securing the tie beams that run the length
of your structure. Lean the erected walls out-
ward, brace them with conventional lumber,
and align the ties before fitting the walls back
together. Then peg the joints from the outside
in (you’ll need 36 pegs total) to accommodate
any siding you’ll use. Your pegs should have
one sharp end so they’ll pass through the ten-
ons and secure the joints.
PH OTO G R A PH BY A N D R E W S PE A R
Attach the four rafters on top of the struc-
ture, then screw or nail down the 2x boards,
then the steel, for the roof. If you’ll be using
your shed as a smokehouse, opt for tongue-and-
groove boards—they’re best to prevent smoke
from escaping.
Screw or nail on 1x6 tongue-and-groove
boards for siding, with a second layer on top if
Miller’s smoke- you’d like a better seal (ideal for a smokehouse).
house has Or, if you can find them, use 1x12 tongue-and-
produced holiday
turkeys, home- groove boards and nail 3-inch battens over the
made deer jerky, seams between the boards to create a reliable
and prize-winning
cheeses. one-layer seal.
March/April 2020 43
 Calagione and his son,
Sammy, brew a beer
together at their home
in Lewes, Delaware.

B
eer is a catalyst for community building. At our brewery, Dog-
A HOME- fish Head, my wife Mariah and I have tried to show our kids that
we make fun, creative, off-centered ales that connect us to awe-
BREWING some people such as the Grateful Dead and our coworkers. We
hoped one of them might be interested in carrying on this tra-
PHILOSOPHY dition, but we didn’t want to put that weight on their shoulders.
We expected our kids to get summer jobs by the time they were 14.
Our daughter, Grier, has chosen not to work at Dogfish Head, whereas
Sammy started running food at our pub in 2015. After he told us he
loved biology and chemistry, we arranged for him to brew a nonal-
coholic birch beer at Boothbay Craft Brewery, which is near Dogfish
Head, Maine, where I spent my summers growing up.
He apprenticed in the Dogfish brewpub’s microbiology lab in
2017 and, the next summer, asked to apprentice at our brewery. My
wife and I told him that it wasn’t a budgeted position. He needed

44 March/April 2020
 to make money. To his credit, he worked
nights running food and cleaning tables, then
apprenticed at our brewpub during the day.
Last summer, he apprenticed at our produc-
tion brewery. Believe me, it’s heartwarming
to show up for a brew day and have my son help
me crush the grain.
We’ve not had any discussion about “What
do you want to be when you grow up?” He’s
only a sophomore at Brown University. I try
not to force anything, but if you go into his
bedroom, he’s dog-eared my homebrew books.
Sitting in our kitchen for three hours and
making an all-grain homebrew is super cool,
but it’s a means to an end. The end is spending
quality time with the person you love. —Sam
Calagione, as told to Joshua M. Bernstein

ELEVATE YOUR HOME BREWING

Calagione is committed to unconventional
flavor charges, from Icelandic kelp to China’s
intensely sweet monk fruit extract. Here’s how
you can apply his unique philosophy to your
home brewing.

▶ Seek inspiration in the spice cabinet

Calagione assesses spices, herbs, or culinary
ingredients by making teas or tinctures. To
try it, put a small amount of your chosen spice
into a bowl and pour a pint of hot water over
it. “You can usually get a sense of the inten-
sity and characteristics, which will inform
how much you want to add” when you scale
up to your five-gallon batch, he says. Less is
best with spices such as cardamom seeds (one
ounce), fresh ginger (two ounces), spruce tips
(two ounces), and cinnamon sticks (two), all *Suggested ▶ Look to fruit for flavor
measures are
of which you’ll want to add toward the last 10 for five-gallon For stone fruit and berries, Calagione favors
minutes of the boil, the stage when you ster- batches. Feel free fresh produce or aseptic (contaminant-free)
to experiment.
ilize the wort and add the hops. Steep the frozen purées added at the boil’s finish and
spices in a muslin sack or specialty grain bag simmered for around 20 minutes at 160°F
for easy removal. Also, consider how ingredi- to 170°F, then strained out before fermen-
ents might create bridges to food. To create tation. You’ll use more fruit than you might
a perfect pairing for raw oysters, for exam- think: around 10 pounds of crushed blueber-
ple, Dogfish Head collaborated with Maine’s ries and sour cherries (or half that amount if
Oxbow Brewing Company on Kelp! I Need you’re using a purée).
Some Honey, a saison with brininess and The bright acidity of a kettle-soured Ger-
minerality from dried, crushed Icelandic man ale plays especially well with berries,
kelp that’s added during the whirlpool, a step as in Dogfish Head’s SuperEIGHT gose,
at the end of the brewing process that spins which contains blackberries and raspberries,
L A KOTA G A M B I L L

the wort to separate out hops and other sol- among other fruits. If you’re using citrus, peel
ids. This maintains the oceanic aromatics and the zest from the middle white layer (or pith).
sterilizes the seaweed. “We don’t pasteurize,” “I’ve never found a recipe where the pith adds
Calagione says. positive characteristics,” continued on page 82

March/April 2020 45
A SELF-
SUSTAINING
GARDEN
By Jessie Kissinger

S
o many plants that we enjoy—especially Shorter
trees—are the gift of someone else’s fore- trees
sight. A sapling in one generation becomes
a landmark in the next.
My parent’s forest garden, a 25x25-
foot space behind the driveway, layered
with trees, shrubs, and ground cover, tech-
nically started with the Holtzes. As the prior
owners of the home, they planted cedars along
the back fence. When my parents moved in 30
years ago, their neighbors had an enormous Herbaceous
plants
hackberry tree that dropped seeds into our
yard. A few of those seeds grew into trees that
ultimately stretched into a canopy above the
cedars. Then 10 years ago, my mom dug up
two redbud trees, the size of twigs, from her
father’s garden when he died and replanted
them in her yard. Now, at 15 feet tall, they
form the understory. And last year, we added
witchhazel and a buttonbush, carved out
short pathways, and laid a ground cover of
Ground
shade-loving perennials—columbine, oak and cover
palm sedge grasses, and ferns that will some-
day creep along the ground and cover the soil
entirely.
We can’t predict who will inherit the garden
next, but in a way, the work we’re doing now is
Bloom designed
for them. Just as the cedars and the redbuds this garden to
▶ Choose plants that like the current—and
were for us. grow food in Mill future—temperature and rainfall of your
Creek, WA.
The key to a long-lived forest garden is bio- region as well as the light conditions and soil
diversity—and that goes beyond flora. You of your yard. Generally, this leads to indige-
need to attract and feed beneficial creatures nous plant choices. Check the USDA Plants
of all kinds, including insects and birds to pol- Database to see if plants you like grow in areas
linate plants, spread seeds, and regulate pest with similar conditions to your area. Take into
populations, as well as microbes and fungi to account the climate change projected for your
enrich the soil. Here, Jessi Bloom, owner of region within your lifetime—be that higher
NW Bloom Ecological Services and author of temperatures, increased storm activity and
Creating Sanctuary, shares some guidelines rainfall, or drought. This will improve the gar-
for designing your own forest garden. den’s adaptability in the future.

46 March/April 2020

Tall
trees
Shrubs
▶ Avoid plants that are susceptible to diseases
or pests in your area. High-yield fruit trees such
as apples tend to require fertilizers and often
have pest issues and shorter lives. Best case
scenario, they’ll produce for about 40 years. If
you want fruit, try lower-maintenance varieties
like jujube, which likes a warm, dry climate with
CO U R T E S Y J E S S I B LO O M
sandy soil, or species native to your area, such as
serviceberry or wild plum in the Midwest and
Northeast. Nut trees can live and produce for
hundreds of years. When harvesting, take only
what you need. Leave the rest for the critters.
Mimic forest ecology by selecting plants
that occupy different layers of the forest.
▶ Space plants so that they capture as much
sunlight as possible. Note the angle of the
sun, especially at the summer solstice—the
time when many plants are most active—to see
how it could impact hours of light and shade.
Then block out the plants according to their
mature sizes (width and height). Place smaller,
sun-loving plants south of taller ones so they’ll
get more sun access. Fill shadowy areas with
shade-loving plants to take advantage of the
leftover sun dapple. Catching as much sun-
light as possible maximizes photosynthesis,
which stimulates the soil biology, which in turn
gives nutrients to the plants and improves their
immunity.
▶ Work with the landscape as it changes over
time. When you plant a sapling, it could take
five to 10 years to cast significant shade. In the
meantime, seed the area around the tree with
a sunny pollinator mix of annuals and her-
baceous perennials from a local native plant
nursery. These plants can cover the ground,
activate the soil biology to keep plants extra
healthy, build biomass, and attract benefi-
cial insects into the system. Once the shade
arrives, layer in herbaceous woodland peren-
nials as the sun lovers recede.
▶ Provide a constant source of food for pol-
linators. Make sure that at least three to four
varieties of flowers are in bloom throughout
the growing season. Add an insect hotel—a
man-made shelter for bugs—to house benefi-
cial insects, and a fountain or shallow birdbath
for a reliable water source.
▶ Be prepared to nurture your garden for
three to five years. “It’s like having a baby,”
says Bloom. “The more work you put in up front,
the more resilient it will be down the road.”
Most important: Know how many inches of
water your plants need per week, track rain-
fall, and water supplementally when the rain
isn’t enough. You’ll probably need to do some
weeding. It can also be helpful early on to add
mulches, compost, and compost tea to boost
the soil’s microbe population. After the estab-
lishment period—if you designed it well—the
garden should sustain itself, like a wild forest.
March/April 2020 47
by W I L L I A M photography by
HERKEWITZ COLE WILSON
March/April 2020 49

