Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2017 i Popular Mechanics

LOOOOTTA TALK ABOUT self-sufficiency these days. Donald Trump pretty much won the election by preaching the wisdom of not relying on nobody for nothing. This of course has its risks as a foreign policy, and I hope the pros outweigh the cons. But as an individual policy? I love it. If the meteor hits or the grid goes down or America gets sold to Russia, it would be nice to know that you could get on without leaving your homestead—a clean water supply, a way to charge your phone, plenty of Swiss chard out in the garden, that kind of thing. I’m nowhere near self-sufficient yet, but we do compost. And the boys have enough Nerf guns to at least wound a squirrel. Of course, there’s my friend Andy up…

ONLINE Assistant online editor Jay Bennett takes you behind the scenes of the Air Force’s Special Operations Command training facilities. He even jumped out of an airplane while reporting. Be glad he survived, because now you can read his story and watch the video exclusively at popularmechanics.com/AFSOC. INSTAGRAM! THE PODCASTS! Here’s what to listen for on our Popular Mechanics podcasts this month: On The Most Useful Podcast Ever, host Jacqueline Detwiler brings you even more tips for living off the grid. She’ll speak with Lehman’s, an Ohio-based farm store, about the most useful tools and nonelectric machines used by the Amish. Plus, technology editor Alex George teaches you how to build the ultimate entertainment system to take along when you abscond from society. Meanwhile, on the How Your World Works…

The Coffee-Brewing Tank for Any Worksite The OXX Coffeeboxx ($230) is built to travel and simple to use: Fill the tank with water, insert a K-cup pod, select a size serving, and then wait for it to brew. Its 2.5-liter removable water tank can make ten cups of coffee, and its watertight design prevents spills on rough rides. The Coffeeboxx has a rubberized handle, a three-foot retractable power cord to make it mobile, and a chassis rated to withstand a 1,500-pound load. That makes it the only coffeemaker you can sit on or, in a pinch, prop up a grand piano with. Tip! Never Buy Pre-Ground Coffee. Unless It’s This One Oxygen is the biggest enemy of freshness. When beans are ground, flavor escapes in as little as three minutes.…

THE PROVING GROUND FOR EVERYTHING YOU NEED A / ASUS ZenBeam E1 MAX IMAGE SIZE: 120 in. PORTABLE BATTERY: Yes, 5 hours LIKES: Despite weighing less than two pounds and having a footprint the size of a smartphone, the E1 is bright enough to use even in some ambient light. The speakers can also get quite loud. Adjustments are intuitive, and the metal shell looks more elegant than the plastic on many other projectors. DISLIKES: Doesn’t project in HD. The keystone correction sometimes inexplicably and annoyingly readjusts the image. $249 B / Sony LSPX-P1 MAX IMAGE SIZE: 80 in. PORTABLE BATTERY: Yes, 2 hours LIKES: Beautiful design, good color, and passable built-in sound. We really liked the wireless aspect: Plug the hub into a source—your cable box or computer— or…

Climb to the highest point on your land, in your house, even in your apartment situation— just get up high—and look down at your life as a kind of map. The perspective is military; the distance makes your attachment to your possessions dispassionate. From your promontory, the edges are clear. This is the world you created. How’d you do? Can what you’ve made provide beyond the next grocery run? Sure it’s a place you can live, but is it a place where you could survive? I live in Indiana, at a great remove. On the far end of an empty country road, in a little house on a broad creek. I don’t grow any food. I don’t own any livestock. I used up all my firewood last year and haven’t…

Forget Wi-Fi. Modern homesteader BEN HEWITT faced the greatest obstacle to living far from utility lines: How do you get water? When I was one, my family moved from a large farmhouse in northwestern Vermont into a small cabin my parents had built at the edge of a nearby hardwood forest. The cabin featured neither electricity nor indoor plumbing. It was lit by smoky kerosene lanterns, and we bathed in a metal washtub filled with water heated atop an old wood-fired cookstove. At first, my parents hauled totes of water to the cabin in the backseat of their rust-bitten Volkswagen Beetle. When they tired of this, my father rigged up a hand pump and managed to pull water from a stream nearly a half-mile distant and at least a hundred…

