Paul's Place

There is a surprising lack of information about this on the Internet and from manufacturers, so we’re going to have some here.

What is latex?

Christopher Columbus discovered natural latex in America, though the natives were already familiar with it. Natural latex is a milky white substance produced by some plants upon injury. The world latex supposedly derives for the Latin word for liquid, but that seems apocryphal to me given that the primary Latin words for liquid are liquidum and liquor. Dried latex from the opium poppy is called opium, but don’t try to snort your bike tubes!

Processing and drying of liquid latex results in a sticky rubber, and further processing – in particular vulcanization – creates a stronger, stretchy, non-sticky rubber like latex glove or latex bike tube rubber. The primary source of latex for rubber is… the rubber tree. The name rubber actually comes from the observation in 1770 that it works well as a pencil eraser. Further processing of latex yields other kinds of rubbers, but rubber can also be synthetically made from compounds like polyisobutylene, as is the case with black butyl bicycle tubes. Latex allergies are caused by proteins in natural latex rubber and there are synthetic versions available based on vulcanized polyisoprene.

Because latex rubber is vulcanized the same as butyl rubber, bike patches should also work. This is because bike patches aren’t attached by glue but rather by vulcanization in which sulfur in the patch cement creates bonds between the tube and the patch. As we’ll see, the softer nature of the latex tubes makes them accept this bonding easier than with butyl tubes.

Latex tube facts

• Latex tubes supposedly can wear down from very hot extended rim braking, but are unaffected by disc brakes.
• Latex tubes in your wheels lose 10-15 psi overnight, vs. about 2 psi for regular butyl tubes.
• Latex tubes give a slightly cushier ride than lightweight butyl. A latex tube at 100 psi feels like a butyl tube at 95 psi.
• Latex tubes are about 5 watts faster per tire than lightweight butyl tubes. See the graphic below.
• Latex tubes are lighter than even “ultralight” butyl tubes by 5-25g.
• Latex tubes have similar puncture resistance (or lack thereof) to butyl tubes.
• Latex tubes are sensitive to stronger solvents such as acetone, thinner, kerosene, xylene, WD-40. But not weak solvents such as isopropanol (rubbing alcohol) and ethanol (booze).
• Inflated latex tubes will push their way through a much smaller tire casing hole than butyl tubes, so patch all tiny tire holes.
• Latex tubes cost at least 2x what quality butyl tubes cost – about $14 vs $7. How much does this matter if you use them for months while patching a few holes in them?
• You can use glueless patches on latex tubes, but only temporarily (same as butyl). See more below.

Let’s do this

Latex tubes are much stretchier than classic black butyl tubes. This hole we are patching was caused by the tube pushing through a small hole in the tire casing – a hole which the previous butyl tube wouldn’t push through at even 100 psi. This hole is fairly small and latex tube holes sometimes are a little bigger and with torn edges. No matter, as the patching will work for holes up to at least 1/8″ (4mm) wide, if not more.

The patch is a square cut from another latex tube. That’s the best way to patch it, but you can use regular butyl tube patches. The patch below is bigger than it needs to be for patching the hole, but a bigger patch makes for a tube that rolls a little smoother in the tire. Regular butyl tube patches are thicker and don’t stretch and so can feel more like a bump in your patched rolling tire.

You don’t need to sand-paper the tube or patch; they just need to be cleaned. It won’t hurt them to lightly sand them either, if that makes you feel more confident. Latex tubes are not coated with the same waxy sheen that butyl tubes are.

Regular butyl patch cement that comes with patch kits does the job, but does it do it in the same way? Vulcanized rubber is rubber whose carbon chains are cross-linked with sulfur atoms or short chains to make it more elastic and less like plastic. It makes rubber more “rubbery.” Butyl tube patch ‘glue’ isn’t actually glue but rather a solvent with sulfur chloride, and the sulfur chemically bonds the patch to the butyl.

Standard Rema kit cement Not the same as Elmer’s office Rubber Cement!

Can you use glueless patches on latex tubes? Yes you can, the same as butyl tubes. But also as with butyl tubes you should only use glueless patches on the road and replace them with permanent patches when you get home. Glueless patches don’t bond to the tube; they are like sticky notes on your wall which merely adhere because they have some sticky stuff on them.

After applying the cement the rubber gets soft and tacky and the patch curls. That’s OK because it’s only a little surface softness and it will be restored when the solvent evaporates.

The patch sticks easily and feels pretty secure:

Fill the tire with enough air to make it taut to see how the patch sits:

We’ll sit the tube on the counter for a few hours in this taut state to see if any air is lost. You don’t need the tube at high pressure to identify a leak. It merely needs to be taut, where it’s filled to the point that it’s just started to stretch. If there’s a leak then it will show at most within a couple hours.

After waiting a few hours the tube is still taut:

And tested in the tire at 95 psi overnight. Latex naturally loses air faster than butyl and so about 10 psi overnight is expected for any latex tube:

It turns out that the original construction of the tube is done by cementing two segments together near the valve stem:

Additional data

Latex tubes have the lowest rolling resistance of any kind of tube:

Links

• Latex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latex
• Polyisoprene (synthetic latex rubber): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyisoprene
• Vulcanization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulfur_vulcanization
• More vulcanization: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vulcanization
• Disulfur chloride, the active ingredient in patch cement: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disulfur_dichloride
• How latex gloves are made: https://blog.ammex.com/how-latex-gloves-are-made/
• Latex tube performance video: https://www.globalcyclingnetwork.com/video/butyl-vs-latex-vs-tpu-which-inner-tube-is-fastest-for-your-bike
• Butyl rubber: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butyl_rubber

If you shop for iron supplements online or at the store you will find hundreds of brands, many with names and labels touting their benefits. Perfect Iron, Ferrasorb, Slow Release Iron, Proferrin, Blood Builder, Vegan Iron, Women’s Iron, Gentle Iron, etc. However, all of these will be one of just six types. There are seemingly hundreds of web sites about iron supplements, but I haven’t seen one summarizing these six options and so that’s what I’m doing here. We’re talking about oral supplements here only, but there are also doctor-prescribed intravenous and intramuscular iron injections for special patients, though even those are usually variants of these six. If you are considering an iron supplement then this should help you understand the options. If you are in a hurry then scroll down to our suggestion of your best strategy for trying iron supplements.

Note that Fe (Latin: ferrum) means iron metal or individual metal atoms and Fe2+ or Fe(II) or ferrous means the 2+ oxidized salt version of iron. There is also a ferric Fe3+ form of iron.

Iron supplementation should be done with a doctor’s supervision to monitor levels and safety. Iron overload is possible with some people and can lead to health problems.

Why the different types?