Charles
Anderson’s
Star Destroyer
stretches
almost 5
feet long,
but opposite the enormity is an
attention to detail—the filigree of
LEGO figurine hands ringing the
docking bay; the barnacle-like
swath of pipes that make up the
vents, pipes, and cannons—that
makes the ship an artistic, archi-
tectural marvel.
It took Charles 15 months
and more than 500 hours to
design and build his LEGO ver-
sion of the iconic Imperial Star
Destroyer, first imprinted on the
collective consciousness when
it crawled across the opening
shot of Star Wars in 1977. Like
the ship in the movie, Charles’s
destroyer intimidates with its
size. Weighing 44 pounds, the
creation boasts almost 20,000
LEGO bricks, three times as
many as the biggest set LEGO
has ever published (the 2017
Star Wars: Millennium Falcon
set, priced at $800).
But it’s not the mass, weight,
or obsessive detail that make
Charles’s starship so remark-
50 March/April 2020
able. “There a re def initely
big ger a nd more impres-
sive L EG O St a r Dest royers
out there,” says Charles, 43, a
senior technical animator in
Raleigh, North Carolina. “I’ve
seen one over 10 feet long.” His
construction is distinct because
it’s custom, the first such LEGO
model he’s built.
Cha rles credit s h is St a r
Destroyer to a digital revolution
transforming LEGO fandom.
Throughout LEGO’s 62-year
history, die-hards have always
built wild, imaginative models
from their plastic scrap heaps,
but a new wave of fan-made digi-
tal resources has given builders
the tools to craft custom models
that rival the detail and integrity
of official LEGO sets. Whether
you’re looking for cutting-edge
software to design your next
project or a site that can gener-
ate a piece-by-piece instruction
booklet, it’s likely out there, free
for download.
THE DIGITAL TOOLBOX
Like most new LEGO projects,
Charles’s ship materialized on
a computer before he started
clicking bricks together.
Today, fan-written LEGO
prog ra ms li ke Br ick smith,
LDraw, and Studio 2.0 allow
builders to “try out ideas with-
out needing to dig through your
tub of LEGOs or go out and find
parts at a garage sale,” says
Jacob Moore, creative direc-
tor at BrickLink, a LEGO fan
forum, brick market, and pub-
lisher of the Studio 2.0 design
program. Charles used Studio
2.0 for his Star Destroyer after
struggling with LEGO Digi-
tal Designer, the LEGO Group’s
in-house program. He says he
made the switch because the fan
software felt similar to the pro-
fessional programs he used at
his animation job. The intuitive
system surprised him. “I hadn’t
tried a project like this because I
thought I’d need all the parts in
front of me,” he says.
As a collector and hobbyist-
crafter of Star Wars props—
Charles just finished a life-size
replica of Han Solo trapped
in carbonite—Charles’s first
concern was making sure his
LEGO Star Destroyer would be
as close to film fidelity as possi-
ble. Given that the ship is shaped
like an acute triangle, precision
with the structure’s angles was
paramount. “I decided at the
beginning I wanted the whole
thing to be 5 feet long,” says
Charles. “That triggered a lot of
the other choices I had to make
about proportions.”
Charles acquired a publicly
available 3D scan of the A New
Hope Imperial Star Destroyer
and overlaid it into Studio 2.0 to
design the skeleton of his build.
 Charles’s ship is
accurate to the
stud except for
one thing: The
bridge is four
studs wider than
movie scale.

March/April 2020 51
Once he had the hull mapped
out, he moved on to the specif-
ics. “Of the 15 months I spent
designing and building this
thing, most were spent in this
software,” he says. “I jumped
back and forth a lot between
c r a f t i n g t he a e s t he t ic a l l y
pleasing parts of the model—
the plating and turrets—and
refining the superstructure
underlying it all. Every time I
designed something, I had to
find places to hook it together. I
just hoped it would stick without
breaking apart.”
Charles’ biggest design chal-
lenge (and concession) wa s
the ship’s bridge—the oblong
hexagon that towers above the
wedge-like body. “I wanted it to
be proportionally accurate,” he
says. “But I had to give in and
make it about four studs too
wide. I had all these beautiful
design elements that wouldn’t
fit if I made it smaller, and I
couldn’t bear to lose them.”
After 11 months, Charles’s
design was finished, and Stu-
dio 2.0 gave him a parts list
of almost 20,000 individual
bricks, which he uploaded into a
fan-written inventory software
called BrickStock.
BrickStock is connected to a
database of every type of indi-
vidual brick the LEGO Group
has ever produced. LEGO has
more than 3,400 unique plas-
tic pieces in over 60 colors on
record, from the classic 2x4
brick to LEGO tires and dino-
saur jaws.
Using BrickStock, Charles
found he already had about 8,500
of the 20,000 required destroyer
pieces from various LEGO sets
and lots he’d collected at garage
sales and online marketplaces.
He purchased some remaining
parts from the LEGO Group’s
online “Pick A Brick” service,
but he sourced most of them
from BrickLink, the fan com-
munity’s massive secondhand
market.
Moore claims BrickLink is the
largest eBay-style marketplace
for secondhand LEGOs, boast-
ing more than 10,000 worldwide
sellers. There’s plenty of sup-
ply: The LEGO Group reports
Once, Charles
producing more than 40 billion
knocked over bricks annually, about 4 million
his destroyer
by accident: “I
per hour. What’s more, LEGO
caught most of announced in late 2019 they
it, then did what
I had to. I started
would be purchasing BrickLink,
the instructions so whether you need a few spe-
over.” cific parts for a Star Destroyer
or as many as you can melt down
(more on that later), you can find
what you need at going market
price: about 11 cents for a work-
horse 2x16 gray plate.
As Charles’s bricks poured
in, he started assembling his
destroyer using the massive
3,300-page custom instruction

book provided by Studio 2.0. But
by page 200, he says, “things
started to fall apart.”
Design f laws spanned the
length of the ship. “The engine
end broke apart multiple times,”
Charles says. “I had all these
sharp angles that worked per-
fectly in my computer model,
but refused to stick together
in realit y, and the tip of the
model sagged at the bottom. To
fix that, I had to design a way
for the last underside panel to
lock upward into place.” This
wouldn’t be as straightforward
as a professional LEGO model,
which, by coincidence, wa s
becoming available at the exact
same time.
THE REAL DEAL
While Charles was modeling his
custom Star Destroyer on Stu-
dio 2.0, LEGO commissioned
their creative teams to build
the exact same ship. The LEGO
Group’s official “Ultimate Col-
lector Series Star Wars Imperial
Star Destroyer” hit shelves in
October 2019.
“I started building it in my
free time at work,” says Hen-
rik Andersen, lead designer
for the official Imperial Star
D est royer mo del. Hen r i k’s
supervisors noted his passion
project and tasked him to make
it official, assigning him a dead-
line and a price point of about
$700. That price cap, hefty as it
is, means LEGO’s destroyer is
around one-quarter the bricks
of Charles’s custom ship. Nev-
ertheless, at 4,784 pieces, the
off icial model is among the
biggest sets the company has pro-
duced. It takes about 30 hours of
brick-clicking to finish.
Henrik and Charles deployed
similar engineering strate-
gies to keep their respective
15- and 44-pound models from
collapsing or breaking apart.
They each relied on a support
spine and skeletal system con-
structed from classic LEGO
bricks and load-bearing LEGO
Technic bricks (the latter can
be fitted with interconnecting
axles). And they independently
worked out the same solution to
locking the starship’s underside
panels onto the model—using
the bottom spine as leverage for
pressing in the pieces.
It was the destroyer’s under-
s i d e h a n g e r (t h e on e t h a t
swallows Leia’s cruiser in A New
Hope) that posed the biggest
test for both builders—and they
each took a different approach.
“The hanger is almost as deep
as the ship, which ends up put-
ting a large hole right where
you’d want a support spine to
be,” says Charles. Henrik made
the official hanger shallower
than what you see in the films
so a spine could run above it,
but Charles bisected his ship’s
spine around the space for pro-
portional authenticity. “Making
that work was an enormous
challenge,” Charles says. “As I
added elements to the model,
the increasing weight started
to pull on [that section of the
spine], flexing pieces and pull-
ing apart bricks. At one point
I came back from a trip to find
the middle of the ship bowing
and falling apart because of that
hanger.” Charles had to rede-
sign the weight-bearing spine of
his 44-pound beast twice, add-
ing more supporting ribs and
adjusting the anchor points of
his underside panels.
Charles’s model is sleeker
and more tr ue-to-f ilm than
Henrik’s, who says he “tried
to balance the studs and f lat
surfaces to give it the charac-
teristic look of a LEGO model,”
but the two creators are largely
complimentary of one another’s
b u i l d s . continued on page 80
SELL YOUR
MODEL
WORLDWIDE
If you think your custom
LEGO model is impressive
enough to be mass-produced
and shipped around the world,
you have two options:
THE OFFICIAL ROUTE:
LEGO IDEAS. Launched
in 2008, this is where
fans pitch new sets for com-
mercial production. If you
have an idea for a set (must
be 2,000 pieces or less), build
it, take photos, and post it on
the LEGO Ideas website. If it’s
popular and receives “sup-
port” from 10,000 fans, the
LEGO Group will consider it for
production.
If the bigwigs approve,
you’ll work with the LEGO
design team in Denmark on
final tweaks. “It’s one thing
for a model to be complex
and beautiful, but you have to
make sure that building it is a
fun experience,” says Johnny
Castrup, head of LEGO Ideas.
After tweaks, your set will hit
stores worldwide, and you’ll
receive 1 percent of the royal-
ties in perpetuity.
It’s tough going, however: In
12 years, only 27 fan sets have
been published.
THE FAN ROUTE:
AFOL. In fall 2018,
BrickLink launched a
production platform called the
AFOL (Adult Fans of LEGO)
Designer Program. It worked
like a Kickstarter. Fans sub-
mitted more than 400 designs
through Studio 2.0, and Brick-
Link worked with professional
designers from the LEGO
Group to test those designs
and nominate 16 finalists for
crowdfunding.
The AFOL Designer Pro-
gram paid off in May 2019,
when BrickLink shipped 13
of the finalist products to
consumers. The sets are gor-
geous—there’s an antique fire
engine and a steampunk chess
set—and if you missed the
boat the first time, the contest
might return this year.
March/April 2020 53
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 ELECTRIC OUTDOOR TOOLS P. 56 POWER SAWS P. 63 ACCESSORIES P. 68

