One of our favorite food geeks, Alex of French Guy Cooking, is at it again. This time, he breaks down the process of knife-sharping and looks at the tools involved, the physics involved, and he even does a little kitchen hack to create a stop for his whetstone on his sink divider.
As is often the case, there are some useful comments. In the video, Alex sharpens at a 15-degree angle. One of his viewers, vinny142, writes:
That 15 degrees is not critical, in fact, there are different angles for different kinds of knives. Filet knives have a 10 degree angle, general kitchen knives 20 degrees. Some chefs even have a personal preference that “just works” for them. Also, this was sharpening: the act of making sharp. Not to be confused with honing, the business with the big iron stick that you see butchers using all of the time in movies. Remember, the really thin edge that Alex mentioned, that curled over? He doesn’t polish it away completely, in fact that very thin edge is what does the cutting, and as you cut, you push that thin edge from side to side and it gets bent all over the place. Honing the blade against a honing steel straightens the sharp edge so it aligns with the direction of cutting again. If your knife doesn’t cut properly, don’t sharpen it, hone it first. If that doesn’t help, then you can sharpen.
The only face that might be creepier than FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s stupid mug is the eternally frozen and smiling visage of the Burger King mascot. Now the fast food franchise is taking shots at Pai’s decision to repeal net neutrality as well as his literal giant coffee mug.
The thing about politics is that brands don’t like to publicly take sides on an issue. Politicians have to do something really nonsensical and unpopular for brands to get involved because they don’t want to risk alienating a portion of their customers. Most Americans support net neutrality because most understand that it’s not a good idea to allow telecoms to pick and choose the content they might want to block or throttle. And if they don’t understand it at first, they tend to do so once they get a little information. As the net neutrality news saturation picked up in early December, just before the Federal Communications Commission’s Republican majority voted to repeal net neutrality protections, one poll found that 80 percent of Americans support maintaining Title II protections. That figure includes three out of four Republicans. This is an easy bipartisan issue.
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To make its position clear on net neutrality, Burger King filmed a stunt in which it educated “the public” on net neutrality using the Whopper as a metaphor for online content. Yes, the customers just learning about the subject are probably actors, and yes this promotes a fast food chain, but hey, when they’re right, they’re right.
The metaphor of having to pay wildly different prices and endure various inconveniences to get the same burger as everyone else is a perfectly fine illustration of the hellscape that the internet could inevitably become if it’s not protected. If you need an explainer for a friend, here it is, flame broiled. If you don’t, we can all just enjoy the King making fun of Pai’s ludicrous Reese’s mug and remember the times that he’s made a fool of himself without needing anyone else’s help.
Detailed information on intake airflow paths, and the shape and material makeup of the unibody. Data on torque curves and all available paint color names. The breakdown of tweeter speakers versus full-range ones. Nearly every car has a page on Wikipedia, but the one for the Honda Ridgeline stands above most of them for its obsessive level of detail for a fairly pedestrian vehicle.
The Ridgeline doesn’t have a massive fan following that might necessitate a detailed Wikipedia page, like a Chevrolet Corvette or a Ford Mustang. It hasn’t been around for decades or starred in music. No one writes songs about the Ridgeline. It’s a pickup truck, notable for being unibody in construction and derided for being closer to a Honda Accord than most rugged body-on-frame pickups.
But the section of the internet’s free online encyclopedia devoted to it is an exhaustive love letter from a bunch of nerds, especially one who goes by screen name “McChizzle.” Click on the Honda Ridgeline’s Wiki page and prepare to be amazed by references to “small vortex generators” found on the mirrors (see above), the full spread of transmission gear ratios, the number and location of unibody crossmembers, and even the amount of load that the tailgate and roof can handle.
Don’t believe me on that last point? Just read this:
When laid-down, the Ridgeline’s tailgate can handle dynamic loads of up to 300 lb (136 kg).[27] When equipped with a roof rack, the Ridgeline’s roof structure is designed to handle a total load of 165 lb (75 kg) to 110 lb (50 kg), depending on model year.