If it wasn’t for upset stomachs then there would probably need to be only one iron supplement: ferrous sulfate (Fe2+). As we will see below ferrous sulfate is not only easily absorbed (modulo interfering foods) but also so cheap that its material cost is essentially zero. The problem is that ferrous iron (the 2+ salt form of iron) upsets the gut biome and slows down digestion to the point of causing constipation and other problems. All the other iron supplement types exist to address this problem, as well as “slow release” variations of ferrous iron supplements. And they all address it in basically the same way – by hiding the Fe or Fe2+ from the gut biome so it doesn’t get upset. Researchers also hypothesize that free iron causes oxidative damage to the intestines, leading to inflammation and subsequent gastrointestinal discomfort. Usually this hiding is by encircling an Fe, Fe2+, or Fe3+ with some other atoms or molecules. The downside is that these wrappers to some degree also hide it from intestinal absorption and so mg per mg it isn’t absorbed as well. Even natural heme iron (e.g. from eating meat) is protected by the heme wrapper, but it isn’t subjected to an absorption penalty because the intestinal absorption enzymes natively recognize this wrapper and give it a free pass, so to speak.

Iron absorption

Below we have a diagram of how iron supplements are converted and absorbed through the intestinal cells. Heme iron is absorbed directly without extracting the iron atom. All other iron types are converted to Fe2+ before absorption. Inside the intestinal cell even the heme iron is extracted to Fe2+. It’s then ported out of the wall for further handling and distribution to the body. Fe3+ handling is shown because some supplements use it and because it’s naturally present in some foods. For more detailed diagrams of this, see these images.

The standalone in the diagram above is what caused GI problems for many people. In the case of ferrous sulfate there is an immediate large amount of it, while with the chelate and other supplements the Fe2+ is consumed as it’s converted and so there isn’t such a large concentrated amount at any given time to upset the GI.

The six types

Beyond these six there are other potential iron supplement types – such as ferric (Fe3+) iron salts – but they are worse than other types in most ways and you will rarely see them. We discuss these each of these six below and provide a cost comparison chart after that.

1. Iron filings
2. Ferrous iron
3. Chelated iron
4. Carbonyl iron
5. Polysaccharide complex iron
6. Heme iron

Iron filings

Iron filings are actually a fine supplemental iron source, as the acids in your stomach and GI tract can oxidize them to the Fe2+ form which can be directly absorbed by the intestines. There are hundreds of pages on the Internet devoted to showing how fortified breakfast cereals can be treated with a magnet to pull out the iron filings. However, you won’t typically see iron filing tablets on store shelves, because they are no better than ferrous iron (below) and are a least as GI disrupting. There are some iron powder supplements labeled Electrolytic Iron. That simply refers to the process of purifying iron metal into a very pure powder for consumption.

Ferrous iron

Also known as Fe2+ and Fe(II) and is an iron salt. Yes a salt. Sodium Chloride (NaCl) is table salt of Na+ and Cl– but Na by itself is actually a metal. The case with iron here isn’t much different. It has been in use as an iron supplement since the 1830s and is available in virtually every supermarket and drug store in addition to online.

The most common formulation of it is ferrous sulfate (FeSO4), but it’s also seen as ferrous fumarate, ferrous gluconate, and ferrous carbonate. As far as iron supplementation is concerned, these are essentially the same. The problem with all these is that the free Fe2+ in your gut upsets it as described above. This isn’t one of those rare complications experienced only by weird people; most people experience these problems to some degree. Also, some foods interfere with absorption of ferrous iron, such as milk and foods that raise pH.

There are “slow release” forms of ferrous supplements, and these purport to reduce GI distress, and studies have shown that more iron is absorbed from slow release tablets than rapidly disintegrating tables. So if you try ferrous iron then you are well advised to try a slow release version.

Chelate

The word “chelate” is from the Greek word for “claw”, and it’s appropriate because it describes how a metal atom is held on two or more sides by one or more other molecules. In doing so the Fe2+ molecule is sequestered from disrupting the intestinal chemistry and bacteria, but still being accessible to the proteins that transport the Fe2+ into the body. Due to being bound like this it’s not absorbed as well as free Fe2+, but who cares because you can just formulate a pill that provides a little more of it, or take two pills.

Almost all chelated iron is in the form of ferrous bisglycinate, commonly provided in the U.S. by the Albion company under the name Ferrochel regardless of what the supplement bottle brand name happens to be. A good description of it is here. Ferrous bisglycinate pills are usually in the form of capsules and you can actually open them up and sprinkle the contents into other foods, which may be useful for children for example.

Carbonyl

Carbonyl is a chemical name for Carbon/Oxygen pair bounded to something. See the picture below, which shows how the Fe is sequestered by carbonyls. This supplement is unique in that the iron is in the native iron form (Fe) and not in oxidized form (Fe2+ or 3+). As a result it is fairly magnetically attractive. The absorption of this relies on the Fe first being oxidized in the intestines to Fe2+. How well does this work? According to studies, carbonyl iron supplementation is 64% as efficient as ferrous iron, which means it works fine if the dose is just a little higher. Users report that carbonyl iron is not generally GI disruptive. Its only downside is that it’s typically a little more expensive than chelate iron, but worth trying nevertheless.

Polysaccharide

This is another way of sequestering iron atoms from the gut biome in order to minimize GI disruption. Polysaccharides are sugar molecules in chains and are found in many foods. Modern chemistry has found a way to get these polysaccharides to bind an iron atom as Fe2+ or Fe3+ in a way that allows it to unbind in the gut and be absorbed into the intestines. Because polysaccharides are basically sugars or starches, this kind of supplement can be made into chewable tablets, gummies, and liquids. Studies have shown this kind of iron is GI-friendly and absorbed nearly as well as ferrous supplements. Polysaccharide iron is more expensive than chelate iron but its solubility provides unique options for administration.

Heme

The word heme (a.k.a. haem) is derived from Greek αἷμα haima meaning “blood”. It’s your body’s native realtime transport mechanism for iron (with ferritin being the longer term storage mechanism for iron). It’s where the red in red meat comes from, and the heme in red meat is 10 times higher than in white meat. The GI tract has evolved to directly absorb heme molecules without having to extract the internal Fe, and this is why heme iron doesn’t upset your GI and why the presence of other foods (e.g. milk) doesn’t interfere with heme iron absorption.

It turns out there are now heme-based iron supplement pills. A common source of this is Proferrin, which provides their own branding or sells to other brands. Studies have shown this pill-based heme to work as well as other iron supplements, with the aforementioned upside that it’s not sensitive to other foods. The downside is that this is the most expensive iron supplement type, while not working any better than other supplement types for studied users.

Summary table

TypeVariationsProsConsIron filingsbreakfast cerealSuper cheap.
Found in breakfast cereals, etc.GI problems Ferrous (Fe2+)ferrous sulfate
ferrous fumarate
ferrous gluconateEasily absorbed non-heme ironGI problems
Absorption blocked by some foods. Chelate ferrous bisglycinateFew GI problems
Cheapest of the more tolerable ironsMore expensive than Fe2+CarbonylPerfect iron brandFew GI problems More expensive than Fe2+ and chelatePolysaccharideFerrex brand
liquid ironFew GI problems More expensive than Fe2+ and chelate HemeProferrin brandNo GI problems
Not blocked by some foodsMost expensive while working no better

Cost comparison

Here we plot the cost of these based on daily dose rather than by mg or pill, because milligrams and pills aren’t equivalent and in the end your daily cost is what matters to you anyway. The actual costs for you will depend on how much you take, but the relative costs below should hold true regardless.