GAS-ENGINE OUTDOOR TOOLS P. 60 DIGITAL HAND TOOLS P. 65 HAND TOOLS P. 70

POWER TOOLS P. 62 POWER DRILLS AND DRIVERS P. 66 SHOP TOOLS P. 72

0
202
OL
AWARDS

TO
Build It
Stronger,
Fix It
Faster,
Maintain
It Better
THESE 48 EXCEPTIONAL TOOLS—THE BEST WE’VE TESTED THAT ARE ON THE MARKET NOW—WILL UNLEASH
YOUR CAPABILITY AND HELP YOU TAKE ANY PROJECT TO THE NEXT LEVEL. At Popular Mechanics, we’ve been
evaluating such equipment for more than 100 years. We test nearly 1,000 different tools each year—out in
the field, in our shop, and on projects throughout our homes. The ones on these pages are models that we’ve
found deliver reliable performance, quality craftsmanship, and often a strong value, excelling in our use and
earning our admiration. Most are new, but a few have been kicking around for a while because better options
have yet to arrive. No matter their age, we’re confident these will help you get any job done.

PH OTO G R A PH Y T R E VO R R A A B March/April 2020 55

56 March/April 2020
 Electric
Outdoor Tools

(For more
in-depth
reviews of top-
performing lawn
mowers, turn to
page 76.)

1. BEST ELECTRIC LAWN MOWER

EGO LM2100SP $430
The EGO’s design is out- 2
standing, featuring lots of
aluminum and impact-re-
sistant plastic. And the
mower cuts an impres-
sive amount of grass on
one charge (about 8,400
square feet in our test),
plus the controls and 2. BEST CORDLESS LEAF BLOWER
adjustment are easy and EGO LBX6000 $1,700
intuitive, even for first- If you’re worried that
time users. Its handle folds cordless blowers lack
forward quickly and eas- power, you have nothing
ily, then telescopes in for to fear with the LBX6000
rapid and compact storage and its king-size battery
in a garage or shed. pack. In comparison test-

March/April 2020 57

ing with other blowers, it
cleared leaves faster and
farther than all but one
of the gas-fueled models.
We particularly liked that
the handheld part of the
blower is lighter than any
other model we tried, at
only 6.4 pounds.
3. BEST CORDLESS CHAINSAW
Stihl MSA
200 C-BQ From $590
Stihl’s small but sur-
prisingly capable motor
makes this the champion
of cordless chainsaws.
The thin-kerf chain (its
teeth are 3⁄32-inch wide)
zips through each cut with
smoothness and preci-
sion. Yes, the MSA 200 is
expensive, but it’s every
bit a high-torque Stihl saw.
58 March/April 2020
3
4. BEST SMALL CORDLESS CHAINSAW just because they need to cold autumn day and blew
Stihl GTA 26 $150 be plugged in. But don’t our front yard clean of
Don’t let the diminutive skip over this one. We leaves, dried berries, pine
stature of this 3.1-pound connected the powerful, cones, sticks—the works.
saw, which has just a 120-volt WG521 to a 100- Then we air-swept the
4-inch guide bar and a foot extension cord on a garage, all in half an hour.
10.8-volt motor, fool you.
Although it’s designed for
minor yard-care jobs, par- 5
ticularly pruning, we were
able to dice up a fallen
tree limb with it, cut-
ting both small sticks and
branches up to 6 inches
thick. The whole cut-and-
clear job took a mere 15
minutes, without almost
any noise.
5. BEST CORDED LEAF BLOWER
Worx WG521 $70
With cordless tools domi-
nating this space, it’s easy
to overlook good products

6. BEST ELECTRIC RIDE-ON MOWER
Ryobi
RY48ZTR100 $4,199
This is a zero-turn mower
unlike any other we’ve
operated. Its 100-Ah lead-
acid battery and four
motors (one each to power
the rear wheels and the
two blades) provide a top
speed of about 7 mph. That
speed, quietness, and lack
of choke and throttle to
futz with make this thing
easy—and, dare we say,
fun—to operate. But it’s
also a grownup machine
7 that cuts in 42-inch-wide
strips, reducing your
mowing time.
7. BEST CORDLESS STRING TRIMMER
Greenworks
GT 161 From $250
The Greenworks is com-
mercial-grade, but if
your trimming require-
ments are on the heavy
end of the spectrum,
then a model like the GT
Electric Outdoor Tools
161 could be ideal. We
admit it can be expensive
($475 with a 2.5-Ah bat-
tery and charger). But its
explosive power gives it
the muscle of a gas-en-
gine machine for mowing
down the tall stuff and
scything through weeds
and saplings.
8. BEST CORDLESS HEDGE TRIMMER
Husqvarna
520iHE3 $450
With a 22-inch blade on a
pivoting head and a tele-
scoping pole providing
a maximum reach of 11
feet, this is the most ver-
satile hedge trimmer
we’ve tested. Use it to
clean up and shape tall
bushes, even their tops,
or stretch down embank-
ments with it to get at
those hard-to-reach spots.
8
March/April 2020 59
 9
BEST
SNOW
THROWER
Gas-Engine
Outdoor Tools

W
hile so much trol it, not to your side.
power-tool inno- By reducing that twist
vation lately inherent to leaf blow-
has focused on ers, Echo made one
cordless, we of the least-fatiguing
still maintain that you handheld models
turn to a gas-engine we’ve used. And it’s got
tool when you need out- power to spare.
right tenacity. Take the Another simple-
(9) Ariens Rapidtrak but-great Echo product
($3,499). Powered by is the (12) CS-361P
a 420cc engine and a ($400). Its torque-
hydrostatic transmis- rich 35.8cc engine and
sion, the snow thrower 10-pound frame give
clears a 32-inch path the chainsaw a high
and launches its out- power-to-weight ratio.
put (in our case, wet Combine that with the
sawdust, weighing 21 responsive trigger, and
pounds per cubic foot) you get a saw that’s pro-
a whopping 36 feet. ductive and fun to use
The (10) DR Power for feathering your way
SP30 ($1,300) is a through a branch or
self-propelled mower; using its torque to fell
at its top speed, you’d and limb.
need to jog behind it. Finally, Honda’s
The aluminum deck newest inverter gen-
reduces its weight and erator, the (13) E2200i
the potential for rust- ($1,049) has 2,200
ing, and its 223cc watts—compared with
engine provides all the 2,000 of its pre-
the power you need for decessor—without an
clipping and bagging accompanying jump
11
wet grass and leaves. in weight. Its shut-
The beauty of off dial provides more BEST
HANDHELD
the (11) Echo PB-250 thorough fuel removal LEAF
($185)—a simple when you’re emptying BLOWER
gas-engine, handheld the carburetor, elimi-
blower—is the off- nating the chances of
set tube that recoils damaging the E2200i
in line with your arm, with stale fuel and
where you can best con- hard starts.

60 March/April 2020
TESTING We evaluated everything here in our test zone—for yard tools, that includes lawns, golf courses, wood lots,
and gardens. With the mowers, we cut long and short grass, in conditions from the lush dampness of spring to
OUTDOOR high summer’s long, dry days, rolling up and across hills to gauge the uniformity of the cut, quality of bagging or
mulching, and ease of use. Hedge trimmers we took to yews, boxwoods, and, of course, a behemoth hedge—
TOOLS ours was 8-feet tall, 6-feet wide, and 60-feet long. We brought string trimmers to a mess of shin-deep weeds,
briars, and saplings. We cut as many “cookies” of dense white oak as we could with each chainsaw from our test
batch, taking into account trigger response, vibration, and stalling. And we used the leaf blowers to clear sawdust and leaves
from 6x14-foot and 6x12-foot areas, respectively, before we took them to a local airport and fired them up in front of a plane’s
pitot tube to measure the wind speed they generated.

10
BEST
WIDE-CUT
LAWN
MOWER

13
BEST
GENERATOR

12
BEST GAS
CHAINSAW

March/April 2020 61
 15

Power
Tools
14. BEST CORDLESS NAILER
Metabo
NT1850DE $271
The heavy-duty NT1850DE
has a permanently sealed
air cylinder for rapid-fire
capability; Metabo esti-
mates that it can punch
three nails a second. Even
professional carpenters
would be hard pressed to
make use of that, but what
we can say is that it rapidly
sank every nail we fired in
softwoods and oak.
15. BEST GLUE GUN
Arrow GT 300 $50
The Arrow’s 300 watts
delivers rapid and sus-
tained glue-melting
power. Use it to gob on an
adhesive or apply a thin
line—both are afforded by
a simple-to-adjust trigger
mechanism. This was the
only gun in our recent test
with an on/off pilot light,
which is important for
safety and saving energy.
16. BEST ANGLE GRINDER
Bosch
GWX10-45DE $89
Changing an angle grind-
er’s wheel has gotten a
lot faster with the Bosch
X-Lock system. Pull up
on the tool’s lever and the
two spring-loaded jaws
retract, freeing the wheel.
Push the next wheel into
place, and the jaws lock
with a satisfying click. It’s
true that the tool accepts
just X-Lock accessories,
but it’s the first (and
only) angle grinder that
requires mere seconds to
swap parts, which is a big
step forward.
17. BEST SANDER
Bosch ROS20VSC $49
This Bosch is comfortable
and fast. But what we like
most about it is how the
rubber O-ring seal on the
dust port and the airtight
canister work together to
pick up all the dust gener-
ated during sanding. And
less dust on the surface

14

16

A Tool We Will Dremel began making its iconic rotary tool in the 1930s to create an alternative that was lighter,
slimmer, quieter, and easier to handle than the only tool like it at the time, the industrial die
Forever Love: grinder. It achieved this with a new form of collet mounted atop a slim high-speed, low-torque
motor. Within 10 years or so, the company had refined that rotary tool, which hasn’t changed
The Mighty Dremel
much since. Today’s product looks unmistakably like that older one, and its ability to drill small
holes, sand, grind, and cut has withstood the test of time. It was the first power tool I used, in my dad’s basement workshop around
1973. It has an uncanny versatility suited to the many oddball jobs that crop up during small repairs around the house, particularly grind-
ing or cutting metal in a tight spot. And it’s got guts that allow it to punch well above its weight class. Example: I used mine to make a
tight-radius cut when removing rotted steel from the windshield recess of my long-gone 1979 Chevy truck. By the time I cut away the
affected metal, the Dremel was almost too hot to hold. I let it cool off, and I’m still using it. How’s that for durability? —Roy Berendsohn

62 March/April 2020
 Power
Saws

19

17

of what you’re sanding

means there’s less to grind
into the abrasive pad,
keeping it clean so you get
more use out of it.