It’s hard to find this level of detail on Wikipedia for any car, let alone something as obscure and somewhat unloved as the Ridgeline.
Image: Honda
Glancing through the page, you’ll learn that the Ridgeline’s bed tie-downs can handle 350 pounds each, and that the in-bed trunk can manage 300 pounds of junk. The electric fans sucking air into the radiator are apparently rated at 160 watts each, the 100 watt Pioneer audio system comes with four full-range speakers and two tweeters, and the single overhead cam is apparently belt-driven.
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Plus, if you’re curious about the aforementioned transmission gear ratios, and you’re also interested in seeing the torque curves of the two generations of Ridgeline, here you go (of course, there’s also a chart for pre-2009 models):
The whole article is littered with nerdy quotes like this one about the material used for the bed:
The bed is built out of steel-reinforced Sheet Molding Composite (SMC) –developed by Continental Structural Plastics– which is dent resistant, corrosion resistant, ultraviolet light resistant, has a non-slip coating, and reduces weight by 30% over traditional sheet-metal designs.
And of course, there’s information on sales volumes, different fascia and wheel options, commonality with other vehicles in Honda’s lineup, trim level content, and quotes about the truck from the automotive press. It’s deeply nerdy and lovely and wonderful.
When I discovered this page, I had to know who was behind it all.
Much of it is the work of Wikipedia user and Ridgeline Owner’s Club forum-member “McChizzle,” who has owned a 2009 Ridgeline RTL since late 2008.
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A Virginia resident in his late 40s, McChizzle uses his truck to commute, tow his boat (see above), help with home improvement projects, and even go on road trips. (He wished to remain anonymous for this story, though he noted his weekend car is a 2015 Dodge Challenger SRT.)
Immediately impressed by the truck’s design and engineering—especially the all-wheel drive system, towing capability, interior space (particularly given the truck’s small overall size), and little “thoughtful” things like the dual-action tailgate and under-bed storage compartment—McChizzle told me he found himself researching as much about his Ridgeline as he could find—just out of curiosity.
It wasn’t long before he realized that the first-generation Ridgeline—a rather controversial truck at the time because of its unibody construction and image as a relatively “soft” vehicle, not a real truck—was highly misunderstood among the masses, with erroneous information about the vehicle abounding on the internet.
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Eventually, McChizzle came across a post on the Ridgeline Owner’s Club, or ROC, forum in which Ridgeline drivers complained about false information on the trucks’ Wikipedia page—information that members of ROC were having trouble fixing.
The Ridgeline doing Ridgeline things
Since McChizzle works for the Department of Defense, he’s had some exposure to a Wikipedia-like editable website of shared knowledge called “Intellipedia,” which acts as a way to collect and distribute data among people in the intelligence community.
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As such, McChizzle is well versed in wiki-markup language, and knows how to properly cite sources so that correct information doesn’t get taken down and bad information is deleted.
Knowing that he had the skills, McChizzle decided “maybe I can jump in and help.” But in order to do so, he had quite a bit to learn.
“I had to get smarter on the vehicle,” he said. “I had to get smarter on what Honda said they built and how they built it, and why they did what they did.”
So starting in July 2014, McChizzle dove deep into all things Ridgeline, asking members on the Ridgeline Owner’s Forum to direct him to reputable sources that could provide insight into how Honda actually designed and built the unibody truck.
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And by August of the following year, McChizzle began inserting into the Wikipedia page information from Honda’s press kits, YouTube interviews of the truck’s Large Project Leader, Gary Flint (see clip above), and even one of my own articles on Jalopnik.
McChizzle has been maintaining the Wikipedia article for the past 2.5 years, and now the page contains over 200 references. When I asked McChizzle over the phone how he decided to organize the article, and how he chose just how granular and detailed to be, he told me three things helped him decide what to include in the Ridgeline’s Wikipedia article.
Firstly, there were Wikipedia’s guidelines, which are standard sections found in many car wikipedia pages (for example: design, updates, marketing and sales sections). Second, there were entries inserted by previous editors, which McChizzle corrected and appended.