On HBO’s Silicon Valley (returning in April), Matt Ross plays smug, frivolous technology executive Gavin Belson, a man given to such statements as “I don’t know about you people, but I don’t want to live in a world where someone else makes the world a better place better than we do.” Ross himself is less wealthy, more sensible. He lives with his wife and two children in a duplex in Berkeley, California, and often worries about how much time his kids spend in contact with nature. It’s an outgrowth of the way he himself was raised: in a series of communal societies deep in the woods of northern California and Oregon, where he learned to hunt, make fire, build shelter, track animals, and read stars. “At one point we lived…

THE BIAS ISN’T INTENTIONAL but it’s there: Nearly every category at the Oscars recognizes the achievements of actors or directors. Sure, there are Oscars for effects, production, and even makeup, but as fans of innovative new camera technology, ingenious set designs, bigger explosions, and just the right amount of CGI, we want more. And the men and women responsible for those moments deserve more. That’s why, for the third year in a row, we’ve highlighted the greatest visual effects in film. We want to recognize those people whose work is often judged more by what isn’t noticed than what is. Just as important, we want to encourage them to do more—because we’re watching and appreciating every minute of it. PM-C SUITABLE FOR THE CURIOUS May contain spoilers, cinema secrets, and…

It’s not easy to re-create a plane crash on a river, but that’s what visual-effects supervisor Michael Owens and cinematographer Tom Stern did for director Clint Eastwood’s Sully. Some of their bigger challenges: 1. FINDING A PLANE You can buy old airplanes, Stern says. “Used-up aircraft become some discounted amount of scrap aluminum. We bought two out-of-service A320s. They had to be brought from the airplane junkyard in Victorville, California, to Falls Lake at Universal Studios outside Los Angeles. They had to be moved at night under highway patrol escort, on a route that was calculated to avoid bridges.” 2. TWO LOCATIONS The crew planned to film the crash and rescue in the Hudson River, but Mother Nature intervened. “The current is quite intense and it goes both directions,” Owens…

When summer ends, a lot of our gardens close for the winter. But hydroponics keep your garden going year-round. Rather than counting on the soil to provide plants with nutrients, a hydroponic setup gives them everything they need directly through the water. You don’t even need natural light. There are six basic types of systems: wick, deep-water culture (DWC), ebb-and-flow, drip method, nutrient-film technique (NFT), and aeroponics. (See page 88.) At Green Spirit Farms, an indoor vertical-farming company that I run with my father in New Buffalo, Michigan, we use a combination of NFT and ebb-and-flow. [Editors’ note: Read about Dan and his dad in “In the Light Fields,” June 2016.] NFT is probably the most popular system for commercial growers. It’s what most greenhouses use because of the low…

1 Watch your plants as you would in a traditional garden. If a problem gets to the point that you can see it, the plant has been dealing with it for a week. Avoid tinkering with nutrients until you get a successful first run. 2 Harvest your crops at the same time you would in traditional gardening. Arugula should be ready to harvest after two weeks and should provide another harvest every week for another four or five weeks. 3 When a harvest is finished, replace the rock wool and clean the system’s reservoir, pump, and tubing with a 3 percent hydrogen-peroxide solution. THE SIX TYPES OF HYDROPONIC SYSTEMS The simplest system. It can use soil as a grow medium with a wick line into a reservoir of plain water.…

THE SUBJECT: MICHAEL PARRIS THE JOB: Ski-maker and designer at Igneous Skis LOCATION: Jackson Hole, Wyoming IN 1998, Parris left a career designing robots for Carnegie Mellon. His new gig? The ski business. A friend who ran a ski company hired him as a designer—Parris has a degree in architecture—and today he owns Igneous Skis, handcrafting only 100 pairs each season, each of which sells for about $1,600. This giant green thing helps him do it. “I interview each customer. Someone who wants to cruise with their kids? An ex-college racer bumming in Jackson Hole? I want to know why you ski.” 1 / Wintersteiger belt sander and stone grinder A. I use the belt sander to shape the sidewalls of the ski and to shape out the band-saw cut,…