Ferrous sulfate (Fe2+) is so cheap that its material cost is essentially zero. It’s actually a waste product of titanium dioxide (sunscreen) production. See below for links to each of the products referenced by the chart.

Your best strategy

Given that ferrous iron is the best absorbed and cheapest source (see the chart directly above), your best bet is to try versions of that (including slow release versions) and see how you react. If that’s problematic (e.g. GI problems) then try one of the other supplement types, perhaps starting with a chelate (a.k.a. bisglycinate) type such as this. See above for lists of foods that may reduce absorption of any of these. All supplements of a given type are going to be essentially identical and so you might as well buy the cheapest brand of a given type. The cost chart above derives from the lowest cost supplements, but for any given type there is are boutique brands that cost a lot more for the same thing.

Glossary

• Chelate – A type of bonding of ions and molecules to metal ions. Often found in biological systems.
• Fe – The symbol for iron, synonymous with iron.
• Ferrous – Iron in the +2 oxidation state. Written as Fe2+, Fe++, or Fe(II).
• Ferric – Iron in the +3 oxidation state. Written as Fe3+, Fe+++, or Fe(III).
• Ferritin – A globular protein – a nanocage! – that stores iron atoms in your cells. It’s like a garage for iron.
• GI – gastro-intestinal
• Transferrin – A protein which transports iron atoms to cells, including to eventual storage in ferritin. It’s like a car for iron.
• Heme – A complex molecule at the center of which is an iron atom which holds an oxygen atom for transport.
• Hemochromatosis – A medical condition in which your body has accumulates too much iron and doesn’t dispose of it.
• Carbonyl – A chemical group in which a Carbon/Oxygen (C-O, C=0, C≡0) pair is bound to a base through the carbon.
• Polysaccharide – A chain of sugar-like molecules, such as starch and cellulose.

Links

• Extract iron filings from your breakfast cereal: https://www.sciencefocus.com/science/how-to-extract-iron-from-cereal/
• Discussion of how ferrous sulfate is better absorbed than more complex supplements but also less tolerated: https://www.cfp.ca/content/65/8/556
• Slow release iron: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1064905/
• Heme iron absorption: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9460807/
• Explanation for ferrous GI disruption: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4336293/
• Spinach isn’t really such a great source of iron: https://www.compoundchem.com/2018/07/17/spinach/
• Iron overload: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_overload
• Iron biochemistry advances are fairly recent: https://ashpublications.org/blood/article/112/2/219/24241/Forging-a-field-the-golden-age-of-iron-biology
• Science: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3354642/
• Science: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15743019/
• Science: https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/article/92/6/1406/4597520?login=true
• Science: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2598894/
• Science: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33005455/

Cost calculation links

These are links to low cost popular iron supplements on Amazon. Except the iron filings which is just a bottle of laboratory iron powder.

• https://www.amazon.com/Innovating-Science-Filings-Laboratory-Grade-Available/dp/B0731XM6WX/
• https://www.amazon.com/Ferrous-Sulfate-Tablets-1000-Count/dp/B072N1DC3H/
• https://www.amazon.com/Amazing-Formulas-Iron-Bisglycinate-Hemoglobin/dp/B07KKPLPQC/
• https://www.amazon.com/Genestra-Brands-Supplement-Vegetable-Capsules/dp/B005IQTIPY/
• https://www.amazon.com/Dietary-Supplement-Capsules-Cypress-Pharmaceutical/dp/B001AS9PLG/
• https://www.amazon.com/Iron-Repair-Supplement-Absorption-Hemoglobin/dp/B087BMSLZJ/

I recently did a remodel of my laundry room to match the adjacent kitchen. I added cabinets of the same style as my kitchen but due to limited space I lifted the cabinets to the ceiling and there is no countertop. As a result, it’s fairly easy to see under the cabinets, especially for visitors that aren’t very tall:

That looks a bit janky, and there’s no way to order the cabinets from most makers with under-facing built-in. Your only options are to go with a fully custom cabinet maker who will provide the tailored materials for the installer, or you can order or make the facade and manually size and install it. We’re going to make it look like this:

The facade material

You can order facade material from all but the low end cabinet manufacturers, or you can make it yourself. If you plan this ahead then I recommend getting the facade from the manufacturer. It will be expensive – like a couple hundred dollars for a 4 × 8 panel – but it’s convenient. Below is a picture of some such facade, but that’s an old picture of material I don’t have it any more and so rather than go through the time and trouble of re-ordering a big expensive panel, I made one from $20 in finished plywood from the home improvement store, and it actually looks better in person than the manufacturer facade (due to the facade being a thin texture-less laminate rather than solid surface material).

Materials

The two sets of cabinets above require a total of about 12″×80″ of board. This is conveniently handled by a single 2’×4′ plywood board cut in half. The total material cost for the required wood, stain, and clear coat is about $40, though you will have a lot of stain and clear coat left over. For my job I found that I needed a combination of two stains to closely match the original material, which is KraftMaid Maple Autumn Blush.

• Sanded plywood
  • The size depends on the job. It’s sold at home improvement stores in 2’×2′, 2’×4′ and 4’×8′ sizes. About $20 for 2’×4′.
  • Thickness is available in one or more of 1/8″, 1/4″, 3/8″, 1/2″, but any of these will do.
  • Various grains are available, though for under the cabinet a perfect match isn’t very important.
• Wood pre-stain conditioner [optional]
  • Some woods take stains poorly and look blotched. If your wood does this then you need to condition it.
• Wood stain(s)
  • If you need to combine stains like I did, then they will need to be water-based.
  • Don’t get that crappy stain+clear coat in one stuff. It’s terrible and I don’t know how that stuff is selling. It can’t possibly be an actual stain if it’s embedded in the clear coat, and its behavior demonstrates that.
  • About $6 per little can. You will probably need to experiment.
• Clear coat
  • I used water-based polyurethane, as it’s simplest to work with, adds no tint, and dries fast.
  • Make sure to get the appropriate finish (e.g. satin) for your surface.
  • About $10 for a medium can, but you won’t use much of it.

• 

• 

Tools

• Jigsaw or table saw with blades for fine cutting of plywood
  • I used a jigsaw with a ‘clean wood’ blade and a straight edge guide for straight cuts
• Stain application rags
  • Or however you prefer to apply the stain you will be using.
• Clear coat brush
  • I used a synthetic fine hair brush
• Whatever is needed to secure the panels into the underside of the cabinets
  • trim screws and driver, or
  • finish pin nails and driver, or
  • wood staples and stapler, or even
  • glue

Before staining the wood, you need to test its ability to take stain. Some woods – softwoods in particular – will look blotchy and ugly when stained, because some parts of the wood soak up the stain more than others. You can see this in the picture on the can of the Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner shown here. You can always just apply the conditioner anyway and the wood will stain well even if it doesn’t strictly need it.