18. BEST OSCILLATING MULTITOOL

Fein MultiMaster FMM
350QSL $199
Fein pioneered the oscil-
lating multitool category
in 1967, and it still builds
the best ones. The 3.6-amp
MultiMaster does more 20
cutting, sanding, and
grinding per amp—and
does so more smoothly—
than any other we’ve
tested. And its many 19. BEST TILE SAW 20. BEST SMALL CIRCULAR SAW
accessories (such as sand- Craftsman DeWalt DCS571B $129
ing and grinding pads, saw CMCS4000M1 $300 DeWalt’s 4.5-inch circu-
blades, and a putty knife) Any small tile job can ben- lar saw is a spunky little
snap easily on and off. efit from this 20-volt wet character powered by
saw, powered by the same a 20-volt battery. Its
battery used in Crafts- hefty gears, remarkably
man’s other cordless tools. large for such a small
Our test on ceramic floor tool, translate motor
tiles was conclusive: The torque into some seri-
30-pound machine is a ous wood-cutting output.
clean cutter and highly We used it to crosscut 2x4
portable, drawing water framing lumber and 3⁄4-
from an onboard tank inch plywood, and found
without the need for a hose that it handled both easily
attachment. and efficiently.

TESTING SAWS Saws are for cutting. So we used them for just that, taking
the circular saws to Douglas fir of various thicknesses (run-
ning with and against the grain) and hem fir lumber sticky with sap, the metal-cutting
saws to studs, pipe, and rebar, and the tile saws to—you guessed it—tile.
18

March/April 2020 63
Power Saws
21. BEST CORDLESS BANDSAW
Ryobi P590 $179
Put down your hacksaw
and pick up the P590, a
cordless metal-cutting
solution priced for the rest
of us. (It’s south of $180
for the saw, two blades,
the battery, and the char-
ger. Solo, the saw costs
$129.) It cuts through typ-
ical hardware-store steel
cleanly and in no time.
22
22. BEST BUDGET CIRCULAR SAW
Skil 5280-01 $50
Skil’s long experience
with the circular saw
comes to the fore with this
inexpensive-but-capable
tool, the best in our recent
test of homeowner-grade
machines. It handles
nicely, its cutting depth
64 March/April 2020
21
is easy to adjust, and its
15-amp motor powers it
through wood even up to
its full blade depth of 2.36
inches.
23. BEST METAL-CUTTING SAW
Makita XWL01Z $224
Makita’s 14-inch cordless
chop saw is equipped with
a gigantic brushless motor
powered by two 18-volt
batteries. It’s a single tool
with only one mission
in life, which it carried
out better than any other
we’ve tried. Let the sparks
fall where they may.
Digital
Hand
Tools
23
 24
BEST
TORPEDO
LEVEL
26
BEST THERMAL
CAMERA
D
igital devices can
be cranky and frail,
and it’s right to won-
der whether adding
digital features
to hand tools is ill-
advised. But we’ll admit,
this trio has won us over.
Consider the (24) Empire
em105.9 ($70). Its back-
lit screen reads level with
a horizontal line, and
arrows tell you which
end of the level to move
and in which direc-
tion. It expresses slope
as degrees, tenths of a
degree, percentage of
slope, or a ratio such as
a quarter of an inch of rise
per horizontal foot (or
run, as it’s known). That’s
a lot of capability in a
tool that is only 9 inches
long and about 2 inches
wide. And it has three
powerful magnets that
help it cling to pipe, con-
duit, or metal strut.
Then there’s this angle-
reading orange cube, the
(25) Klein 935DAG ($30).
It’s small enough to tuck
into a tool bag or a pocket,
and we found it useful
for measuring the slope
of our mower test areas.
That tiny size (about
2.25-inches long and wide
and 1 inch thick) makes it
easy to use in tight spots. A
zeroing function finds the
angle from one surface to
another, while a Hold but-
ton locks the reading.
The (26) Flir C3 ($700)
is a power tool in its own
diagnostic way. We use
25
BEST
ANGLE
READER
it here during our test-
ing of everything from
appliances to workwear.
Why? Taking a thermal
image can reveal poten-
tially useful info about
the mechanical or electri-
cal health of a machine or
show you whether a gar-
ment leaks heat. If the
Flir’s screen indicates a
particularly hot or cold
spot where it doesn’t
belong, take that as a sign
that something could be
amiss and check it out.
March/April 2020 65

27
27. BEST CORDLESS DRILL-DRIVER
Milwaukee
Installer’s Tool $229
The Installer’s Tool gives
you about as much ver-
satility as can be packed
into a soft-sided toolbox.
It consists of a 12-volt
drill body and four nimble
Power heads: a keyless 3⁄8-inch
chuck, an offset driver
Drills head, a 1⁄4-inch hex-
head chuck, and a right-
and angle head that the other
heads snap onto and off
of. It’s fast and effective
Drivers in both drilling and driv-
ing around corners, over
obstacles, and in tight
spots. Any repair or instal-
66 March/April 2020
lation is guaranteed to go
faster and easier with this
little gem.
28. BEST MID-DUTY ROTARY HAMMER
Skil Pwrcore
RH170401 $118
Our test revealed that
Skil’s 20-volt Pwrcore is
ideal for heavy-duty use
around the house. It takes
European-style bits that
slip-lock into the chuck
automatically, easily
drills wood and steel, and
strikes with percussive
action strong enough
to hammer a hole into
concrete. In chisel mode,
it hits in a direct line with-
out rotation.
29. BEST BUDGET DRILL
Ryobi D620H $60
Another example of some-
thing that’s not new but
still good, this corded
drill was twice the tool
compared to others it
faced in our inexpensive-
drill shootout. We tested
them all with spade bits,
twist drills, and drill taps.
The motors in the others
burned out, and they
stalled and jammed while
drilling holes in wood or
steel. Not the Ryobi. It
sailed right through.
29

28
30. BEST COMBO KIT
Ridgid R9603 $179
The best buy from our
tests is this Ridgid. Its
drill driver isn’t as power-
ful as others, but it’s fast
and comfortable, making
it an almost outlandish
deal when you consider
30
that you get the drill, the
impact driver, two batter-
ies, a charger, and a case
for the price of one tool.
31. BEST SMALL IMPACT DRIVER
Makita XDT12Z $179
This svelte and compact
driver is also a pleasure to
use. Pull the trigger and
you’ll immediately notice
the XDT12Z’s smooth,
quiet motor. These are the
marks of a tool intended—
and, based on our testing,
great—for daily profes-
sional use. It’s equipped
with four speed settings,
wood and bolt modes,
and two tightening
modes that prevent
fasteners from breaking
or stripping.
31
March/April 2020 67
 33

33. BEST BOLT EXTRACTOR

GearWrench
Bolt Biter $152
The Bolt Biter socket is
a substantial improve-
ment over products like it
that have come and gone
before. Formed out of
tough, chrome-molybde-
num steel, each socket has
a tapered, clover-shaped
cavity to help it better grip
rounded bolt heads. Plus,
they work with any tool:
ratchet wrench, air tool, or
a cordless wrench.

32 34. BEST WORKSHOP RADIO

DeWalt
DWST08820 $229
DeWalt’s DWST08820 has
an ingress protection (IP)
rating of 54, meaning air-
borne dust and splashing
water can’t get in. That’s
useful, but how does this
radio sound? Outstand-
32. BEST EVERYDAY BIT SET ing. Even subtleties of
Bosch DDMS40 $21 classical music and jazz
Unlike with most other
kits, the bits in this one go
in and out of their hold-
ers easily. Everything in
the DDMS40 is rated, and
tough enough, for you to
use with an impact driver.
Among its 40 pieces are
many common sizes of
Phillips head, square

Accessories drive, and Torx, and eight

twist drills (1⁄16-inch to 1⁄4-
inch), seven 2-inch bits,
and a bit holder.