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“Adding the comparisons section was something I decided to add in order to address previous Wikipedians,” whom McChizzle told me were “trying to compare the Ridgeline to a minivan, a car, or an F-150.”
Finally, much of what’s in that Wikipedia page came from suggestions made by other members of the Ridgeline Owner’s Club, who especially wanted to address misunderstandings and questions they’d seen frequently floating around the message boards.
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A good example, McChizzle told me in an email, is the breakdown of the available colors. He told me that because the information is hard to find, and he saw that “used car shoppers on the ROC were trying to figure out if a particular color they liked was ever used on a particular model year or trim level,” he thought including it in the article made sense.
Looking at the Wikipedia-related thread on the Ridgeline Owner’s Club forum, it seems like there was lots of teamwork involved—check out this post in which McChizzle thanks forum member Carsmak for cleaning up his seats and sending in a photo to be used in the Wiki article.
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Between all the input from other ROC members, and McChizzle’s many hours of research (he even had to make his own drawings when Wikipedia allegedly refused to let him use certain graphics from Honda’s press release; he also made that sweet center console gif above), it’s clear that this Ridgeline Wikpedia article is a labor of love.
But Why The Ridgeline?
Image: Honda
As for why McChizzle chose to dive into such a big project dealing with a vehicle that’s far from an enthusiast’s car, well, much of it comes down to him just being hugely impressed by his truck.
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Though he’s not a fan of the looks, McChizzle is a big fan of the engineering that went into Honda’s mid-sizer, saying what ultimately sold him was “the technical, the engineering behind it and its design, and its performance for the things I needed it to do.”
He told me that settling for a midsize truck originally made him nervous, but when he realized the Honda could tow his boat just as well as his old GMC Sierra, handle D.C.-area snow like a champ, offer lots of interior room, and park in urban parking garages, he became a true believer.
He was especially struck by the little things. The spare tire mount on the side of the bed for when access to the in-bed storage area was limited; the dual action tailgate; the interior layout—McChizzle fell in love.
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“Wow, they actually put some decent thought into this,” he told me. “The way it was laid out and the thoughtfulness that was put into everything really took me aback.” As he did more research—especially on the head designer Gary Flint—his passion for the truck grew.
“There’s a lot more to this vehicle than I realized,” McChizzle thought at the time. “This is really something unique and special.”
Image: Honda
One reason McChizzle decided to take on this huge project is that he took a gamble on the Ridgeline, and to this day remains impressed by its capabilities. But another reason is that he kept seeing false information about the then-controversial truck. “The false information I was reading and hearing about on the Gen 1 Ridgeline,” he told me via email “was starting to annoy me.”
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He went on, saying “The Ridgeline is a controversial truck in the U.S.,” and that “made the idea of adding additional accurate content about the vehicle interesting to me.”
But it wasn’t just that McChizzle was passionate about the truck and annoyed by misinformation. Crucially, he had the skills. “In my profession, I deal with facts that lead to analysis for leaders to make better/informed decisions,” he said. “If you write about a controversial truck that people have strong emotions about… that’s something that’s worth documenting so the truth can get out there.”
So this amazing Wikipedia page represents a perfect storm of a man falling in love with his Ridgeline, getting agitated by misinformation, and having the skill-set to set the record straight.
It’s not easy having a messy kids, because that usually means you’re the one that has to pick up after them. Josh Reese grew tired of picking up his kids’ backpacks, so he decided to make a solution.
In the never-ending effort to tidy up my kids’ bedroom, I ran into the problem of not having a good place to put their backpacks. The kids would just throw them on their beds along with their books and papers. I tried hanging the backpacks on the bedposts, but it looked messy and they always fell off anyway.
I went to the drawing board and designed a solution.
If you want to build your own hanger, check out Reese’s How-To on Maker Share.
Want to showcase your own projects? Join Maker Share today.