AViking boat may not have been able to make it to Montana, but that doesn’t mean the Scandinavians couldn’t. Along with the Homestead Act of 1862, which gave settlers 160 acres of land for a small fee and a commitment to live there for five years, the extension of the transcontinental railroad across the U.S. helped Scandinavians migrate to the agricultural frontier of Montana. Today their Nordic heritage remains embedded in the folkways of the Northern Great Plains, so much that it demanded a familiar and hard-to-find drink: “We started making aquavit on request from the local fraternal order of the Sons of Norway,” says Ryan Montgomery, cofounder of Montgomery Distillery in Missoula. “And we continue making it not only because we sell out, but because aquavit has significant ties…

1 Roast You don’t need to roast your own coffee. But you also don’t need to fix up that old truck yourself, or build your own deck. Roasting at home puts you in the driver’s seat to make the perfect bean for your household. Unlike other home roasters, the smoke-suppressed Behmor 1600 Plus ($370) can be used indoors. As moisture and oils leave the beans, metal coils on the ceiling of the countertop unit reheat and virtually eliminate the smoke. Five preset roasts will help you get your bearings before you start to truly customize. You can buy green, unroasted beans online. (We like Roastmasters.com.) For your first batches, try beans from Central America. They have consistent size, quality, and a wide range of flavors, which makes them especially forgiving…

THE PROVING GROUND FOR EVERYTHING YOU NEED DeWalt DWE575 WEIGHT: 10.4 lb AMPERAGE: 15 LIKES: Professional-grade with unstoppable power and a heavy-duty rubber cord that’s robustly mounted to the motor, so you don’t have to worry about snags leading to a loose connection. All control points and grip surfaces are well engineered and comfortable. DISLIKES: None. $119 Makita HS7600 WEIGH T 9.0 lb AMPERAGE: 10.5 LIKES: A compact and spunky saw that’s easy to handle. It has outstanding balance and visibility to the cut line. DISLIKES: Relatively low amperage does cost the Makita some performance during long, deep rips. Plus, the blade wrench likes to come loose from its holder. $100 Ridgid R3204 WEIGH T 8.8 lb AMPERAGE: 12 LIKES: This feisty little saw was the only tool in our…

Q I broke two bits drilling holes in my garage floor with a rented hammer drill. What did I do wrong? DAVID D., BOISE, IDAHO A The most obvious possibility is that you hit a piece of rebar, or reinforcing steel. Or maybe you found a cast-iron drainpipe. If you see a pipe exiting the floor at any point, assume that that’s what you’re hitting and drill elsewhere. You might think that a bit strong enough to drill through concrete could also handle steel, but a masonry bit’s tip and flute geometry are completely different—thicker and blunter, meant to pulverize. Also, the hammer drill was probably in percussion mode, which simultaneously pounds and drills through concrete, stone, or asphalt. That percussive action broke the bit when you hit steel. Even…

Lehman’s opened in 1955 as a hardware store in Kidron, Ohio, selling equipment to northeast Ohio’s Amish community. Today, Lehman’s has expanded to sell products through, uncharacteristically, the internet. Here are a few to pick up for your off-grid kitchen. DIAMANT GRAIN MILL → A cast-iron flywheel turns iron and steel burrs to grind grains into flour or cereal. Use with the corn sheller to make cornmeal. $1,000 CAST-IRON CORN SHELLER → Use this to remove the kernels from dried corn so they can be fed to livestock. You can use the cobs as frewood (frecorn?). $299 OVEN/SUN FOOD-DRYING RACK → These solid oak and fberglass drying screens separate fruit and vegetable slices so they (the slices) can be dried. $90 STARTER FRUIT PRESS → Not only will it instantly…

Good Morning America and ABC World News Tonight chief meteorologist Ginger Zee grew up on a four-acre farm that ran on geothermal power and a small woodstove. It’s important to record and understand your homesite’s microclimate, she says, especially when you’re growing food. You’ll need the following tools. 1) SNOW BOARD → Cut a sixteen-inch square out of plywood, paint it white, and place it on even, open ground next to a vertical meter stick. Mark the location with a bright flag. By measuring both snowfall and the water equivalent of snow (use your rain gauge, below), you’ll be able to tell how much water your crops are getting in the winter. 2) THERMOMETER... → Shell out for a thermistor thermometer. These register electrical resistance and are very accurate. Record…

