JacobCoffinWrites

The image shows a capped pipe with some assorted valves sticking out over water. Someone has drawn a >:3 face onto a small round part sticking up from the top.

Awhile back I posted that one of my cyberpunk short stories got picked up by an anarchist fiction zine. I was excited because I had this related-but-sort-of-mutually-non-canonical photobash comic ready to go, about a stolen secret service protoptype and the endangered deer it thinks is the president. I don’t want to spam this community with my weekly updates, so I figured I’d just share the still panels, spaced out whenever I get to them in the posting schedule. They’re just quiet bits of art between the jokes.

There are a bunch of spots like this around my home towns. Not necessarily a business, not a house, just some kind of sandpit with an old workshop or metal building and some old vehicles in it. Probably if I really dug in to county records I’d find a registered business, likely defunct, in a local family name. Perhaps several. But usually they’re pretty quiet spots, at least until someone new buys them. I’d wanted to do the cyberpunk version of one of those.

(I’d like to extend a huge thanks to the ham radio community over on reddit, who were great sports about looking over an early draft of the building and the antennas, and who helped me with scale and even which antennas to include. The only one that came up as a possible issue was the discone on the back, and there was some debate on whether to scale it down to make it more ‘as expected’ or to leave it as an unusually large one, until someone settled it by mentioning that their mentor had had one about this size, which came from the Swedish military. I’m making a rural cyberpunk webcomic, so I will 100% include European military surplus equipment in the backgrounds if I get that opportunity.)

I recently started trying to learn bookbinding (and because I never liked practicing by making something I didn't need, I'm starting with a 266-page solarpunk TTRPG rulebook I helped make).

I joined the Fully Automated discord a while back, mostly because I was looking for a place to talk worldbuilding in the genre. I read the lore/setting part of the rulebook and it actually helped me start thinking bigger than I had been around ways the world could be better. If there's a solarpunk timeline from our modern day, through conflicts and crumbles and collapses, gradually rebuilding towards something eutopian, then they're much closer to that high-tech, post-scarcity end-state than the solarpunk stuff I normally write. But there's something kind of fascinating about that world, and it makes for a great place to tell stories.

I offered them the use of the art I'd already made, and then I got involved in writing and editing the lore, including contributing a couple sections around rural areas and reuse, which, true to form, they expanded into something bigger than I had come up with on my own.

Since the game is an open source, all-volunteers thing, we didn't do a print run, just released a series of PDFs. But I have free access to a printer that can do 11x17, a plotter printer that can print on canvas, my SO's unused bookbinding kit, and enough patience to learn to bind at least a few copies, so I decided to give it a try.

The first step was rearranging the pages into signatures. These are small pamphlets of folded papers that get sewn and glued together to form the book. This turned out to be way easier to do than I expected, as there are several online tools for interposing PDFs. I found and really like this one: https://momijizukamori.github.io/bookbinder-js/

This allowed me to take the regular letter-sized (8.5"x11") PDF and rearrange it into signatures of four or five 11"x17" pages, with two pages per side. It handled reordering the pages so they work correctly once the signature is folded together and stacked with the others. We also took these interposed files and made them available on the FA! website.

Once I had the interposed version, I could print off the signatures:

I really recommend printing each signature separately so you can paperclip them together and keep careful track of which pages are inside it. It's really, really easy to completely lose the plot on the numbering - I almost couldn't figure out how to put a four-page signature back in order once or twice, if it had been mixed with other ones I'd have been really confused. But it's easy as long as you keep them in their sets and remember which side is up (because its the only sheet/side where two page numbers show in order).

The free printer I had access to couldn't print without leaving a margin so I had to trim them by hand. I started off using a papercutter on the short sides, but eventually switched to using a straightedge and scalpel on all the sides.

The next step was folding the signatures folio-style using a bone folder:

And then punching holes so I could sew them together. Some guides have you sew each signature separately, then sew those together, but the one I followed (and recommend) does them all at once.

The folded piece of paper is a template marked and punched so all the holes in all the signatures line up as closely as possible.

Next, I sewed it together using the Penrose Press guide, being careful to pull the threat as tight as I could before tying it off on each signature. I really like how secure this seems to make the binding.

Even if you tie it tight though, it'll still have some gaps. That's were clamping and gluing it helps! The guides I followed suggested just stacking books for weight at this part, but I went ahead and built a really ugly book press with a piece of scrap particleboard, scrap 2"x4", some wax paper, and a couple deck screws. I pre-drilled the holes, wrapped the boards in the wax paper, and screwed them together so the book block could be clamped between them:

That's when scope-creep hit and I switched plans from making this first copy a softcover book to making a hardcover.