68 March/April 2020

come through clearly with
saws running and ham-
mers whacking away.
Suddenly, a jobsite feels a
lot more tranquil.
35. BEST POCKET-SCREW GUIDE
Kreg 320 $40
The 320 is a beautiful
redesign of Kreg’s exist-
ing small pocket-screw
kit, making the method
of joining with these fas-
teners even easier. It
contains two guides that
can be used together or
separately, the drill bit, a
depth gauge, and a clamp
head. Kreg even throws in
35
two small boxes of pocket
screws for the price.
36. BEST HOLE SAW KIT
Lenox Speed Slot $368
The stair-step slot in the
side of these hole saws
enables you to get some
leverage with a screw-
driver to pry out the waste
plug that the saw has just
cut. It’s also good that
each hole saw is toothed
with finely ground carbide
tips, allowing you to cut
through steel, wood, cast
iron, stainless steel, fiber
cement board, and plaster.
37. BEST HEAVY-DUTY BIT SET
Cle-Line Bit Index $50
Proof that high-qual-
ity, American-made twist
drill bits aren’t extinct,
each of the 15 in this set
is beautifully machined
and coated with a wear-re-
sistant finish. Their
split-point, 135-degree
tips don’t easily slip off the
starting point, especially
handy when you’re drilling
hard steel.
36
37
38. BEST WELDING SQUARE
Mag-Mate
WS410CP $37
Magnetic welding squares
catch molten metal splat-
ter as they hold parts in
position at 90 degrees
to one another. To test
if the Mag Mate’s cop-
per jacket lets this flying
junk slide off, we handed
it to a member of the boil-
ermaker’s union. After
running yards of mig wire
on two-inch steel plate, he
returned it (no worse for
the wear) approvingly.
39. BEST STUD FINDER
Stanley S50 $12
We like the newest bells
and whistles as much as
anyone. But sometimes
you just don’t need all
that, especially when the
work is as basic as locating
a wall stud or ceiling joist.
And Stanley’s S50 makes
it easy. Just press the but-
ton and glide the device
slowly along the wall,
keeping an eye on the indi-
cator. When it lights up,
you’ve reached an edge.
39
March/April 2020 69

Hand
Tools
40. BEST SOCKET SET
Craftsman
CMMT99206 $99
Craftsman made its name
with products like this
mechanics’ tool set. Each
of the 216 pieces—1⁄4-,
3⁄8-, and 1⁄2-inch drives
(both standard and deep),
extensions, combina-
tion box-end wrenches, a
screwdriver and bit set,
and Allen wrenches—
is covered with a smooth
and lustrous chrome plat-
ing over chrome vanadium
steel to defend against cor-
rosion and fracture.
70 March/April 2020
41. BEST MULTITOOL
Leatherman
Free K4 $90
The Free K4 is an out-
standing example of a
tool that combines the
features of a standard fold-
ing pocketknife with the
more useful ones of a mul-
titool. You can easily open
its main 3-inch blade with
one thumb, and out of its
back fold all manner of
other good things: scissors,
an awl/punch, a straight
screwdriver bit, and a Phil-
lips screwdriver–bottle
opener combo tool.
41
42. BEST POCKETKNIFE
Kershaw Skyline $45 42
The U.S.-made Kershaw
Skyline is a slim, attrac-
tive everyday carry.
And its blade is made
from 14C28N, a stain-
less-steel alloy with loads
of uniformly distributed
carbides—super-hard par-
ticles locked in the steel’s
microstructure. These help
it resist wear, corrosion,
and a dulling phenome-
non called rolling, where
the edge or even the knife
40 point bends back like the
tip of a breaking wave.
43

43. BEST SCREWDRIVER SET
Klein 32288 $50
Klein’s screwdriver is here
for several reasons. First,
the bits are extremely
sturdy, suited to the work
of professional electri-
cians. Second, they swap
easily in and out of the
handle: Push them in to
lock, and twist the handle
collar to pop them out. The
whole shebang—five bits
and handle—stores in a
neat little wallet.
bers on its back, making it
far easier to read regard-
less of your view.
45. BEST SNOW SHOVEL
Ames True Temper
1603400 $20
This Ames True Tem-
per shovel is a study in
sturdiness. Its 1.25-
inch-diameter steel
handle is firmly planted
to the 18-inch-wide blade
with a heavily ribbed
socket. And what a blade.
It’s molded from one piece
of slippery, high-density
polyethylene that resists
clumping snow, meaning
you spend more time shov-
eling and less time trying
to bang the True Temper
clean. A wear strip riveted
on the blade’s tip helps it
withstand the occasional
rough cleaning, though.
45

44. BEST TAPE MEASURE

Milwaukee
48-22-0225M $25
Milwaukee added features
you wouldn’t normally
expect in a stout, 25-foot
tape measure. And it
got them all right. But
our favorite is the com- 44
bination of standard
horizontally arranged
numbers on the front and
vertically arranged num-

March/April 2020 71
 46

moves an astonishing
amount of dust. It’s so
powerful, the company
warns that you should use
only vacuum-rated flex
hose and duct; the sys-
tem’s suction is so great
that it will crush lesser
materials as flat as a pan-
cake. The benefit to you:
Dust and chips from your
machines and power tools
find their way into the
Supercell’s collector, not
into your lungs or onto the
shop floor.

47. BEST HEAVY-DUTY TABLE SAW

Metabo HPT $599
This is the only table saw
we know of that’s both
cordless and corded,
46. BEST DUST COLLECTOR giving you maximum
Oneida Supercell $2,395 mobility and more options
Two things go into remov- of where and how to cut
ing flying sawdust: air lumber. Use it in the
volume and suction. The garage and plugged into a
Supercell has plenty of wall outlet. Or go cordless
both. Oneida designed it out in the middle of the
to bring industrial-duty yard or on a construction
Shop Tools air movement to the small
shop or garage. Its 230-
site where cleanup is less
of a concern. We like
volt, five-horsepower the 68-pound saw’s soft
motor and fan assembly start, which brings it up

72 March/April 2020
 47

to working speed slowly to our unqualified endorse-

reduce motor strain and ment. The DWE7480 is
increase safety. surprisingly accurate, The Most
due to a fixed fence that
48. BEST SMALL TABLE SAW rides on rack-and-pinion
Iconic Anvil
DeWalt DWE7480 $299
We have several years
rails. Weighing just 48
pounds and running off
Ever Made
logged with this compact of a 15-amp, 4,800-rpm Most of us would rarely use the word “graceful”
DeWalt table saw in the motor, it has a power-to- to describe an anvil, the hulking block of steel
Popular Mechanics weight ratio that simply or iron used to pound hot metal into shape.
shop. And it has earned can’t be beat. Not so professional and amateur blacksmiths,
especially when they refer to a Hay-Budden
anvil, the prototypical implement of the late
1800s and early 1900s. A Hay-Budden—from
petite foot-size models weighing 10 pounds
to 800-pound behemoths—has an unusually
beautiful sweep and an incredible strength
achieved by the manufacturer’s working
knowledge of metallurgy that was quite sophis-
ticated for its day. Today, these anvils are as
sought after as they were back then.
Sadly, Hay-Budden as a brand came to an
end in the 1920s. But it’s a testament to its
peerless design that, in this digital era, a host of
companies, like JHM and McLellan Blacksmith-
ing, carry on its legacy, shaping beautifully
wrought anvils that look every bit the part.
These aren’t toys for the dilettante. Visit the
CO U R T E S Y J E S S E S AVAG E ( A N V I L)

website of these manufacturers and you find

deep dives on metallurgy, heat treating, and
anvil features that help a smith shape a knife,
say, or form up graceful ironwork that might
become a gate or fence. It speaks to the endur-
ing fascination with forming hot metal that
there are probably as many anvil makers now as
48 there were in Hay-Budden’s time.

March/April 2020 73
 Home
11
// BY PA IGE SZMODIS //
The Best
Cast-Iron
Skillets
to Last a
Lifetime
T
H E POWE RHOUSE O F
all kitchen equipment,
the cast-iron skillet is
the only cookware that
improves with use—
ea ch t i me you co ok
with it, polymerized
oil builds up to form a non-
stick, water-repelling surface.
Compared with aluminum or
stainless steel, cast iron has low
thermal conductivity but offers
superior heat retention, making
it ideal for high-temperature
cooking such as searing steak
and caramelizing vegetables.
However, not all cast iron is
created equal. The pans from
brands like Griswold and Wag-
ner that you might find in your
grandmother’s kitchen or at flea
markets got their smooth sur-
face through hand-polishing.
Most of today’s manufacturers
forgo this time-consuming and
expensive process, and instead
preseason the cast iron to reduce
stickiness (although a few are
going back to time-tested pol-
ishing methods). With the right
skillet and skills, you could build
upon the factory seasoning to
rival the polished pans you’d
find at antique shops. Plus, you’ll
get more satisfaction (and save
money) by doing it yourself.
74 March/April 2020
BEST EVERYDAY SKILLET the heaviest skillet we The young Stargazer
1 . LO D G E C L A SS I C
Price: $32
tested, but its weight
potentially contrib-
brand reigned supreme
with its nonstick sur-
Weight: 7.6 lb.
Smoothness: 95.5 dBa
Stickiness: 4
uted to its excellence
in searing and heat dis-
tribution. It quickly
face. Compared
with more expensive
options, Stargazer’s
Searing: 7
Heat Distribution: 4
delivered an even, dark
sear with no hotspots
and very little sticking.
12-inch skillet is bet-
ter balanced in terms
of weight and heat
Pouring: 5
The cast-iron brand
that you can find just
BEST VALUE
3 . V I C TO R I A
conductivity and distri-
bution. It doesn’t have
about anywhere, Lodge
has been around for
over 120 years. The
Price: $25
Weight: 7.4 lb.
pour spouts, but its
unique, rolled rim never
dripped. With a long
Classic 12-inch skillet handle designed to
Smoothness: 80.5 dBa
doesn’t exceed oth- stay cool and the larg-
Stickiness: 3
ers at any particular est helper handle, it’s
Searing: 9
task, but it’s a popular as comfortable as it is
Heat Distribution: 8
and affordable choice Pouring: 9 functional.
that’ll yield decent heat You can find this
conductivity and bal- 12-inch Colombia- BEST ENAMELED
ance—despite its heft made skillet for $25 5 . LE C R E U S E T
and slower heat rate— or less, yet it outper- S I G N AT U R E I R O N
for decades. formed some skillets Price: $200
that cost more than Weight: 6.6 lb.
BEST OVERALL eight times its price.
Smoothness: 85.5 dBa
PERFORMANCE It may require some
Stickiness: 7
2. SMITHEY IRON - extra seasoning to
Searing: 8
WA R E N O. 1 2 improve its nonstick
Heat Distribution: 7
surface, but overall,
Price: $200 Pouring: 6
it supplied even heat
Weight: 8 lb. The high-end French
distribution with an
Smoothness: 91.1 dBa Le Creuset label lived
ergonomic handle.
Stickiness: 10 up to its reputation
Searing: 10 as the maker of the
BEST NONSTICK
Heat Distribution: 10 finest enameled cast-
4 . STA RGA Z E R
Pouring: 4 iron cookware. Both
Smithey Ironware is Price: $130 the interior and exte-
one of the new compa- Weight: 6.2 lb. rior of this 11.75-inch
nies taking inspiration Smoothness: 70 dBa pan are glossy and
from vintage pans by Stickiness: 10 resistant to stains, and
polishing the interior Searing: 8 it has balanced han-
to create a gorgeous, Heat Distribution: 9 dling with a wide loop
glassy surface. This is Pouring: 10 helper handle.
HOW Cookbook author David Joachim conducted a series of five tests to judge
10 skillets’ heat conductivity, heat distribution, smoothness, stickiness, and
WE
ergonomics. He measured smoothness by scraping a metal spatula over their
surfaces and recording the decibel levels (dBa). He judged factory seasoning
TESTED
(stickiness) by frying an egg with no oil at medium heat. Heat distribution was
tested by observing burn patterns on paper circles. For heat conductivity, he
seared boneless strip steaks to monitor the speed, evenness, and depth of
browning. Finally, he poured one cup of water from each pan to consider the
ergonomics of the handle, pouring spouts, and weight. After ranking each
skillet from 1 to 10 (worst to best) in each test and considering its value, we
determined that these five are the best skillets you should consider.
 2

