A dovetail gauge is used when marking out dovetails, of course. It certainly isn’t required – a sliding T-bevel, or some other angled or adjustable square can be used. The advantages of a gauge like this, however, are it’s lack of adjustability, and it’s light weight. It isn’t larger than the job requires, and that makes it easier to hold in place when marking out the work.

Like most squares, this tool has a stock (made of a dark hardwood here, “wenge” I believe) that butts up against the workpiece, and a blade that serves as a guide for a pencil or scribing tool. One blade is angled, for marking out the tails (in this photo, the tails are marked out – the shaded areas will be removed, leaving the tails between) and the other blade is square to the stock. Drawing square lines along the endgrain of the workpiece is another common task when laying out dovetails, so it is convenient to have the two blades on one tool.

The time I spent making this wasn’t trivial, but it was pleasant work. The brass stock was already a uniform width. Using a sliding T-bevel and a steel scribe, I marked the lines, then cut close to the mark with a hacksaw. I finished each edge by filing to the line, then dressing them with emery paper. I don’t recall the exact steps I used to mount the blade, but most likely I clamped them together and drilled pilot holes through the brass and into the wood. Enlarging the holes in the brass a bit, to create clearance for the threads of the screws would make sense.

Luckily the time indoors was spent listening to engaged and engaging people talk about interesting things. How to build support for right-to-left languages when coding themes for WordPress, or how an exploratory learning model can be a better approach to software design.

WordPress 3 is going to be the bomb, no doubt.

The Cook’s Illustrated team came up with a very effective bagel recipe for the home kitchen. When I use it, I deviate from the instructions in two ways. I knead the dough by hand since I don’t have a KitchenAid mixer, and I don’t use high gluten flour, instead concocting my own by adding some Bob’s Red Mill vital wheat gluten to King Arthur’s bread flour.

Eight bagels doesn’t seem like a huge reward for the effort involved, but once you have been through the process two or three times, it is fairly simple. A mixer would help, since the dough is very stiff.

Since the formed bagels are refrigerated for eight hours before the boiling and baking, the work is divided into two short sessions. That means you can have freshly baked bagels for breakfast in about thirty minutes.

The processing of Kodachrome is more complicated, but hopefully someone is on that project, somewhere….

So, I plan to figure out how to make a simple astrolabe, and try it out sometime in the next few days.

The problem it solves? Letting the followers of your muffins know when fresh ones are ready. All without needing to dust off your hands to approach a computer. Turn a nob, press a button.

This video is a fine example of “explaining by showing.” No words needed. Just a pleasant jazz guitar. Nice.

BakerTweet from POKE on Vimeo.

Iphone Paper Dock / Stand from Dessine moi un objet on Vimeo.

Saturday morning I baked my second loaf of bread from the same recipe, but I doubled it:

my son holds up the second Miche

right out of the oven, note how close it is to the full width of the parchment.

Because I moved the formed loaf  from the colander to the parchment a little too early, it had a chance to spread. Next time I will be sure to preheat much earlier.

I learned a good bit about timing with this recipe. Not about how timing effects the results – more how bad timing makes the baker’s life harder.

I fed the starter Thursday night. By Friday morning it had more than doubled in volume – and I didn’t have time to make the dough and let it ferment before heading to the office, so I put the levain in the fridge. This meant I wasn’t able to start until 7 PM.

When I got home from work, I took the levain out of the fridge, made dinner and read for a while. The dough was ready to sit for its second ferment by 10 PM.

Our kitchen was rather cool, so I decided to just go to bed, and let the dough rise for as long as 8 hours if need be – I just didn’t want to stay up until 1 AM (at the earliest) in order to bake.

I woke up at 3 AM, and didn’t feel like dozing was very likely. So I got out of bed, went to check on the dough, and was glad I did. It was slightly more than double in size. So I decided to bake.

I drank tea and read Shelly Powers’ Painting the Web while I waited for the oven (and the pizza stone) to get hot.  By the time the bread was baked and on the cooling rack, it was close to 5 AM. I slept well for a few hours. At 8:30 AM, I was tasting the bread.

I wasn’t as happy with the crust on the second loaf, but my wife and son preferred it. A softer crust is a little more acceptable to them – I prefer a crisp and crackly crust. I had tried turning the oven down to a lower temperature after 15 minutes of baking at 470 degrees. I won’t do that the next time I bake this recipe.