From the free-throw line—a distance of just 15 feet—I can maybe put the ball in the basket about twenty percent of the time. I’m not NBA material, but the league might consider drafting the guys from YouTube’s How Ridiculous, who just nailed a seemingly impossible 660-foot basketball shot.
There isn’t a human alive who could throw a basketball that far (a football field is about half this distance) so the guys took advantage of the towering Maletsunyane Falls in Lesotho, Africa, to pull off this trick shot. The group doesn’t mention how many missed attempts there were while they tried to snag this Guinness World Record, but they apparently spent six days at the falls so their shooting percentage was probably nothing to brag about.
If you’re looking to build or customize a rifle that looks and shoots exactly how you want it to, you’re not going to find a better gun than the AR-15. With a seemingly endless supply of upgrades at your fingertips, modding or building your AR-15 from the ground up has never been easier.
For the most part, modding or building your AR-15 from the ground up is relatively simple and straightforward. And best of all, most of the tools needed for the job are probably lying around in your toolbox already.
Modded AR-15s
And if this your first time building an AR-15, make sure to take a look at our list of essential gunsmithing tools to see if you’ve got everything to get started.
Today, we’re going to look at…
Vise blocks
Pin punches
Wrenches
Tool kits
Screw kits
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s take a look at some of the best AR-15 build tools designed to make gunsmithing easy and convenient.
Brownells Upper and Lower Vise Blocks
When assembling your AR-15, it’s important that you use vise blocks to clamp your receiver halves together without damaging or distorting your upper and lower receiver.
There are a number of different vise blocks available on the market, but the advantage of going with Brownells is that you’re able to get two high quality products without having to pay an exorbitant amount of money.
The lower vise block will run you about $50, while the upper receiver block costs roughly $60. Brownells also has the two vise blocks available together for $80, which is a hell of a mark down if you want the pair.
Both blocks are made from a heavy duty urethane plastic that’s strong enough to withstand pressure from your bench vise while also keeping your upper and lower receiver protected from damage.
Sporting Conversions Takedown Pin Tool
A takedown pin tool is built form a heavy duty plastic that’s strong enough to remove takedown pins without damaging your gun. It’s also helpful for installing your magazine catch without marring or scuffing up your lower receiver’s metal, because it lets you push the mag release back far enough so that you’re able to install your mag catch without any issues.
The stock wrench is a basic spanner tool designed to make tightening and loosening castle nuts on your receiver quick and convenient. The wrench is created to give a firm grip on the nut in three places, making it easier to exercise control over the nut without causing any damage.
The Stock Wrench is a pretty straightforward tool, so don’t expect any fancy gadgets to be included. The tool serves only one purpose, but it’s its convenient size and non-slip rubber handle make it better for tightening and loosening nuts than a regular spanner.
Plus, it makes a great lightweight tool to carry around in your range bag.
Brownells AR-15 Armorer’s Wrench
Know how the Stock Wrench was a purely functional gunsmithing tool designed to get the job done more easily? Well, if you’re not about living that minimalist lifestyle and want the Swiss Army Knife of wrenches, the AR-15 Armorer’s Wrench is right up your alley.
As you can see, this wrench is significantly thicker than the Stock Wrench. That’s because the Armorer’s Wrench is built for work. This heavy duty tool is strong enough to withstand heavy use without breaking or bending, but is delicate enough to protect your gun from scuffs and scratches while handling stock and pin-style barrel nuts.
Magpul AR-15 Armorer’s Wrench
The Magpul Armorer’s Wrench is for when you want the Cadillac of spanners.
This sturdy wrench is designed to maximize grip and comfort. Just like the other armorer’s wrench, it works with both pin and stock-style barrel nuts, is compatible with standard-sized muzzle suppressors, and is able to tightly grasp castle nuts without causing damage to the nut.
Oh, and you can also open bottle caps with it, which is great for cracking open a cold one after you finish working on your build.
Overall, when it comes to armorer’s wrenches, it’s the quality and durability that makes the Magpul wrench stand out from the rest. You can expect to put this thing to endless work with numerous builds without issue.