4
T R E VO R R A A B

March/April 2020 75
 Tools
12
// BY ROY BEREN DSOH N //

The Best
Mowers
for Taming
Unruly
Lawns

M
OWE R TESTI NG H E RE IS
nea rly a yea r-round
affair. For this review, we
began on a cold and windy
March day, searching out
south-fa cing hillsides
devoid of snow; from that
skimpy start, we mowed on through
the first full growth in early spring,
the high and wet grass of early sum-
mer, and the dusty conditions a couple
of months later when there was hardly
anything to cut. We kept right on mow-
ing when the grass bounced back in late
summer and into the fall, bagging clip-
pings and leaves. We called it quits on a
cold and gray November afternoon that
was much like the day we started. motor’s rotations per minute up
Our test areas were a mixed lot—a Price: $560 Weight: 80 lb. and down to meet power demand
golf course, an office building lawn, Volts: 60 Cutting width: 22 in. and extend run time. Users familiar
and the turf at Delaware Valley Uni- Blades: 1 Drive: Rear-wheel with the brand’s gas-engine Per-
versity in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Cut area on one charge: sonal Pace mowers—the farther
The mowers were equally diverse. We 5,400 sq. ft. you push the drive bar forward,
tested standard-width and wide-cut the faster the machine goes—
models, some powered by gas engines Toro mowers do well in our tests will like this rig. And it has a
and others by battery-fed motors. We for the simple reason that they’re steel deck, hefty rear axle, and
also tried a big, electric, zero-turn rid- designed and built well. We were three-function capability: mulch,
ing mower. At each stage, we evaluated relieved to find that the company side discharge, and bag. Now, does
cut cleanness, bagging capability, side didn’t skimp with this machine, a it power through tall grass the
discharge, how each fared on unruly full-size, self-propelled, rear-drive way the gas-engine Personal Pace
non-turf grass, and whether tires eas- unit that gave us exactly 30 min- mower does? No. Still, its overall
ily shed or picked up moist clippings. utes of mulching, hill climbing, and performance is commendable. We
Out of the 17 we put through the paces, cutting, scything down the tallest recommend it for gently sloped
here are the top performers. (See the and lushest grass in the test. (And and maintained suburban yards,
full report at popularmechanics.com.) it ran longer than 45 minutes under just purchase a second battery.

76 March/April 2020

Price: $700 Weight: 69.9 lb.
Volts: 36 Cutting width: 20 in.
Blades: 1 Drive: Rear-wheel
Cut area on one charge:
4,285 sq. ft.
Costing $700, the RMA will
cause any homeowner to won-
der what they’re getting for
that money. One answer is
robust construction; the Stihl
has many burly parts, includ-
ing an all-steel deck and a thick
20-inch blade. But it also has
T R E VO R R A A B
small and important details.
The motor is located almost
entirely above the deck, pro-
make the Stihl slightly taller
than other mowers, but there’s
no harm in that. We also like
the slot, tucked below the bat-
tery hatch, for a second six-Ah
battery. And, as with the Toro,
we advise investing in that sec-
ond battery. The mower did
reasonably well in mulching
mode, cutting taller-than-aver-
age grass with the deck set at
mid-height, but it left behind
trails of mulched clippings in
places where the lawn was
particularly lush. On the other
hand, every battery mower we
tested left some deposits in its
wake when the grass was tall.
Price: $549 Weight: 78 lb.
Engine: 190cc Cutting
width: 21 in. Blades: 1
Drive: Rear-wheel
The best gas-engine mower
we’ve used lately is this Snap-
per. It’s got all the bells and
whistles of a fully outfitted
machine, such as single-lever
deck-height adjustment,
a big, powerful engine,
three functions (mulch, side
discharge, and bag), and
push-button starting. On
that last point, we like it, but
if we’d made this mower, we
recoil; you never know when
a battery or push button will
give out and leave you with a
shaggy lawn. The mower uses
a battery similar to that found
on power tools—slide it into
the receiver on the engine
housing, push the button, and
away you go. The Snapper
has sufficient power for even
tall and non-turf grasses,
leaves a clean cut, and bags
well, with no visible clippings
trailing in its wake. We prefer
mowers with a deck slightly
wider than the wheelbase to
facilitate trimming, which this
mower does not have, but
that’s not a serious demerit.
March/April 2020 77
 Tools
12

B AC K FRONT

THE 3 TYPES OF
DRIVETRAINS
There are two ways to propel a mower:
You push, or the mower itself does. And if
you opt for one that moves forward under
its own power via a drivetrain, you’ve got to
choose between rear-wheel, front-wheel, and
all-wheel drive. Here’s how each works.
1

1. REAR-WHEEL mission, pulleys,

▶ Pull the mower’s and drive belts,
handle to apply ten- the gears at the
sion to the drive front axle turn the
cable and a spring wheels.
attached to the ▶ This leads to bet-
transmission. ter maneuverability
▶ The transmission but less traction
pivots; the pulley at going uphill.
its top moves away
from the engine.
3. ALL-WHEEL
▶ This tenses the
drive belt coming ▶ Once again, pull
from the engine the mower’s
output shaft, drive handle to
spinning the trans- tense the drive cable
2
mission pulley. and the spring.
▶ That rotates gears ▶ The transmis-
at the rear axle, sion pivots; the two
turning the wheels. pulleys move away
from the engine.
2. FRONT-WHEEL ▶ That tenses
two drive belts,
▶ The process here
is much the same spinning the trans-
as with rear-wheel mission pulleys.
drive, except the ▶ Gears at both the
configuration is front and rear axles
flipped. turn all four wheels
▶ As you pull back for better traction,
on the drive han- but at greater cost
dle and tension and maintenance as
moves through the there are more parts
cable, spring, trans- to wear out.
3