The water-based stains and clear coat for this job are available at hardware and paint stores. I have no particular brand loyalty and so am not recommending these products over any other. Their colors just worked for this. Do at least two clear coats, and I do more for other surfaces that are more visible and/or exposed to water. Wet the clear coating brush and apply in thick blobs which are brushed to consistent thickness in order to help avoid bubbles. 400 grit sanding between coats. The final coat will look most consistent if it’s sprayed instead of brushed, but it’s not required for this job. I’m going to do a more extensive post on how to have success with polyurethane clear coats.

The board on the left below is our under-cabinet maple plywood, and the board on the right is some of the original cabinetry trim from KraftMaid. There is a slight difference between them, but when installed under the cabinet it’s impossible to tell.

Below is the board prior to installation, with some countersink drill holes for where it will be screwed into the cabinet. Another option is to use a finish nailer or staple gun.

The completed result:

The rest of the kitchen that this goes with:

Links

• Maple board – https://www.homedepot.com/p/203552995
• Birch board – https://www.homedepot.com/p/203504320
• Pre-stain wood conditioner – https://www.homedepot.com/p/305704375
• General stains – https://www.homedepot.com/b/N-5yc1vZbo8pZm8r
• Polyurethane finish – https://www.homedepot.com/p/100169146
• Wooster nylon finish brush – https://www.homedepot.com/p/203433139

Is there some pothole in a stretch of road you use which you keep having to avoid, seemingly for years? Whether you are driving a car or riding a bike, potholes can be dangerous to your vehicle or even yourself. I frequently do group bicycle rides and some potholes have caused crashes and destroyed wheels, including one case a few years ago I witnessed that resulted in a major lawsuit against a city. You have two options for handling these potholes: getting the city to fix them, or fixing them yourself. This post is about the learnings for how to have the best success doing this, which involves some non-obvious pitfalls.

Check out the Oakland Pothole Vigilantes, who have for a few years been filling in for the overloaded public works department in repairing the thousands of potholes in Oakland, CA. It turns out that if you are in need of a repair due to lack of action by the city or due to a time constraint, you can fix potholes yourself, and often for about $10-$20 in materials. Maybe you can start your own vigilantes for your area, even if you do no more than a lot of phone calls to the city.

Legality?

Is it legal to repair potholes in public streets? That depends on the municipality, but even where it’s technically illegal the city will often allow it to occur if done well enough. Perhaps the thinking is that the pothole was already a potentially dangerous nuisance, so even an amateur repair is an improvement. I’ve never seen an issue raised by a cleanly done job, and the Oakland Vigilantes above have been doing it for years. As we will see below, the commercial asphalt repair materials available to the public are quite good at handling most repairs and are certified to do so. The repairs I’ve done to some public roads are better than many of the city-done jobs, but I’ve also seen some very good city fixes that are smoother than I could produce, almost certainly because they had some kind of heavy steam roller for the job. Typically the small repairs by the city are lower quality, while the larger repairs are better. Probably a budgeting or subcontracting thing.

Getting the city to do it

Some cities have it together better than others. Those that do will have a public works department “Report a pothole” web site. For example, San Francisco has this: https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/potholes. There’s also a phone app which has been gaining traction the last couple years called Mobile Citizen which lets you report potholes and other problems to your city. For example, my area hosts the app like so: https://www.contracosta.ca.gov/7875/Mobile-Citizen. Your best best for a non-urgent pothole fix is to try to get the city to do it. For other cases or for your private property, read on…

Example results

Before patching, this was a long-standing wide pothole in the middle of a road frequented by cars and bicycles. It’s 1″ – 1.5″ deep and about 20″x 18″ in area. Lots of rocks, dirt and loose gravel. The direction of vehicle travel is from left to right in the picture. This pothole had been here for a few years.

After adding the compacted asphalt patch:

After some crack filler was added around the edges, and a month of settling:

Materials

The material cost to fix the patch above was about $10, as it was 2/3 of a $15 bag and a small amount of crack filler and sand I grabbed free from the side of the road.

• Asphalt patch
  • These typically come in 50 pound bags of somewhat loose sticky asphalt-like material. See the table below for quantity needed.
  • These bags cost about $14-$20 and some hardware stores keep them in stock (my local Ace and Lowes do) while others require ordering.
  • e.g. https://www.acehardware.com/departments/building-supplies/concrete-cement-and-masonry/sand-and-gravel/5401310
  • e.g. https://www.truevalue.com/asphalt-cold-patch-50-lb
• Crack filler
  • The cheap elastomeric stuff is OK for our purpose of gluing the edges, but there are better options too such as the melty sticks which work better in the long run.
  • This material is optional but for shallow patches it helps them set without falling apart early.
  • Similarly to the patch material above some stores carry this, some require ordering it.
  • e.g. https://www.lowes.com/pd/Henry-Company-128-fl-oz-Asphalt-Patch/50255631
• Sand
  • This is for covering the job after you’ve finished patching and edging, in order to prevent the surface from being sticky while the surface dries and it’s used.

Tools

There are a number of tools you’ll need, though there is some overlap in functionality between them. Many of these tools you may already have or can substitute for something similar. Most people don’t already have a tamper or a metal plate, though there’s also the option of driving a car over a board-covered patch to compress it.

• Stiff broom
• Stiff small hand broom or metal brush
  • For clearing away dirt and loose gravel
• Heavy gloves
  • The asphalt material is tarry and hard to clean from your hands or anything.
• Hand shovel
  • For scooping from the bag of patch material.
• Heavy hammer
  • For tamping down the asphalt to compress it.
  • e.g. engineer hammer, club hammer, drilling hammer.
• Heavy steel metal plate (~4″×4″ – 8″×8″ by at least 1/4″ thick )
  • For tamping down with a heavy hammer.
  • e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Hot-Rolled-Steel-Plate/dp/B00YWBPZSK/
• Heavy steel 8″x8″ tamper
  • An alternative to the above hammer and square but in my experience is not as good and more expensive.
  • e.g. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Razor-Back-10-in-x-10-in-Steel-Tamper-30005/100158211
• Sprayable oil
  • For spraying on the tamping plate to prevent the asphalt from sticking to it, which will be a problem.
  • Can be cooking oil, machine oil, some solvents. Anything to prevent the sticking. The more volatile the better.
• Compressed air canisters
  • For clearing dust.
• Scissors
  • For cutting open the asphalt bag, for those bags that don’t have easy open bagging.
• Cordless power drill [optional]
  • For power cleaning the surface with a metal brush wheel. This is optional but helps for some surfaces.
• Stiff (a.k.a. coarse) power drill metal brush wheel (3″ or 4″) [optional]
  • e.g. https://www.homedepot.com/p/Forney-4-in-x-1-4-in-Hex-Shank-Coarse-Crimped-Wire-Wheel-Brush-72739/206472317
• At least two yellow/orange traffic cones.[optional]
  • e.g. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07GVH8YYX

Calculation table

A single bag fills about 5 square feet of 1″ depth, or 2.5 square feet of 2″ depth. The product literature may claim that a single bag supports 6 or 7 square feet of 1″ depth, but I haven’t found that to be the case once the material is compacted. Always bring significantly more than you think you need. 1″ is about the shallowest possible depth to work with, otherwise the material doesn’t have enough to coalesce.