SOLAR → Location: South- or west-facing rooftop or unwooded area → Equipment: At least 24 solar panels, charge controller, breakers, switchgear, inverter, and batteries. → Output: 7.5-kw → Cost*: $25,000 to $30,000, depending on whether it’s a rooftop or a ground array. GENERATOR → Location: Level ground near the house → Equipment: Generator, panel, breakers, and switchgear. A 100-gallon or larger liquefied petroleum gas tank. Propane. → Output: 7.5-kw → Cost: About $10,000, but it can vary based on distance to the house, plumbing, and interconnection to a battery. SMALL WIND TURBINE → Location: Breezy area, high ground → Equipment: A wind turbine, set atop an 80- to 100-foot tower, turbine disconnect, electronics, inverter, and batteries. → Output: 7.5-kw → Cost*: $36,000 to $40,000 on average. Cost varies based on…

1 At two opposing sides of the concrete mixing tray, use a drill and a 1 ¼-inch spade bit or holesaw to create holes for the filling pipe (ebb) and drain (flow) from the ebb-and-flow kit. For a cleaner hole, put a piece of scrap wood beneath the tray to drill into. 2 Place the mixing tray on top of the plastic bin lid. Mark the location of the holes in the mixing tray on the lid. Remove the mixing tray and drill holes in the lid with your spade bit or holesaw. 3 Near one edge of the bin lid, drill a ¼-inch hole. Use a box cutter to make two 1 ½-inch cuts in the shape of an X over the hole. This will be where the pump…

Elwood Adams Hardware (Worcester, Massachusetts) It’s the oldest operating hardware store in the country, opened in 1782—America’s original “If we don’t have it, you don’t need it.” —Joe Petkiewicz, Cherry Valley, Massachusetts Deck’s Hardware (Ambler, Pennsylvania) My brother and I are thirdgeneration owners of Deck’s, which has been serving our neighborhood just outside of Philadelphia since 1908. Sometimes our customers just want to come in, browse, and take in the sights and smells. —Tyler Deck, Ambler, Pennsylvania McLendon Hardware (Renton, Washington) McLendon’s has hardware of every kind imaginable and replacement parts for almost all of it. Need a drip pan for a 30-year-old air conditioner? That’s aisle 27. A replacement tire for the push mower your granddaddy bought when he got back from World War II? Aisle 13. —Sam Nash,…

Abraham Lincoln’s first inauguration, in 1861, was staged on the steps of the United States Capitol as its dome was still a work in progress. A few years later, Lincoln insisted that the construction of the dome continue through the Civil War. “If people see the Capitol going on,” he said, “it is a sign we intend the Union shall go on.” In 1866, less than a year after Lincoln had been assassinated, at the dawn of Reconstruction, the dome was completed: nine million pounds of cast iron covered in Dome White paint, capped with a bronze statue called Freedom Triumphant in War and Peace. But the work goes on. Since the dome’s last complete restoration, from 1959 to 1960, decades of abuse by rain, snow, and slow leaks degraded…

DISASSEMBLY REPORT MODEL: CELESTRON NEXSTAR EVOLUTION 8 HD PRODUCED: NANTONG, CHINA TIME TO DISASSEMBLE: 6 HOURS, 25 MINUTES, 58 SECONDS NUMBER OF PARTS: 588 NOTES: This is how vision works: Light is gathered through a hole, shaped, and presented—converged into focus—for viewing. In the case of our eyes, the equipment involved is the pupil, the cornea and lens, and the retina, respectively. This standard equipment is remarkable but limiting: Our pupils are small. The distance between the retina and the lens is minuscule. So it would not be inaccurate to say that a telescope is an enlarged and elongated version of our eyes. The big front opening replaces the pupil. Lenses and mirrors guide light through a long tube rather than a tiny eyeball. The result: a tool that peers…