I followed my SO's bookbinding book, and this guide for the spine, and added a section of cheesecloth (in place of mull, which I didn't have) and manila paper in roughly the dimensions they specified. These help hold the spine together and attach it to the cover (called the case).

Next, I roped the Fully Automated folks into making a back cover for me, and I put together a printable version with a spine and everything. I took a lot of measurements, made my best guess, then went to our local makerspace to print it on their plotter printer:

It's slightly large but I'm happy with it!

The next steps came pretty much entirely from this guide.

I cut some bookboard (stiff cardboard) to size, and did my best to line it up with the image showing through the canvas. Once I had them in place, I traced them lightly onto the back of the canvas in pencil, held it up to the light to see if it was good, and made corrections until I had good lines. Then I measured out to the edges of the sheet and trimmed it down:

Then I glued the bookboard to the canvas:

I forgot to take some pictures for the next step (sorry) so you'll have to rely on my descriptions. First I cut the corners off the cover at a 45 degree angle 1/8" out from the corner of the bookboard. I used a carpenter's square to mark the angle. Then I folded the sheets over the bookboard and glued them.

Then it was time to glue the book block into the case. This happened fast enough that I didn't dare stop to take pictures. I slipped some wax paper between the endpaper (a blank sheet I included on front and back when I used the interposing software) and the rest of the book block. Then I painted it with glue as quickly as possible, being careful to first glue the cheesecloth to the paper, then painted it over with glue as well. Then I carefully closed the cover onto the sheet. The endpaper was just about a liquid at that point, despite how lightly I stippled on the glue, so I'm glad I didn't have to try to make changes. I flipped it, and let it dry for awhile.

Then I repeated those steps on the other side and left a heavy laptop sitting on it.

Its always tense waiting while the glue dries on a project, hoping its not clamped crooked, or the glue isn't running and sticking to something it shouldn't. Especially when you're combining the end result of two other projects. Luckily this one turned out mostly okay:

I can see where the endpapers stretched (just like one guide said they would) causing them to reach further towards the fore-edge than I'd have liked. But it generally looks pretty smooth and clean so I'm not very bothered by that.

All in all, I think not bad for my first bookbinding project!

I've made a few trips to the hardware store and other errands over the years, using a backpack on my bike (years ago, when it was my only transportation, I hauled a small amount of groceries in a backpack and just made multiple trips) but this is the first trip I've made since I started trying to turn this mountain bike into a cargo bike. I've got the rear rack I talked about in that post, some basic secondhand fabric panniers secured with straps and zip-ties, and a milk crate from a consignment shop. I went for a pretty light grocery run for the first trip, just two totes of frozen stuff, and it rode just fine on the way home.

Thanks for all your advice! I think I'm going to upgrade to bucket panniers at some point soon, but I'm glad I can at least start using it like I'd planned.

I previously posted looking for advice on turning my old steel-framed mountain bike into something I could use to haul groceries and maybe some bits of furniture I find on trash day.

I got a ton of helpful suggestions, and started out on what I think will be a gradual project as I make incremental improvements to this bicycle.

Step 1 was adding a rear rack, so I could add cargo panniers, or a basket behind the seat.

I settled on this one because I liked the extra support legs, and because it claimed to be able to support more weight than most other designs (something I remain skeptical about, but I'm pleased with the overall construction so far).

I did find that the right side seat stay was too crowded for two of the wraparound attachments to fit, so I'd need to use the built-in attachment point just above the rear gear.

Unfortunately, the lower support rod segment was too short to reach the attachment bolt. But that was fixable - the rod was just a length of 3/8 steel round stock with a flattened section where it bolted to the wraparound attachment bracket. It would be pretty easy to make one of my own.

I started by buying some 3/8” steel rod and a fresh can of propane for my offbrand bernzomatic torch (on two trips, one by train, one by bike because I didn’t realize the old one was empty till I tried to use it).

(Test fitting the 3/8 rod into the upper section of the telescoping rear post)

Then I got some of my old forging tools together. Without a proper forge or anvil, I knew it’d be pretty sloppy blacksmithing, but I didn’t need this to be particularly fancy.