Hole areaHole depth50lb bags needed1’×1′1″0.251’×’12″0.52’×2′1″<=12’×2′2″<=23’×3′2″43’×3′3″6

Steps

See if the public works department will do the repair themselves, and within a reasonable timeline. If not or if this patch is on your private property then proceed.

Measure the hole and calculate how much asphalt patch is needed. Then bring that and 50% more.

Choose a time when there will be the least amount of traffic at the given location. Needless to say, commuting hours are the worst.

Collect all the tools and materials needed via a checklist of items like above. Assuming you have to drive to the location, lay them on a protective mat in the car.

Lay out the traffic cones and put on your vest and hat if you are doing that.

Clear out the hole and surrounding area with the tools identified above. Remove loose and nearly loose rocks in the hole. Make sure there’s no dirt or dust. Water spray it if possible to best remove the dirt.

Start laying in the patch in 2″ layers. Tamp the patch with the stick tamper or the hammer and metal plate. Spray the tamper surface lightly with something to prevent sticking, as sticking can be a big problem. Hammer it down about as hard as you can.

The end result should be slightly raised above the surrounding asphalt, about 1/4 to 1/2″ depending on how hard your tamping was. Even after tamping hard there will be a little settling over the next months of traffic. It’s hard to quantify this mounding requirement, but I’ve found that if I tamp it hard then I need to mound only a quarter inch.

Optionally drive a heavy car wheel over the patch a few times slowly, with a flat board covering it.

Optionally add a thick line of the elastomeric goop around the edges, particularly if the hole is shallow and risks the patch easily coming loose before curing.

Put a thin covering layer of sand over the patch to keep it from being sticky while curing.

Remove your cones and tools and feel free to immediately leave. The patch will be OK for use right away. The only potential issue is wet elastomeric edging, which you can cover with something if needed.

Learnings

This section is the primary motivation for this post, as it’s about the things I’ve learned after doing this a few times which aren’t on any product package instructions.

• The patching asphalt is dirty, sticky and staining, so be careful about everything it touches while handling and transporting it.
• As mentioned above, the patch will stick to your tamper unless you coat the tamper with something.
• Very old patch in the bag can start to solidify on its own after a few months, but it seems to still break up OK for application as long as it hasn’t been compressed.
• You may need to wet wipe the surface due to hardened dust that air blowing and brushes can’t get at easily. A spray bottle can help with this.
• Road wetness actually doesn’t impede patch application and curing. Just clear away puddles to the extent possible, since they will make it harder to access the work you are doing. However, mud is a problem because once it’s dry it will become a layer of loose dirt.
• The ‘end’ of the patch is where the most wear is, so make sure that isn’t under patched.
• Be conservative with your estimates of patching asphalt needed. It’s easy to underestimate and the products’ own description is optimistic.
• Temperature of gravel and surface doesn’t matter a lot for setting, but cooler is nicer for doing the work because the patching compound is less sticky.
• Cover the finished job with dust/sand so that it doesn’t stick to tires. This is mentioned above, but an extra thing can be done for the edge goop which is to cover it with some plastic and Gorilla tape for a few hours.
• If there is any traffic then you will get rubber necking drivers that slow down more than you’d think they need. Wearing the safety clothing and setting up the cones makes you look less unusual to them and reduces the looky loo lingering.
• Manual hammering with a heavy square of metal works better than a stand up tamper stick. You get more force and more control. I have a stand up tamper but I don’t use it much any more.
• Even with hard manual hammering, you still need to mound the patch somewhat. Heat and cars over time will bring it down. The deeper the pothole, the higher the mound, because there’s that much more material which will compact. I suggest a third inch of mound per inch of patch depth, assuming you tamp it down fairly hard.
• I tried using 3/4″ wood as a hammered tamper for the pictures here, but it just broke. Perhaps a 2×4 or 4×4 would survive.

Steps in pictures

Bunch of tools in the back of the car. Make sure to put that protection blanket down, because this stuff can be a little dirty and sticky. Missing from the picture below is the jar of sand. I didn’t have the metal plate for this one and so I substituted a hardwood “plate”.

The initial dirty pothole shown below. In addition to a bunch of loose dirt, some of its asphalt chunks are loose and should just be removed. Brush this out with the various cleaning tools to get as clean a surface as possible.

Brush out the loose debris:

The final step before placing the patching asphalt is to blow air to remove as much dust as possible. A better alternative is to spray wash it or pressure wash it, if you can somehow manage that. The patching asphalt works OK on wet surfaces, though clean dry warm surfaces are the best to work with.

The big problem the asphalt people don’t tell you: it sticks to your tamper. This defeats the purpose of tamping because the material lifts right back up when you lift the tamping surface. Below you can see the results of tamping with this sticky stuff.

A solution to the sticking problem is to use a light oil or volatile solvent on the tamping metal. Make the tamping metal smooth if not already.

Below we are tamping the patching asphalt into place. The tamping surface below is wood, but don’t use wood; use the metal plate described in the tools list above. The wood can work but it will just crack after enough whacks. Hammer this lightly at first to get it initially positioned, then hammer it fairly hard. It’s almost impossible to hit it too hard. This gives you more control and power than using a tall tamping stick.

Below we have all the patching material in place. It needs a little more tamping, and even after some hard tamping it will rise about a quarter to half inch above the surrounding asphalt.

This pothole was a bit shallow, so we line the edges with the crack filler. It will dry within an hour and keep the edges in place while the patch settles and solidifies.

Lastly we cover the patch with some sand in order to keep it from being sticky with unknown vehicles driving over it in the near future. This may or may not be a necessary step depending on the circumstances.

And below is the patch after a month of drying and solidifying.

Links

• The Oakland Pothole Vigilantes: https://www.potholevigilantes.com/
• Lowe’s asphalt repair products: https://www.lowes.com/pl/Asphalt-repair-Asphalt-repair-tools-Building-supplies/3310385030
• Ace surface repair products: https://www.acehardware.com/departments/paint-and-supplies/waterproofing-and-sealers/concrete-and-driveway-sealers
• Home Depot: https://www.homedepot.com/b/Building-Materials-Concrete-Cement-Masonry-Asphalt-Repair-Asphalt-Patch/N-5yc1vZ2fkp5qy
• Example pothole reporting site: https://www.sfpublicworks.org/services/potholes
• iPhone Mobile Citizen app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mobile-citizen/id572867081
• Android Mobile Citizen app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.maintstar.mcitizenrequest

We’re going to compare Oakley sunglasses to the latest generation of import sport sunglasses. I’ve owned a pair of Oakley Radar and import Torege TR02 sunglasses and have used each for 200+ hours in sun and rain over the course of three years. I’m now ready to provide a report on them. The imports are way better than they used to be…

Not your grandfather’s cheap sunglasses

While ZZ Top glorified cheap sunglasses in the 1970s, those were the days of flimsy poor quality easily broken cheapo sunglasses. I had a pair – paid for by flipping burgers at an amusement park – and the hinge broke the third time I wore them. But Chinese manufacturing has come a long way since then, largely aided by advancements in computers and robotic machinery. A couple months ago I needed a new multimeter for reading electric voltage and current and was surprised to learn you can now get the professional quality True RMS multimeters for $25! They used to be more like $250.