A / Rain-X Windshield De-Icer ESTIMATED SPRAY RANGE: 2 ft The least aggressive ice melter we tested, but it also had the least intense odor. After melting the ice, it leaves behind a residue of classic Rain-X to help keep glass clean. Since it’s more of a mist, the Rain-X would be tough to apply in any real wind. $3 B / Prestone Windshield De-Icer ESTIMATED SPRAY RANGE: 8 ft The densely focused stream and aggressive propellant make this a good choice for tall or broad windshields. Melts ice aggressively and keeps on melting. There’s even a somewhateffective scraper built into the can for particularly tough ice. $12 C / CRC Ice-Off ESTIMATED SPRAY RANGE: 6 ft Medium-dense spray pattern. The high methanol content melts ice readily, and the reasonably…

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NO MAJOR HIGHWAY will take you to Florence, Alabama. You fly down a sparse two-lane to get there, averaging fifteen over, the dust of dry farm fields catching the last stretches of the southern sun. It’s still 68 degrees at dusk, so you keep the windows down. You pass an old, warehouse-looking building on Tennessee Street. Turbo Coffee, it says out front. Next door, same building: a genuine barber pole. You could use a trim. You go in. Greasy Hands, it’s called. It looks transplanted from some hipper neighborhood in a hipper city—Brooklyn, Austin, the Mission. But nope, here you are in Florence, Alabama. It works here because it works anywhere: good people doing good work that makes you feel good when you walk in and better when you leave.…

12-GAUGE SHOTGUN → Off-grid means on your own. Use this to scare off potential mischief-makers, or to dispatch rabbits digging up your vegetable patch and eat ’em for dinner. CANT HOOK → If you’re gonna be lighting fires, you’re gonna be moving logs. Your back will last twice as long if you use one of these grabbers to do it. LINESMAN PLIERS → Also called side cutters for the blades on its jaws, these pliers can make electrical repairs, cut fence wire, and chop through nails and small screws. LONG-HANDLE NO. 2 ROUNDPOINT SHOVEL → Dig a ditch, put out a brush fire, chop through ice and snow. It’s all in a day’s work for old No. 2. Get one with a deep socket—the metal cup at the top of…

Now that you have the basics taken care of, what is there to do out here? 1 “PROCURE” MOVIES →The legal way: Buy movie files from iTunes, Google, or Amazon. →The...legally complicated way: Travel back to the early 2000s and find DVDs. A library works. On a laptop with a CD drive, download an app called HandBrake (free) to turn those disks into video files and save them to your laptop. 2 SYNC MOVIES ONTO A BIG SMARTPHONE OR A TABLET →A 256-gig iPhone 7 Plus ($969) is ideal, but a 128-gig Google Pixel ($749) or iPad Air ($499) will also work. FYI: Most Android phones will need Google Chromecast to play video, which requires extra power to run. 3 CREATE POWER →During the day, connect two 20-watt Goal Zero…

Although similar plants, like spinach and kale, could probably be grown together, for best results, you should grow only one plant in a system at a time. I recommend starting with a leafy green like arugula, which does not have a fruiting phase in which the plant makes seeds before harvest. Before any plants go into the system, your seeds need to germinate. You’ll need to choose a growing medium. This is what the plant will take hold in, and it can be a lot of things. The industry standard is rock wool, a material very similar to fiberglass that is extremely porous and holds 16 times its weight in water. It’s the most widely used hydroponic medium in the world because it’s completely inert. There’s nothing in it, and…

A solar-powered night-light may sound counterintuitive, but when the night-light isn’t in use during the day, it captures ambient light. Just leave it near a window and open the blinds. The two AA batteries hold enough power to keep the night-light running until the sun comes up, then the solar panel starts collecting again and the process begins all over. One caveat: If you live in Alaska—or even northern Minnesota—you might want to use standard batteries during the winter. Shopping List DIAGRAM Instructions 1. Crosscut the top panel from the 4-inch poplar board. A 3 ½-inch piece should accommodate most action figures. 2. Using twist-drill bits and a cordless drill, make a 3/16-inch hole for the LED wire and a ½-inch hole for the switch. Use a spade bit to…