78 March/April 2020
BEST FOR BAGGING
M U R R AY 11 A - B 2 A 975 8
Price: $236 Weight: 57.2 lb.
Engine: 163cc Cutting width: 21 in.
Blades: 1 Drive: Push
If you’re shopping for a mid-duty mower,
this machine is a great choice. We were
pleasantly surprised with the tight
seal between the bag and the deck;
the resulting airflow under the mower
inflated that bag like a balloon. And sure
enough, it was packed with collected
clippings by the time we were done. For
the price, the mower has a long list of
high-quality parts: a large engine, good
workmanship visible everywhere with
no rough edges on metal parts, and
smoothly rolling wheels. All these con-
tribute to the Murray’s journeyman
performance in bagging, side discharge,
and mulching. And the manufacturer
threw in a bonus feature normally found
on more-expensive mowers: two-lever
deck-height adjustment.
EASIEST TO USE
WO R X WG751
Price: $348 Weight: 50.2 lb. Volts: 40
Cutting Width: 19 in. Blades: 1
Drive: Push Cut area on one charge:
4,830 sq. ft.
The Worx is a light, simple, and, based on
our testing, well suited to smooth sub-
urban yards. Counting the bag and two
batteries, it weighs a hair over 50 pounds.
We found that lightness makes it easy
to push up or across hills, even with a full
grass bag. And its deck was simple to
adjust via the single height-changing lever.
A hatch on the side of the deck permits
you to easily switch between its mulch,
bag, and side-discharge functions. Some
of the weight savings comes via a plastic
nose and a torsion box (a web-like assem-
bly of plastic fins). While that raises some
concerns about the durability, nothing
broke during our test. And the WG751 is
hardly devoid of robust features—it has
two rigid steel axles at the front and rear.
Price: $232 Weight: 65 lb.
Engine: 140cc Cutting width: 21 in.
Blades: 1 Drive: Push
The horsepower war rages on as compa-
nies try to pump more and more oomph
into their lawn mowers. But this one does
just fine with a modest Briggs & Strat-
ton engine, thank you very much. And
that contributes to the machine’s light
weight, which makes it nimble and easy
to handle. It’s downright fun to mow
with. The TB115 bags and mulches sur-
prisingly well, handles normal-height
grass, and—with the side-discharge
chute in place—performed admirably in
tall grass. Let’s be clear: It doesn’t have
the power of a 190cc mower. But if you
don’t need that, why buy more engine?
For maintaining small lawns or trimming
landscapes prior to tackling the tougher
stuff onboard a rider, this Troy-Bilt is the
cost-effective choice.
March/April 2020 79
BUILDING MY OWN AIRPLANE
continued from page 35
intimate, but it’s more so when you’ve
built the plane yourself. As a pilot, you
have to be ahead of the airplane or
you’re in trouble. In a kit plane, whether
it’s in flight or on the ground, you’ll
always know exactly where an issue is
because you’re the one who assembled
it. There’s a level of pride in whatever
you’re flying, too: I built this. I’m still
assembling, so I don’t have that full
sense of attachment yet, but once I sit
in the pilot’s seat, it’ll hit me.
I have a newborn at home, so now
I’m going through all of this with
safety in mind. All the decisions I’m
making come down to feeling capa-
ble. If I don’t feel capable, I’d rather
find people who are more experienced
to perform the task. For example: I’m
hiring a professional test pilot for my
first flight with the TSi. You have to
stall the airplane, test the maneuver-
ing, take it up to max speed, and verify
everything the manufacturer tells you
the plane can handle.
These days, I’ve made planes my life.
I’m a full-time aviation YouTuber. Most
people don’t know how to build their
own airplane or what getting a pilot’s
license entails, and I hope that by doc-
umenting what I am doing on YouTube
I can attract more people to kit planes
and aviation. My channel was taking
off before I decided to build the plane,
and my wife asked if I’d still choose a
kit plane if YouTube didn’t exist. Abso-
lutely. Ever since I earned my license,
my goal was to build a life around flying.
It took me 20 years to reach this point.
One of the best things about build-
ing a YouTube channel has been the
community I’ve entered. I’ve had peo-
ple from all over the world reach out to
me and say my channel inspired them
to start doing some type of aviation.
It encourages me to keep doing this
more and more. I want to feel like I’m
representing more than Nigerians or
immigrants, like I am speaking for any-
one who has ever wanted to fly. I don’t
want to get on my channel and say, “Hey,
look at me, I’m a Nigerian immigrant
reviewing airplanes.” I’m doing it for
everyone who has ever looked to the sky,
seen a plane, and thought: That’ll be me
someday. —As told to Jordan Golson
80 March/April 2020
LEGO REVOLUTION
continued from page 53
Charles’s only critique for his pro-
fessiona l counter par t lies in the
minutiae. He points out that the offi-
cial model’s radar domes are cocked
at an improper angle. “They made the
same mistake on the Star Destroyer
they published in 2002,” he says.
“A lot of fans were hoping they would
correct that.”
You ca n buy Henr ik’s off icia l
set online or in a LEGO store, but
Charles’s home creation is for sale, too,
in a way. You can purchase his gargan-
tuan instruction booklet, plus a parts
list, for $50 on the fan site Rebrick-
able, which houses such information
for more than 15,000 custom sets.
“Not all LEGO fans are designers.
Personally, I’m a ‘follow the instruc-
tions’ guy,” says Rebrickable founder
Nathan Thom. “I began Rebrickable
because I had thousands of pieces I
collected from sets and wondered if
there was something else, already
designed, I could build with them.”
On Rebrickable, builders upload their
personal inventories of LEGO parts,
and the website produces a list of
other models (plus instructions) you
can put together with those pieces.
Rebrickable also provides alternate
builds you can make with parts from a
single set. For example, the 174-piece
Mighty Dinosaurs set offers alternate
builds for 52 other designs, including
an elephant, a helicopter, a scorpion,
and a crab.
PRINT THEM YOURSELF
What if the LEGO piece you want
doesn’t exist? There’s a world of cus-
tom 3D-printed LEGO pieces. Joe
Trupia runs Citizen Brick, a printing
company that designs and publishes
pieces the family-friendly LEG O
Group won’t release. Citizen Brick
has sold LEGO barbed wire, beer,
dozens of different guns, figurines
with cleavage, and a few iterations of
the “botany enthusiast,” a figurine
toting a bong.
Trupia makes his bootleg bricks
by melting down preexisting LEGO
pieces and pouring the liquid into 40
injection molders. These molders are
similar to what the LEGO Group runs
in their factory in Denmark, but Tru-
pia admits Citizen Brick’s setup is
low-tech. Each molder holds a quar-
ter pound of LEGO bricks and must
be refilled manually via a foot-pedal-
o p e r a t e d h o p p e r. T h e m o l d e r
accepts small LEGOs whole, but it
uses a grinder to break down larger
bricks. LEG O ha s used the same
polymer—acrylonitrile butadiene
styrene—since 1963, and Trupia’s
machines melt it down between 375°F
and 400°F, depending on the volume
of plastic, its color, and the size of the
mold. Some bricks face temperatures
as high as 525°F.
Trupia admits he walks a fine line
between homage and bootleg. “We
were really proactive when we started
up, asking [the LEGO Group] what
they wanted us to stay away from,
especially franchise-wise.” The LEGO
legal team provides Citizen Brick with
disclaimers for their products, but
Trupia still treads carefully. Citizen
Brick won’t produce Star Wars toys,
for example.
Still, Trupia doubts custom-printed
LEGOs will take over the market. “It’s
probably inevitable [people will use
our custom pieces],” he says. “But
3D-printed pieces are not going to
get any where close to the produc-
tion quality of the real deal anytime
soon.” Indeed, if you play around with
3D-printed pieces, you’ll find they’re
often irregular, brittle, and hard to
click together. From what Trupia’s
seen, customers have no patience
for that. “They’re incredibly loyal to
LEGO,” he says. “Frankly, Citizen
Brick wouldn’t exist if we didn’t pay
the proper respects to the LEG O
design aesthetic.”
S o fa n c r e a t or s l i k e C h a rle s
Anderson will stick with original
and secondhand bricks rather than
the remolded knockoffs. The classic
LEGOs haven’t changed in 62 years,
but modern builders are more ambi-
tious, resourceful, and inventive than
ever. Today, your first custom build can
be a titanic, personal, one-of-a-kind
masterpiece—and perhaps something
as impressive as a 44-pound, 20,000-
brick Imperial Star Destroyer.