Take a look at the pictures and descriptions below and see for yourself that the quality of the Torege sunglasses is very good. But how does it compare to the high quality of the Oakleys? Read on to see.

A practical use for cheaper sunglasses is to store a pair in your car, store a pair in your bike bag, etc. Nobody cares what you are wearing while you’re commuting to work. And they probably don’t care otherwise either. If you’re in a position of representing some brand or company then you may want to be wearing expensive sunglasses simply to make a statement about the brand image you want to convey.

Chinese pseudo-branding

Along with the upgrading of Chinese manufacturing came the introduction of pseudo-branding. Go on Amazon today and you will see hundreds of products with Chinese-made Western-looking names. This is a relatively recent practice which attempts to make Chinese products look more Western and also to convey a sense of professionalism and commitment by the maker. We tend to trust established brands more because it implies that company has more experience, dedication, and professionalism and is not a fly-by-night operation which could disappear at any time. I call them pseudo-brands because they aren’t really backed by much of the marketing, support, etc that formal brands are. The names for these brands tend to be intentionally designed to avoid possible conflict with existing Western brands that the maker may not be aware of way over in China, and thus the oddness of some of these names. Example pseudo-brands in the sunglasses space include Rivbox, Siplion, Hulislem, Duduma. Torege is one such brand and I think it’s name is marginally better than these but still a little weird. Somebody once said my Toreges looked cool and asked what they were. I said Torege (tor-egg-ay) and they had a confused look.

BluBlockers!

Have you ever seen those old infomercials selling Blu-Blocker sunglasses? How everything was supposedly clearer with them? Well it’s somewhat true. Vision is slightly sharper at the cost of being less colorful. Blue and violet light are at the opposite spectrum from orange and red, and they refract quite differently and thus focus on your retina a little offset from each other.

Ever notice how dissonant and annoying it is when you look at images with red and blue abutted like below? Below is a simple demonstration of why blue and red together make things a little harder to resolve.

It turns out that if you have a choice of removing blue or red, it’s better to remove blue in most real-world circumstances. Here’s an example of how some simple blue blocking sunglasses might filter the color spectrum:

Oakley has blue-blocking technology called Prizm. There’s no secret or patent here, as other sunglasses makers do virtually the same thing. Oakley Prizm lenses block light wavelengths differently depending on the targeted sport. Prizm for fishing is slightly different than Prizm for skiing. There’s even a Prizm for video gaming. Typical sports glasses like the Oakley Radar and will filter out blue like above and some yellow while preserving red and green.

Torege has a name for its version of this: Toriex. The same claims are made for this as Oakley makes for Prizm. Until somebody does a scientific light measuring test you will simply have to try them out to see how you like them. My guess is that since this is not advanced science the technologies perform similarly. In my experience with these color filtering glasses I’ve found that blue-blocking makes a nice difference in some environments but I’m not sure I can detect the technology differences between brands.

Blue blocking has also been associated with eye strain reduction, especially with computer usage: https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/what-science-says-about-blue-light-blocking-glasses

Polarization

Polarized lenses have one primary purpose: to reduce glare from reflective surfaces – typically water. But they also can increase contrast of the sky or the environment is there is a lot of reflected light bounced around. This can mean slightly more saturated looking colors. This is all highly dependent on the environment. My experience with my polarized glasses – including the Oakleys – is that they are great for use on water and making cloudy skies look nice, but they don’t do a lot for basic country hiking and bike riding.

The Oakley sunglasses can be ordered with the polarized option. The Torege sunglasses come with three lenses: an iridescent non-polarized lens, a polarized lens, and a non-polarized ‘night vision’ lens. I guess they are trying to cover various bases up front without having a complicated ordering option system. All the lenses are UVA/UVB blocking.

Basic comparison of these sunglasses

Here we have a table comparing some basic high level features of these two sunglasses. There’s more detail in the sections below.

FeatureTorege TR02Oakley RadarCost$26$200-$250Weight29.1 g30.0 gLens weight9.3 g11.2 gLens thickness1.48 mm1.81 mmColor options1724*IncludedFrame, three lenses, bag, cleanerFrame, one lens, bag, cleanerCountry of originChina (design and construction)USA (design) and China (construction)Company sitehttps://www.torege.com/https://www.oakley.comWhere to buyhttps://www.amazon.com/dp/B07MQDG2Z7/https://www.oakley.com/en-us/product/W0OO9208

Torege Sports TR02

Torege is a Chinese eyewear manufacturer which started around 2010 as yet another maker of import sunglasses. However, Torege and a few other makers started targeting a better quality and better looking product. Some of these makers directly copied Oakley designs – probably directly via silicone molding copies – and became known as Fauxkleys. But silicone molding results in a poorly copied product and so new designs were made with a unique look that is definitely reminiscent of Oakleys and other Western brands, but not identical. The build quality became similar in many ways.

These Toreges TR02s are so popular that they went from $16 three years ago to $26 today. But even with that price increase you can still buy eight of the Toreges for the cost of a single pair of Oakleys.They have thousands of 4.5 star reviews on Amazon. Torege also has a website which offers basically the same products but with different names. For example these TR02 sunglasses are called “Clock Stoppers Express” on the site.

Oakley Radar

Oakley has been making quality sunglasses since 1975, where they designed and made their stuff in Foothill, California. Like just about every other higher profile eye maker, they were bought by Luxottica, in 2007. Design is still done in USA, but much off the component production is done in China and potentially elsewhere, depending on the model and part. Just because something is made in China doesn’t mean its quality is poor. You can hire a Chinese manufacturer to produce any quality you are willing to pay for.

Oakley Radar and its similar sibling – Flak 2.0 – is probably their historically most popular sporting glasses. It’s typically used for land sports such as cycling, golf, running, beach sports. The tighter fit on the face is what makes it better suited than conventional boxy sunglasses, as it’s both more secure and more aerodynamic.

Oakley has a bunch of color customization options for these glasses, but IMO they suck. Somebody please go to the Oakley page linked above and try to create a color combination that doesn’t look bad. I don’t know what they are thinking. Five years ago when I got mine there were fewer options but better options. For an extra $20 you can up to 15 little characters etched onto the outer lower left lens. Probably your name or some pithy saying. For an additional $300 you have some prescription add-on options.

Lens comparison

A comparison of the lens thickness with a precision micrometer shows the Oakley is thicker. If you are in a sport where sunglasses heavy impact breakage is a potential issue then Oakleys are going to be better for that. Both company’s lenses are made of essentially the same high strength polycarbonate plastic in any case (despite the fancy names and marketing around them). They both use coatings to implement an iridescent look and the aforementioned blue-blocking. Oakley implements polarization within their polycarbonate material, but I haven’t yet learned how the Torege implements polarization.

By far the most common damage to a pair of sunglasses is lens scratches. You would hope that a very expensive pair of sunglasses might provide lenses that scratch less than a cheap pair. But it’s not so. $100+ Oakley lenses scratch just as easily as $10 Fauxkley lenses.

