Make: Tips and Tales from the Workshop

10 Fastening

In the Introduction, I tell how listening to the stories people told as they shared their tips inspired this book. There were two specific tips, though, that also inspired me to write this book. The first was a trick I saw for removing a broken lightbulb from a socket—a sticky (and potentially bloody) situation, right? You simply cut a potato in half, jam the slice o’ spud onto the broken bulb fragment in the socket, and then twist it out. I got the biggest charge from seeing that. It’s so smart, so simple, and the kind of clever hack that’s as much of a brain-treat flavored with human ingenuity as it is a worthy solution to a problem. A few days later, I had a similar inspired moment when I saw the first tip in this chapter ...