Brownells AR-15 Critical Tools Kit
The critical tools kit is perfect for the first-time gunsmith who has taken an interest in learning how to build or modify their AR-15.
Just like its name suggests, the critical tools kit come with all of the essential tools that you will need in order to work on your rifle, such as…
Brownell’s AR-15 armorer’s wrench
A lower receiver vise block
An upper receiver action vise block
Two pivot pin tools
A pin punch for your bolt catch
What really makes this tool kit awesome is its value. For less than $100, you get a premium set of tools that will help you get started with your build. That’s cheaper than most people will pay just for the two vise blocks!
Wheeler Engineering Delta Series AR-15 Ultra Armorer’s Kit
If you’re looking for everything you could possibly need in a gunsmithing toolbox Wheeler Engineering’s Ultra Armorer’s Kit has got you covered.
Wheeler Engineering Delta Series AR-15 Ultra Armorer’s Kit
This heavy duty tool kit is filled with literally everything you need to build, modify, or maintain your AR-15. In fact, one of the selling points of this kit is that it enables you to perform more than 50 different types of operations when working on your AR-15.
The kit comes with a number of useful tools, including:
A bench vise for your AR-15
Vise blocks for your upper and lower receiver
Combo tool for torqueing and tightening nuts
Pivot and roll pin installation tool
A workplace mat to keep your AR-15 parts protected
Delta ring tool
Bore guide
Bolt carrier, bore, chamber, and magazine brushes
Custom carry case for your tools
As you can see, the Ultra Armorer’s Kit is one of the most comprehensive set of gunsmithing tool sets on the market. All of the tools are built with to be durable and easy to use, and are able to withstand heavy usage without any problems.
Wheeler Engineering AR-15 Armorer’s Essential Kit
If you don’t want to spend nearly 300 bucks on gunsmithing tools, but you still want to make sure that you’ve got everything you need to start your AR-15 build, Wheeler’s Essential Kit might be right for you.
This tool set is perfect for beginners and for people who’ve got some gunsmithing tools lying around already. It comes with all of the heavy duty instruments that you need to build your AR-15 or modify the one you’ve already got.
Additionally, the tool set also comes with a durable bag to carry around your tools and keep them protected from the elements. And while the Essential Kit isn’t quite as comprehensive as the Ultra toolset, its tools are made with the same heavy duty design that’s built for longevity and maximum usage.
Multitasker Twist AR-15 Tool
The multitasker twist tool is a screwdriver multi-tool designed to help make maintenance and optics adjustments quick and easy. This compact tool is the size of a pen, making it easy to carry around in your pocket or in your range back.
While not a necessity for building your AR-15, this tool certainly is handy you’re trying to clean or adjust sights. The tool also comes in a sleek black finish, but for about $10 more, you can get a desert camouflage tool instead.
Don’t Forget to Have Fun
Whelp, that’s our list of best AR-15 build tools to help you get started with your rifle.
As you can see, building or modding your AR-15 is a complex process. For this reason, it’s always a good idea to come up with a tool checklist before starting your build. That way, you don’t have to worry about stopping midway just because you forgot to buy a pin punch set or something.
Also, if you’d like to learn more about building your first AR-15, Glock, or a variety of other popular guns, make sure to check out our build guides to learn a little but about gunsmithing.
Lantac USA posted up a photo of a new AR BCG that has an external handle. This unusual looking BCG turns your AR into a bolt action rifle when built into an upper with no gas system installed. My friend Brian M. turned his .300blk AR into a bolt gun by simply blocking off the […]
Adam Fieldson of WhipWorks makes beautiful bull whips by weaving nylon paracord. Here, he walks us through the painstaking process of making one of his whips – a gift he presented to Tested and Mythbusters star Adam Savage. You can purchase his work in his Etsy shop.
Lantac USA posted up a photo of a new AR BCG that has an external handle. This unusual looking BCG turns your AR into a bolt action rifle when built into an upper with no gas system installed. My friend Brian M. turned his .300blk AR into a bolt gun by simply blocking off the […]