Welcome to How To Break Stuff. This newsletter will be part chronicle of various projects, part how-to DIY ‘zine, and part manifestos on what it means to repair things in an era of obsolescence.
Last summer, I did something dumb. In the depths of a pandemic depression, I bought a truck. An old truck. Out of a field.
It didn’t work. It didn’t go, it wouldn’t stop. It was moldy. It had to be towed.
On a whim, starving for human contact in the days of lockdown, I pretty much live-tweeted the months-long process of fixing the truck.
And to my absolute surprise, people actually liked it. Or at least didn’t unfollow in droves.
(Yes, 58 is a lot of likes for me.)
This newsletter is borne of the interest in that thread.
We live in a disposable time. Depending on whose stats you read, Americans on average buy a new-to-them car or truck every 5-7 years. Laptops? 3-5 years.
And that’s not really our fault — our devices, from the navigation systems in our cars to the toasters in our kitchens, are built to be replaced, not rebuilt.
There’s a power in repairing. And its really satisfying too.
There will be a few basic tenets around here:
First off — repair is political.
I mean this in a radical sense. Yes, there’s right to repair legislation working its way through various levels of government right now, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
Many years ago, I swung crowbars in New Orleans, Louisiana, helping to gut houses flooded and mangled by Hurricane Katrina. One of the things I encountered there for the first time was a tool library. A bunch of activists, in a huge tent, loaning out tools, big and small, so people could fix their houses.
It’s also where I learned to keep my tools in good shape, from the turbocharged Volvo that got me there (expect more on this Volvo of Theseus) to the four-foot crowbar I kept sharpening.
When functioning devices mean getting to work, having a roof over your head or a meal in front of you, being able to take that into your own hands is a kind of liberation.
Fixing things saves you money, keeps trash out of landfills, and keeps more things from needing to be made. It’s efficient, and these days efficiency is a radical necessity as well.
Still with me? I promise this thing isn’t a soapbox. But there’s a point to this. Our ability to make and fix things is important. It lets us express ourselves, it lets us save a few dollars, and it gives us agency over lives that are increasingly automated.
Second thing you’ve gotta know here is I’m no expert. I’m not an ASE certified anything, I cut corners, use the wrong tools for the wrong jobs whenever I can, and rarely even measure once before cutting. (see crowbar, above)
I don’t say that as a disclaimer, but rather as an invitation. I like to tinker because I like learning how things work. I find the act of peeling back the layers of something in search of a problem to be profoundly enjoyable. Come join me on that.
Here’s how I plan on this working:
There’s no good magazine-style formatting on substack, and all of our attention spans are shit anyway. So instead of one big newsletter every week or two, with sidebars and sections, I’ll try to mix it up, with a project update or general post every week or two, with little sidebar-style posts and recurring segments scattered here and there, including:
Get a load of this tool, the title of which you have to read in your best accusatory New Jersey accent, will look at some less-common tools you might actually want to have around.
Ask HTBS is pretty self explanatory: gimme your questions. If I know what to do, I’ll tell you. If I don’t, I’m a reporter by trade — I’ll find out. I’m currently compiling questions for the inaugural Ask HTBS post, so please send anything my way: evan.simko.bednarski -at- gmail
Repair of the week, again, does what it says on the box. I break about a thing a week so… I’m going to try to keep up a healthy ratio.
I also want to include some of the interesting stuff I find around the web — new skills, others’ cool projects, things like that.
Next up will likely be an update on the nitro-powered remote-controlled car I found in the trash in Brooklyn and thought, “this is appropriate for my four-year-old.” But going forward it might be anything from a dead vacuum cleaner to the phone I just cracked the other day while working on my car to whatever my landlord has decided to ignore this week.
Oh and when I say things like “weekly”— I’m a reporter at a major metro newspaper by day, and I have two kids under the age of five. Not a goddamn thing is happening weekly. But live in this fiction with me please.
One more thing — there’s a lot of kinds of repair I don’t know enough about and want to. I wish I could work with wood. I wish I knew what I was doing with a sewing machine. There’s a hundred different way to be handy. If you know a lot about welding or sewing or carpentry or whatever, please feel free to weigh in. If this can become a place where folks share skills, it would be everything I wanted in starting this.
Get a load of this tool #1: JIS Screwdrivers
Have you ever stripped a phillips-head screw, especially a small one on a toy or the battery compartment of a piece of electronics?
Are you sure it was a phillips-head screw?
If you’re constantly stripping small, apparent phillips-heads, you might be dealing with a different animal entirely: the Japanese Industrial Standard.
Even to the trained eye, the differences between the two are extremely subtle. But they can mean the difference between fixing something and breaking it more.
The venerable phillips-head screw was designed by a guy named Henry. (Phillips was his last name). It came out at a time when most machinery was using flat-head screws. The cross-style slot of the phillips-head screw made it a boon for assembly-line work because it’s effectively self-centering: poke a screwdriver in its general direction, and it’ll work.
But the modern phillips-head screw has another built-in feature that aids fast (read: automated) assembly line work: overtorque protection. The screw and its driver are both designed with a slight arc in their mating surfaces. Once you get enough torque on a phillips-head, the driver “cams out” of the screw, slipping to prevent too much torque from damaging the fastener.
This is both a pain in the ass, and also means that a phillips-head driver will never perfectly fit a screw without a matching arc.
That screw is the Japanese Industrial Standard, or JIS, screw.
Here’s the thing: most American toolboxes have phillips-head screwdrivers. A *ton* of things in most American houses were made with JIS screws.
On a JIS screw, a phillips-head driver will want to “cam out.” So to compensate, you push the driver into the screw with more force. And then you strip the head of the screw. And then you yell “fuck!” Probably in front of your toddler.
JIS screwdrivers are easy to come by. A well-stocked local hardware store should have some, and online suppliers regularly stock them.
JIS Screwdrivers:
Utility - ** They do one thing, but they do it well
Necessity - **** You probably have a JIS screw in your house right now!!
Availability - *** Can you run out and buy one right now? Maybe.
OK so that’s that. Thank you for joining me on this. Look for more soon as I continue to procrastinate, and in the meantime, go get your hands dirty.
-Evan