Torege lens thickness: ~1.5mm

Oakley lens thickness: ~1.8mm

After 200 hours, the Torege lens has a few scratches and some coating abrasion along the top where it seats into the frame. The logo is still clear and the iridescent coloring is otherwise the same as new. The clarity of the lens is good; I can see no visual distortions and I sometimes forget I’m wearing them. See more 200 hour pictures are below.

After 200 hours this Oakley lens has more scratches than the Torege in about the same time of use but I would not like to claim this is proof that the lens scratches more easily. Both the Torege and Oakley lenses are made of what appears to be identical polycarbonate, with a coating on top. However, the coating on the Oakley lens below has clearly disintegrated more than the Torege, and it’s hard to read the Oakley name without the right lighting. I believe this to be endemic to the lens coating. It’s possible that the scratches below are also more likely with this lens due to fragile coating. See more 200 hour pictures are below.

Nosepiece comparison

The nosepiece rubber is one of the more noticeable differences between these two. The Oakley is a softer and more pliable material. It feels like it’s made of a soft silicone. It seems to attract oil more and need to be de-greased more. On the other hand when it is clean and dry it feels a little more grippy than the Torege. The Torege is a little bigger and has a stiffer material. Both nosepieces feel fine to me, but I can imagine that some may find the softer Oakley piece to be more comfortable for some.

The nosepiece attachment is almost identical between the two. The Oakley one is a little more fragile and the nosepiece can become detached a little easier due to the smaller size and more stretchy rubber. They are both fine in practice.

Replacement part support

Oakley provides replacement lenses online or ordered from a store. The lenses cost from $70 to $110, depending on the model and options. No other parts (e.g. nosepiece) are replaceable.

Can you replacement lenses for these $26 Torege sunglasses? Yes you can, for $26, and it comes with a free replacement frame and nosepiece. Can you get Torege nosepiece replacements? Yes you can, for $26, and it comes with free replacement lenses and frame as well. Can you get a replacement Torege frame? Yes you can, for $26…

My Toreges after 200 hours’ use

I’ve used these sunglasses for biking and hiking for a couple years now, about 200 hours total. I take good care of them but wouldn’t say that I baby them. The plastic and hinge has been good enough that mounting and unmounting with some twisting hasn’t resulted in breakage. Here are some pictures of them to show their makeup and current state:

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• 

• 

• 

• 

My Oakleys glasses after 200 hours’ use

My Radars are from before a recent design tweak, so they look slightly different. Aside from some lens scratches that were probably my fault and some lens coating disintegration that’s probably Oakley’s fault, these sunglasses have held up well. They open an close well and are not falling apart. These are polarized lenses and the polarization seems to still work, though it provides little benefit to the cycling that I do with these glasses.

• 

• 

• 

• 

Oakley pros and cons relative to Torege

• + More customizable
• + Frame is more flexible
• + Name brand prestige
• + Lenses are 20% thicker than the Torege (less likely to break?)
• − Far more expensive
• − Lens coating deteriorated, more than the Torege
• = Lenses scratch as easily as any cheap sunglasses
• = Not nose bridge adjustable
• = UVA/UVB blocking
• − Comes with a polarized or non-polarized lens

Torege pros and cons relative to Oakley

• + Look as good as the Oakleys, possibly better depending on your taste
• + Far less expensive
• + Two additional lenses are included
• − Lenses are 20% lighter than the Oakley (more likely to break?)
• + Lens coating more durable than the Oakley
• − Less customizable
• = Not nose bridge adjustable
• = UVA/UVB blocking
• + Comes with polarized and non-polarized lenses, and a blue-blocking Toriex Technology lens
• + Easier to swap lenses due to drop down nose piece

Conclusions

The Torege sunglasses win on many practical fronts and I personally think they look better than the more blocky Oakleys, though there are other Oakley options. My pair still looks practically new after a couple hundred hours of outside sports use. There is little practical quality difference between the two, and the single most important metric is lens surface durability, in which these lenses are equal or seemingly slightly better for the Torege.

Primary reasons to get a pair of Oakleys are the better customizability, preference for Oakley’s Prizm variation of blue-blocking, and the higher profile image they convey due to name branding. You can also get some Oakley sunglasses in optical prescription form for an additional $400+. And there is of course style preference. Oakley has multiple styles of sunglasses beyond the one above, as do Torege and other Chinese brands. There’s also the country of origin. Toreges are designed and made in China. Oakleys are designed in the USA and now largely made in China. Do with that what you will.

Here’s a recommendation: Wear the Torege sunglasses for most of your bike rides and car drives and maybe have a pair of Oakleys for days in which you want to present more of an image. No big deal if you damage or lose the Toreges. Torege has a 100% no questions asked two day loss replacement guarantee, for a $26 shipping and handling cost…

Torege alternatives

It turns out there are a few other Amazon/AliExpress alternatives to Torege which perform as well for similar or lower cost. The cheap sunglasses sold on a rotating rack at 7-11 are generally terrible and not in the same league as the sunglasses we are talking about here. Check out these, some of which I own and have no complaints about.

• Torege TR05 – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KG5JG11/
• RIVBOS RB833 – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07R4SW5M6/
• RIVBOS RB831 – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019MM7XUQ/
• FRETREE TR90 – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B089GLGFMH/
• HULISLEM Blade – https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07WFSVGC9/

Additional links

• The original BluBlocker still exists: https://www.blublocker.com/
• Wikipedia on blue-blocking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasses#Blue-light_blocking_glasses
• Glasses for competitive video gaming?: https://www.oakley.com/en-us/collections/e-sports
• Blue Blocking for computer users: https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/what-science-says-about-blue-light-blocking-glasses
• Polarized lenses: https://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-polarized-lenses.htm
• Oakley’s statements on the quality of their polarized lenses: https://www.oakley.com/en-us/technology/eyewear
• ZZ Top – Cheap Sunglasses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKKJV0Aiiv0
• Where are Oakleys made?: https://www.oakleyforum.com/guides/where-are-oakleys-made-usa-china/

I made my own light box (a.k.a. tent) for product and domestic macro photography, and it’s been very useful.

The version made here doesn’t fold into compact shape for storage, but with a modification described later this can be done.

I have some B&H Photo store links below, but I’m not affiliated with them and you could find the same stuff at other sites such as Adorama and to some degree Amazon.

What is a good light box?

The purpose of a light box is to provide an environment for taking photographs of small subjects with consistent bright ambient lighting, with a typically neutral background. A common use case is product photography for anything smaller than a shoe box or so. A good box:

• Provides white or reflective surfaces to bounce light around
• Has at 3000+ lumens of 5000-6000K light
  • Don’t worry about precision as it can be tweaked in post-processing.
• Supports specular or diffused light
  • Diffused is typically accomplished with translucent material
• Provides camera access from flexible angles and distances from the side and above.
• Has a selection of backdrops in addition to basic neutral smooth flat white.
• Is portable or at least stowable.