From left to right: 3/8ths steel round stock, fireplace glove, a steel block I found on the side of the road (my anvil, at the moment), my favorite forging hammer (combination round peen and straight peen), offbrand bernzomatic torch, lighter because I couldn't find my striker, and a face shield because you should wear safety goggles while forging (and this was easier to find)

I didn’t take any pictures while working because I didn’t want to waste additional fuel. Basically I just heated the end up as much as I could without a way to contain the heat, and hammered the daylights out of it whenever it seemed to be as hot as it’d get. It was halfway closer to cold forging than proper blacksmithing but I managed to spread the end of the rod flat enough to drill a hole through safely.

I used the drill press, a metal-drilling bit, and a bunch of tap oil, and went through the center of the piece without any real difficulty.

Once the hole was positioned, I used the grinder to clean up the overall shape of the forged part a little. Like the old wisdom says: a grinder and paint makes me the welder (or blacksmith) I ain’t.

(Top: the new one. Bottom: the original/stock part)

I decided to go much longer than necessary, which I suppose adds a little weight, but also some strength as we’re not relying on as much of the hollow tube it attaches to for structural support.

Once it was cleaned up and the oil removed, I spraypainted it. It would have been easy to go with Gloss Black to match the rest of the bike rack (I had a can of it handy) but I decided to paint it blue. I’d just put some work into making this part custom, and I’m working on rethinking if my goal needs to be to make something look like a product in the first place. For now I don’t mind calling a little attention to it.

Plus, the bike never looked great, which works great for me. One of my relatives found it rusting in a sandpit, gave it to me my first job away from home, and I’ve replaced piece after piece back when it was my sole means of transportation. For quite awhile it was held together with zip ties and various kinds of tape (and featured a fender made from cut-up gatorade bottles and duct tape) and the overall look meant it wasn’t exactly a high priority target for theft.

I gave the paint the full 24 hours to dry, then assembled the last bit of the rack.

Looking decent!

I have some panniers a relative gave me to hang over the rack if I can ever figure out how these straps work, but I wanted to see if it would work with a big steel basket I got out of a dumpster awhile back.

Turns out it’s ridable, though heavier than I'm used to. Cargo would likely make it even more tippy, though maybe not more so than those child seats I've seen around? Just the same, I suspect if “bicycle pickup truck” was a good idea, more people would be doing it so I'll swap on the panniers soon.

Next steps will be to add panniers, better brakes (per the previous post), and I think a frame bag and a handlebar basket.

Edit: I've removed the basket and I think I understand the paniers. I just don't trust the attachment system to stay attached and not get tangled up in the rear wheel and chain. Each side has an adjustable strap with a hook, and a loop of strap sewn on. It just seems like with the flex and stretch of the cloth bags as the bike moves and bounces along, it'd be too easy for the hook to come unhooked, at which point it'd be awesome at snagging a spoke or something. So I've got it hooked together I think the way it's intended, and a few zip ties should make sure it stays that way. When I go to buy bigger panniers someday (these are fairly small) I think I'll want ones with buckles or something more secure but still removable.

The image shows several stickers attached to a metal pole. Near the center is a black and white cartoon raccoon in a dress surrounded by colorful flowers.

I posted awhile back after making a home for solitary bees, sharing that it had gotten some use. Its important to replace the sticks annually to prevent parasites from being passed from bee to bee as holes are reused.

Thanks to some winter storms, we had lots of downed branches to clear, so I had no shortage of sticks available for use as future bee housing:

(One pile of many)

The holes need to be between 5" and 6" deep, so I started cutting the sticks into 6.5"-ish lengths.

This doesn't look like much but it took a lot of eight-foot branches to make these piles.

The next step was drilling holes. Different size bees need different diameter holes, so I read a few guides and picked out a range of drill bits between a metric #2 and a full half-inch (I don't think solitary bees care about unit standardization) to make sure any potential tenants can find a cozy caliber to call home.

I used the drill press to start the holes then used a set of extra long metric bits in a screwgun to get the full length the bees need

This didn't always go perfectly. I didn't break any bits, but sometimes the holes were crooked enough to punch through the side of the stick and I'd set them aside.

Then I just had to bag up what I'd made and replace the sticks in the bee house:

(Background omitted because it's easier than tidying the shop.)

I'd thought I'd made enough sticks for two years, but it took almost all of them to fill the bee house. Glad I prepared as many as I did.

I think I'd call that move-in ready.

Awhile back I posted that one of my cyberpunk short stories got picked up by an anarchist fiction zine. I was excited because I had this related-but-sort-of-mutually-non-canonical photobash comic ready to go, which played with the same concept but in a different tone.

I don't want to spam this community with my comic weekly or anything, so I figured I'd just share a few still panels, spaced out whenever I get to them in the posting schedule. They're just quiet bits of art between the jokes.

