Top all-time · #466
Woodworking for engineers
Personal blog · woodgears.ca · on HN as MatthiasWandelhardwaredesign
Woodworking for engineers is a personal blog at woodgears.ca about hardware and design. Since 2007, 123 different Hacker News readers have linked it 164 times, most often “Binary marble adding machine”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Sometimes recommended · 7 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link woodgears.ca for engineer-minded woodworking: gear templates, the pantorouter, marble machines and joint strength tests.
- Recommended for · 7 comments
- one commenter calls it probably among the best on the net; others say it is worth a peruse or an interesting read.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- Binary marble adding machine10 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2007-08-17
- Binary marble adding machine8 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2009-07-24
- Woodworking for engineers8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2010-10-22
- Woodworking for Engineers8 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-06-11
- The eyeballing game5 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2019-12-12
- The eyeballing game4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2010-06-09
- /4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2009-07-24
- The eyeballing game3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-10-16
- Jenga Pistol3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-08-26
- Templates for Cutting Gears from Wood3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2019-09-12
What Hacker News says?
Also Matthias Wandel's gear generator https://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/index.html
Comment linking /gear_cutting/index.html
on “Gears”Submitted Woodworking for Engineers as a story · 715 points
HN discussionin practice the filtration in a room goes down exponentially and quite quickly even with budget filters that only filter out 90%. even in shops where you are sanding. https://woodgears.ca/dust/dylos.html
Comment linking /dust/dylos.html
on “Contra Wirecutter on the IKEA air purifier”Submitted Wooden combination lock as a story · 439 points
HN discussionMatthias's beginner page is on their Wiki![0] [0] https://woodgears.ca/beginner/
Comment linking /beginner/
on “Woodworking for Engineers”Submitted How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out? as a story · 427 points
HN discussionThe best replacement for sketchup these days is OLD sketchup (version 8), from ten years ago. You can still get it. More on that at http://woodgears.ca/sketchup
Comment linking /sketchup
on “Woodworking for Engineers”Submitted Jenga Pistol as a story · 278 points
HN discussionThere is a very surprising statement on his "Gear Template Generator" page ( https://woodgears.ca/gear_cutting/index.html ): > I recommend printing the gears with an ink jet printer. Even cheap ink jet printers print very scale accurate but Not all laser printers are accurate. Does anybody know whether that's still the case, and why?
Comment linking /gear_cutting/index.html
on “Woodworking for Engineers”Submitted Beginning Woodworking as a story · 259 points
HN discussionTo Matthias, in case you do pop in to this thread: you've forgotten to set a character encoding for pages, so some browsers display gobbledygook instead of apostrophes. For example, on https://woodgears.ca/faq/video.html : "How’s your (shoulder?)"
Comment linking /faq/video.html
on “Woodworking for Engineers”Submitted Testing the strength of different wood species as a story · 256 points
HN discussionI made my shed using his design and techniques. Every fall, when we stow away backyard furnitures, the umbrella, and Cycles into the shed with ease. I thank him. https://woodgears.ca/shed/shed1.html
Comment linking /shed/shed1.html
on “Woodworking for Engineers”Submitted Wood Joint Strength Testing as a story · 216 points
HN discussionHis woodworking videos are fantastic. Also, FWIW, he's now got a whole page about the cameras he's used to film them: http://woodgears.ca/misc/best_camera.html
Comment linking /misc/best_camera.html
on “Rolling Shutters”Submitted High-tech automatic infrared heater aimer as a story · 155 points
HN discussionFrom the woodworking site posted a couple of days ago, Matthias Wandel made one out of wood: http://woodgears.ca/marbleadd/index.html
Comment linking /marbleadd/index.html
on “4-bit calculator made from cardboard and marbles”Submitted Binary marble adding machine as a story · 119 points
HN discussionAnother good one is the eyeballing game, by Matthias Wandel. You have to eyeball half-distances, half-angles, center of a shape, etc. https://woodgears.ca/eyeball/index.html
Comment linking /eyeball/index.html
on “Show HN: Test your shape rotation skills”Submitted Templates for Cutting Gears from Wood as a story · 113 points
HN discussionIt's a real great message, yes, they gave a shit. They gave a shit because the author likely paid >10,000 CAD. Yes, ten thousand Canadian dollars. Or $7692 USD. This is significant to me because I feel like for a table (conference room or not!) anyone asking for that type of price point _should_ give a shit. I'm all for nice furniture (in fact, I've built some) – but I'd say some of the cape-wearing folks who really…
Comment linking /
on “Giving a shit as a service”Submitted The slinky machine: a slinky escalator as a story · 77 points
HN discussionI suspect you're trolling. But just in case you're not, and the problem really is that you cannot find interesting, educational and/or enlightening material... have you tried: Random Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random Ask.Metafilter (with accepted answer): http://ask.metafilter.com/home/answered Hack a Day: http://hackaday.com/ LifeHacker Top posts: http://lifehacker.com/top/ or http://lifehacker…
Comment linking /
on “Did You Hear We Got Osama?”Submitted The eyeballing game as a story · 51 points
HN discussionThose who enjoy other mechanisms made from wood may also like https://woodgears.ca/ The drawing mechanism reminds me of this technique from 1958 for generating vector characters entirely with analogue circuitry: http://www.nixiebunny.com/crtgen/crtgen.html http://www.glensstuff.com/fouriersynthchargen/fouriersynthch...
Comment linking /
on “Art student’s 407-piece hand-carved wooden clock (2016)”Submitted Jenga Pistol as a story · 49 points
HN discussionIf you want to see a cool DIY property - the guy behind woodgears.ca lived on the property while his dad built a retreat/summer camp. https://woodgears.ca/cottage/index.html
Comment linking /cottage/index.html
on “WikiHouse – Open source, modular, wood based, zero carbon housing”Submitted How to make wooden gears as a story · 46 points
HN discussionI also think it seems pretty appealing. There have been some interesting things on HN over the years about it. I loved this talk about how the tools you use determine how you look at problems (Tim Ewald - Clojure: Programming with Hand Tools) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShEez0JkOFw And if you haven't seen him before, you're about to fall in love with Matthias Wandel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Matthiaswandel/v…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: If you were to switch career, what would you do?”Submitted Binary marble adding machine as a story · 44 points
HN discussion