Leading Ingredient For Acid
Reflux Bouts Linked To
Anti-Aging Phenomenon
Scientific studies show breakthrough acid reflux
treatment also helps maintain vital health and helps
protect users from the serious conditions that accompany
aging such as fatigue and poor cardiovascular health
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Seattle Washington:
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FIX YOUR GUT & FIGHT
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HANDCRAFTED KNIFE
continued from page 41
pliers (and gloves or an oven mitt for
added safety), place the blade on its
side in the coals (so the edge is fac-
ing up), with the forced air on and the
embers burning.
▶ Normalize the blade
Normalizing your blade’s steel helps
relieve stress in the grain structure
during the cutting and grinding pro-
cesses. Heating the blade and allowing
it to cool reorganizes the steel’s micro-
structure, making it more consistent
and strong throughout.
Leave the blade in the forge until
it’s glowing orange but not quite bright
orange (with your forge at 1,500°F, this
should take about 15 minutes). You can
use a magnet at the end of a pole to see if
your blade is hot enough. When the steel
reaches a temperature called the “Curie
point,” it will no longer be magnetized.
The heat disrupts the alignment of the
atomic magnetic moments within the
steel, causing them to stop reinforcing
each other and eliminating the mag-
netic attraction.
“It is important to be sure the steel
reaches an even color with no dark
shadows present within the orange
glow,” Brach says. “Shadows will cre-
ate soft spots in the steel.”
Once your blade is hot enough, use
the tongs to remove it and let it cool
on its own until it reaches room tem-
perature (about an hour). Repeat this
heating and cooling process, but the
second time, remove the knife when
it’s heated to a slightly dimmer shade
of orange, after around 10 minutes.
▶ Harden the blade
Heat the blade to an even orange color
one more time, but this time, imme-
diately quench it in the metal pail of
warm vegetable oil (between 100°F
and 120°F).
Quenching the blade in oil rapidly
reduces the temperature of the steel,
trapping carbon in solution and mak-
ing the steel harder. Make sure to
completely submerge the blade while
keeping a grip with your tongs; other-
wise a fire could spark on the surface.
(If a fire starts, don’t panic: It will be
small and contained—you can usually
82 March/April 2020
just blow it out like a candle.)
Make a subtle cutting motion with
the blade through the oil for 30 sec-
onds. If you want to check its hardness,
let it cool completely on a rack.
“If your blade has properly hard-
ened, once it is cool you should be able
to run a worn file along the edge and
the file will skate on the surface of the
steel rather than cutting,” Brach says.
“If the file bites into the steel, reheat it
in the fire to the even orange tempera-
ture, let it soak at that temperature for
10 minutes, then quench it again.”
▶ Temper the blade in your oven
Tempering the blade softens the metal
slightly so it won’t be too brittle. Take
the knife from the oil bath or off the
rack, and place it on the center rack of
a 375°F oven. Bake for an hour, then
remove the knife to let it cool com-
pletely. Repeat the baking process once.
▶ Sharpen the blade
You can now grind your blade edge
down to that centerline using your
angle grinder and the flapper wheel.
Pay close attention as you sharpen the
knife. Once burrs begin to appear on
the edge of the blade, it’s as sharp as
you’re going to get it with your angle
grinder. At that point, switch to a knife
sharpener to finish off the edge.
▶ Wrap the handle
Wrap the handle in paracord or in
strips of recycled leather to add grip
and comfort. A few feet of either mate-
rial will suffice, but if you have some
to spare, braiding the material before
you wrap it around the handle will give
your knife a more impressive look.
“If you use a cord-wrapped handle,
it’s important to secure it to the tang,
preferably with slow-set epoxy, to
ensure the grip does not slip forward
onto the cutting edge during heavy
use,” Brach says.
Apply the epoxy to the handle of
the knife and lay the first few inches of
the cord along the handle. Then wrap
the remaining cord tightly around the
handle and over that first piece of cord
until both are completely covered. Tie
off the end with a secure knot.
HOME BREWING
continued from page 45
Calagione says. Add an ounce or two
of zest in the boil’s final minutes for a
citrusy pop. “The essential oils don’t
get fermented, so they stay on the top
notes of the beer and contribute more
aromatics.”
▶ Try a barrel-aged shortcut
You likely can’t age your beer in
10,000-gallon tanks hewn from fra-
grant Paraguayan wood like Dogfish
Head does. (Those tanks produce the
brawny caramel-accented Palo Santo
Marron brown ale.) Instead, develop
barrel flavor by dropping several oak
chips in a mason jar with four to five
ounces of a strong, neutral spirit such
as Everclear to serve as a solvent.
“Shake it every morning for a week
to expose another layer of resin-rich
wood,” Calagione says. After the beer
finishes fermenting, add drops of the
tincture to taste before bottling.
▶ Treat sugar as a tasty addition
Dogfish Head uses molasses, maple
syrup, and brown sugar to boost a
beer’s flavorful complexity. Calagi-
one recommends keeping adjuncts
to less than 20 percent of a beer’s
total fermentable sugars to avoid an
unpleasant dryness. Retain maple
syrup’s delicate characteristics by
adding it after the boil, during fer-
mentation. “The brewer’s yeast eats
the sugars at the same time it’s eating
sugars from grains,” Calagione says,
leaving flavor and not sweetness.
Sometimes ex tra sweetness is
essential, especially when brewing
light, low-calorie beers with amylo-
glucosidase enzymes (try White Labs’
Ultra-Ferm). They break complex
sugars into simple sugars that yeast
convert to alcohol, but the trade-off is
no body. “That’s why industrial light
lagers taste so watery,” Calagione
says. One breakthrough ingredient
is unfermentable, zero-calorie monk
fruit extract, which is hundreds of
times sweeter than table sugar. As
with spices, assess monk fruit’s inten-
sity by making tea or tincture before
adding it during the sterilizing whirl-
pool, and “recognize that a little goes
a long way,” Calagione says.
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// Q U E S T I O N S , H A C K S & E X P E R T A D V I C E F R O M P O P M E C H P R O M E M B E R S //
“How can I secure my cubicle from
prying intruders—in a covert way?”
—PRO MEMBER MARTIN STEVEN*
We called up Vince Hough-
ton, historian and curator at
the International Spy Museum
in Washington, D.C., for tips on
locking down your workspace,
James Bond style.
1. P R O T E C T YO U R PA S S -
WORD // Houghton says this
is the easiest way to protect
your information. Keep desk
tchotchkes (especially sticky
notes) to a minimum. “Make
sure your security questions
aren’t plastered all over,” he
says. “Social engineering is the
term we use for trying to learn
as much as we can about some-
body in order to guess their
password and get inside their
system without hacking it.”
2. L E AV E A “ T E L LTA L E ” //
There’s a scene in D r. No
where James Bond plucks a
strand of hair from his head
and sticks it across the open-
ing between the closet doors
in his hotel room. When he
ret ur ns, the ha ir is gone,
indicating to him alone that
someone opened the doors.
Houghton says you can leave
telltales of your own on your
office desk. Have important
documents you’d like to keep
safe? Place a stapler on top
and position it in a way that
you’ll easily be able to spot if
it has been tampered with.
3. MAKEDUMMY FILES // If you
suspect a co-worker is steal-
84 March/April 2020
ing your ideas, leave a folder
with a bunch of junk ideas on
your desktop and then bury
the good files in a place that’s
much more difficult to find—
like, say, in a folder labeled
“Cancun 2012.” This method
is what industry experts call
“chicken feed,” and it’s a great
way to throw snoopers off your
scent, Houghton says. “You’re
offering up tidbits of what
looks like good information to
your adversary.”
4 . I N V E S T I N L O W -T E C H
GADGETS // Houghton rec-
ommends a screen protector
that shields your screen from
snooping eyes. A pen camera
is also useful here. If you’re
going to a meeting and you sus-
pect that someone is going to
sit down at your desk and rifle
through your stuff, “you can
turn that pen camera on and
then catch them in the act,”
he says.
5. AND FINALLY… HERE’S HOW
TO SLACK OFF // Memorize
your boss’s schedule, iden-
tify which parts of the day
he or she will be in a meet-
ing—not roaming around the
office. That way, you can scroll
through Pop Mech in peace.
—Interview by Jennifer Leman
JOIN POP MECH PRO AND GET FEATURED HERE! Plus gain access to our most in-depth,
exclusive, and fascinating stories. Learn more at popularmechanics.com/popmechpro
*DOUBLE FIRST NAMES NOT REQUIRED FOR MEMBERSHIP.
Master the denser air at lower alti-
tudes, it’s harder for air
Midflight to get past the one-way
flap back up the eusta-
Ear Pop chian tube,” he says.
—PRO MEMBER STEVE MARTIN* Which means Mar-
tin—who teaches pilots
Ever notice that your how to equalize the
ears pop easier on a pressure using an alti-
plane’s ascent than tude chamber on his
the descent? That’s campus—recommends
because, according to pulling the “Valsalva
Martin, the Aerospace maneuver.” Pinch your
Physiology Operations nose, keep your lips
Manager at the Univer- sealed, and blow like you
sity of North Dakota, are blowing your nose.
the pocket of air behind If only one ear pops, tilt
your eardrum expands the problem ear so it
on the way up due to faces the sky and look
the lower barometric straight ahead with
air pressure, naturally your shoulders level.
forcing equalization. “This will stretch and
On the way down, you straighten the eusta-
have the exact oppo- chian tube. Perform a
site problem. “When short, sharp Valsalva
we descend into the maneuver,” he says.
KEEP LEFTOVER SAWDUST
—PRO MEMBER JOHN TIMMERMANS
“Any fine sawdust I get I save in a glass jar. When-
ever I have a hole or crack that needs filled, I mix
some of the sawdust with wood glue.” It’s a cheap
solution for quick (if a bit imprecise) repairs.
G E T T Y I M AG E S
 POPULAR MECHANICS (ISSN 0032-
4558) is published six times per year
by Hearst, 300 West 57th St., NY,
NY 10019 USA. Steven R. Swartz,
President & Chief Executive Offi-
cer; William R. Hearst III, Chairman;
Frank A. Bennack, Jr., Executive Vice
Chairman. Hearst Magazine Media,
Inc.: Troy Young, President; Kate
Lewis, Chief Content Officer; Debi
Chirichella, Executive Vice President,
Chief Financial Officer & Treasurer;
Catherine A. Bostron, Secretary.
©2020 by Hearst Magazine Media, Inc.
All rights reserved. Popular Mechanics

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 18
// DIEGO CÁ R DEN AS, FOU N DER OF BA MBOOCYCLES, ME XICO CIT Y //

MADE HERE
Watch the Complete MADE HERE
Video Series on YouTube

I
H A D A LWAYS WA N T E D T O
design cars, but that changed
when I got to design school.
That’s where I discovered a
world of materials, processes,
and tools I never knew existed.
Cars were limited when it came
to this, and after a trip to Europe, I
found a new passion on two wheels.
This inspiration wa s driven
further when I returned to an assign-
ment to study bicycle design for a
class. It was then that I discovered
bamboo frames from the 19th cen-
tury. My mind made a design almost
immediately. It’s just putting tubes
together, right? How hard could it be?
The answer came over six months.
After that, I was hooked. It’s been
my life since 2007, especially after
the earthquake that hit Mexico City
in September 2017. I had just made
my first cargo bike, and a friend
and I used it to move rocks and rub-
ble away from fallen buildings. After
that, friends used it to deliver water,
food, and tools. Something I’d made
helped people.
That’s why I feel a great passion
for designing these bikes. We are
constantly getting new design chal-
lenges, geometries, and adaptations
from clients. It’s a puzzle I enjoy solv-
ing. Plus, every bike is a step toward
a better world.

I start with harvesting and cleaning the bamboo. After

HOW that, we dry, roast, and cut it with a laser cutter into
IT’S the various parts of the frame. When those are glued together
DONE using the jig, carbon-fiber reinforcements are added to the
unions. Then we finish it with sandpaper and a sand-belting
P O P M E C H E D I TO R S

machine before assembling with the bike components.”

92 March/April 2020
 Welcome to the best
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You have a big, beautiful world to explore. Standard Symmetrical All-Wheel Drive +
up to 33 MPG.* Standard EyeSight Driver Assist Technology.† Standard X-MODE.
® ®

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and advanced technology to do it right. This is our most adventurous Outback ever.

Outback. Well-equipped at $26,645.**

Subaru, Outback, EyeSight, and X-MODE are registered trademarks. *EPA-estimated highway fuel economy for 2020 Subaru Outback non-turbo models. Actual mileage
may vary. †EyeSight is a driver-assist system that may not operate optimally under all driving conditions. The driver is always responsible for safe and attentive driving. System
effectiveness depends on many factors, such as vehicle maintenance, weather, and road conditions. See your owner’s manual for complete details on system operation and
limitations. **MSRP excludes destination and delivery charges, tax, title, and registration fees. Retailer sets actual price. Certain equipment may be required in specific states,
which can modify your MSRP. See your retailer for details. 2020 Subaru Outback Touring shown has an MSRP of $37,345. Vehicle shown with accessory equipment.