Hopefully that's all okay, and if you do want to read this silly webcomic about a stolen secret service protoptype and the endangered deer it thinks is the president I'm posting it weekly here or here

I found this story on Mastodon, about a maritime shipping disaster and the first-on-the-scene, questionably-legitimate emergency responders who rescue crew, contain the ecological impacts, and restore infrastructure damaged by a megafreighter crash before the official response can get into gear. And who take a bunch of loot when they leave.

Fully Automated's setting is generally more responsible than the capitalist one suggested in this story, so there might be less of a vacuum for a group like this to fill. But the world is big and varied, and it has a messy history, with plenty of war and strife, in which groups like this could thrive. Some of them may still be around. And some regions might just genuinely need someone to step up and respond to disasters, regardless of legitimacy.

Either way, I think it's a neat concept with decent execution.

Between the large swaths of rewilded land in Fully Automated's setting (which is protected from any permanent development/dwelings) and the general availability of high tech stuff, I could totally see slow, wandering, nomadic houses being a thing (for good or ill, depending on who in the setting you ask).

I bought this set of outside calipers at a junk store in my hometown (sort of a consignment, thrift store deal, with lots of old furniture, and the contents of like half a dozen garages right down to the old jars of mismatched screws. I sort of use it like a hardware store).

I like this design a lot, I like the lack of a spring on the jaws, and that you can fasten the little distance measuring arm to the side it measures on, so you can close the calipers around something, tighten that wing screw, then open the calipers to get them back.

They had some surface rust, so I decided to clean them up. The first step was to disassemble them. Not difficult when there's only three pieces involved.

I let them soak in some evaporust for about 8 hours. I really like this stuff, it hits the sweet spot between very effective and not especially dangerous, and it's reusable! They do overestimate how effective it is in their instructions though, so it often takes longer.

The calipers, straight out of the evaporust. You can already see some text which was hidden before, along with the initials AM from a previous owner.

Now that the worst of the rust had been dissolved, it was time to switch from chemical to mechanical cleaning. I sanded it down with 400 grit emery cloth.

The calipers with only one side sanded.

As I cleaned up the sides, I found a few neat bits of history:

Here's some funny nicks up near the joint on one side. I wonder what caused them. And the previous owner's mark on the right side, AM. This is a big part of why I love old tools. I love the history they carry with them, even if I don't know all of it.

Looking better, but still a ways to go. I was surprised to find that there weren't any markings on the little distance arm. I'd been expecting to find little angle tickmarks or something, maybe even printed numbers, but there weren't any to be seen after the evaporust, or once I started gently sanding off the remaining rust and the black crud evaporust leaves behind.

Once I had most of the rust gone, I switched to steel wool. I didn't want to take too much material off the surfaces, and I felt the more flexible steel wool would hit inside the pitting from the rust better.

The steel wool shined it up quite nicely. And here's a closeup of some of the surface pitting left over by the rust on the left side. The back of these calipers didn't have this kind of damage.

It was tempting to leave it here, but I didn't want the rust to return, so I decided to treat the calipers with cold blue, to provide some protection against oxidation. There are other ways to protect steel, but I like the look and it seems to hold up well enough.

Cold blue always looks a little rough when it first goes on (this stuff is a gel you don't want to get on your hands. You wipe it on, leave it to darken the metal for 60 seconds, and wipe it off again) but a little burnishing with 0000 steel wool will tidy it up:

There we go, still pretty shiny, but not as likely to rust again. Not bad considering how it looked in the beginning. Hope you'd approve, AM.

(I wrote this post for the making/fixing things blog I have on our local movim instance. If you're a slrpnk.net local, your credentials will work on movim automatically!)

I've been thinking about campaigns and discussing possible plotlines with my SO, and while we were talking about options for investigations and the reasons people might commit crimes even in a solarpunk society where everyone has enough, and they reminded me of this podcast which focuses on white collar crimes, their impacts on society, and the investigations around them.

Especially if your players are interested in playing investigators, I think there's a lot of potential in learning about the motivations and tactics of the rich and powerful in everything from taking shortcuts that make unsafe buildings, to illegally dumping chemical waste.

If you'd like to do that learning by listening to an entertaining podcast read by a fellow with a remarkably dry sense of humor, I'd very much recommend it.

Semi related, I'm currently planning a session or short campaign around searching for a decades-old illegal dumping site so it can be remediated, while providing useful inputs to geopolymer manufacturing.