Materials and tools Materials needed

• 5 x 20″ x 20″ x 1/4″ thick white foam poster board
  • 3/16″ is less ideal (more flimsy) but usable.
  • Can use smaller dimensions than 20×20 for a smaller box size.
  • e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Pacon-Foam-Board-White-Sheets/dp/B00IWSHEB0/
  • This will cost about $18. Smaller sizes will cost less.
• White Alex Plus All Purpose Latex Caulk
  • Sold at every home improvement and hardware store
  • e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Cartridge-18065-DAP-Painters-Acrylic/dp/B00009V3UZ/
  • This will cost as low as $2.
• Pure white flat finish spray paint
  • Sold at every home improvement and hardware store and general stores as well
  • e.g. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=white+spray+paint+matte+flat
  • This will cost about $5.
• 2″ wide packing tape.
  • Sold at drug stores, home improvement stores, online, etc. Probably even supermarkets.

Additional materials for a complete package

• 2 square yards of nylon diffusion fabric
  • The only practical source for this is online.
  • e.g. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CYX5162/
  • About $5 per square yard
• A large sheet of 20″x30″ white paper for a smooth curved backdrop
  • More useful for smaller boxes, but fine in any case.
• Sheets of colored and possibly textured cardstock
  • Available in person or online at craft stores like Joanne’s.
  • Also from cardstock specialists: https://www.12x12cardstock.shop/collections/bazzill-cardstock
• Two or more 5000K LED 1600+ lumen light bulbs
  • At least 3000 lumens total. If lumens aren’t listed then they are probably low.
  • Dimmable is a plus.
  • e.g. Phillips Daylight LED 1600 lumens: https://www.homedepot.com/p/Philips-Daylight-A21-LED-100W-Equivalent-Dimmable-Smart-Wi-Fi-Wiz-Connected-Wireless-LED-Light-Bulb-562389/313643225
• Bulb fixtures for the above lights
  • e.g. https://www.amazon.com/Woods-Clamp-Aluminum-Reflector-Listed/dp/B000HHQ94C/

Tools needed

• Ruler for measurement and as a straight edge.
• Box cutting style razor blade
  • or, preferred:
• Jigsaw with a “clean wood” blade.

Design

The design here is a box which is open on one side and has cutouts on the sides. When in use the open face is facing horizontally for size-view pictures or facing upward for top-down pictures. The reason for having any walls at all is to allow light to bounce around and make the lighting more global and uniform. Some light boxes are designed with reflective material around the inside in order to increase brightness, but brighter bulbs can do that in a way that’s usually better with good diffusion.

There are five sides to the box cut like so:

Construction Cut the foam boards

Mark the foam board as per the above metrics with a pencil. Use the ruler to make straight line edges. Feel free to make a smaller or larger box if that’s useful to you. The 20″ cube here is about as big as I could ever need a box without going to a larger stage approach.

A jigsaw with a “clean wood” blade produces the cleanest line and is the best way to cut the foam board. Just beware that lots of little foam dust particles will be created by the blade and you’ll need to vacuum or blow them away before spray painting the interior. Make sure to protect the surface from any metal on the jigsaw foot, as that metal will stain the white foam board.

Tape the foam boards into a cube

Tape the boards together to look like below. One of the windows below is smaller than what the design above calls for but I would make it bigger like the design here if I was to do it again. An alternative approach is to make the box foldable, in which case you wouldn’t use a permanent tape like packing tape.

Caulk the interior seams

Caulk the interior seams with Alex Plus interior latex caulk. This is the same stuff used for your interior trim boards. It’s not the same as exterior silicone or polyurethane caulk. You don’t want to use silicone or polyurethane or probably any of the other types. They will be super sticky and a nasty mess to deal with.

Paint the interior

Spray paint the cube interior with flat or matte white spray paint. Matte is much like flat except that it has slightly more sheen. Either will work fine. Make sure the interior is free of any dirt before doing this. No need to prime the surfaces, as they are ready to accept paint as-is.

Cut the diffusion sheets

The diffusion sheets are also 20″x20″ for this build. You can affix them to the open sides permanently or temporarily via pins or masking tape. I use temporary masking tape so they are removable if I want.

It may be useful to add a third diffusion sheet for the camera access side, like so:

You may find it useful to stock on up on some colored or textured cardstock to provide background color or texture to your images. These are available online and at craft stores in huge varieties.

For some reason my cat likes to lick the diffusion plastic and tries to sneak at it when I’m not looking.

Test image

Let’s put an iridescent tape roll in the box and see if we can get a clean image. The lights are set up on both sides, with the left side coming from above and behind, as is standard convention for lighting. The right light is lower and in front, in order to illuminate the face. Diffusion fabric helps make the lighting a little less specular, but sometimes you will intentionally want the specular look and omit the sheets.

And this is the result. It was shot with a Canon R6 with an RF 24-105 lens at F8, 70mm, ISO 100. Photoshop was used to clean up some dirt on the subject and tweak the brightness curves.

For product listings you might want to convert the background to pure white or transparent, like so:

And here’s our title image vase:

Foldable light box

To make your light box foldable you can use sticky velcro instead of permanently taping the surfaces. It works just about as well and takes only about one minute to unfold. I made a quickie mini box to demonstrate this:

Tips

• It’s best to get shot as close to final in the pic
  • Fixing with photo touch-up later can be tedious.
• Make everything clean
  • You’d be surprised how much lint and grit there is when looking at the photo up close after taking it.
• Use a tripod
  • It allows use of narrow aperture and low ISO.
• A good lens is a zoom lens that supports ~30-100mm focal lengths.
  • Image stabilization isn’t needed if you are using a tripod.
  • If you are always photographing the same kind of thing then a fixed focal length lens would be fine, including macro lenses.
• Use aperture-priority camera mode with low ISO
  • Chose the aperture based on how much depth of field you want. If you want the whole subject in sharp focus front to back then use as a higher f number (smaller aperture) as needed to do so, but no more.
• Camera built-in flashes will probably produce bad results.
• More light is typically better, but a long shutter time on a tripod can make up for less light.

Links

Link to the materials and tools used above:

• Foam board: https://www.amazon.com/Pacon-Foam-Board-White-Sheets/dp/B00IWSHEB0/
• White spray paint: https://www.amazon.com/Rust-Oleum-7790830-Stops-Spray-12-Ounce/dp/B0009X8LHW
• White caulk in squeeze tube: https://www.amazon.com/11425-Acrylic-Latex-Silicone-5-5-Ounce/dp/B00CJSC2RA/
• Clean wood T-Shank jigsaw blade: https://www.amazon.com/Bosch-T101AO3-3-Piece-T-Shank-Blades/dp/B000KL3XMG/
• Clean wood U-Shank jigsaw blade: https://www.amazon.com/Bosch-U101AO3-5-Piece-U-shank-Blades/dp/B000HSGLYE/
• Diffusion fabric: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07CYX5162/
• Bulb fixtures: https://www.amazon.com/Woods-Clamp-Aluminum-Reflector-Listed/dp/B000HHQ94C/
• Light temperature: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_temperature

Here are some links of pre-made components that we build ourselves above, plus some additional accessories. These components are a bit more expensive than our build, but may have useful features and convenience for you. They won’t really work much or any better that what we construct above. A nice thing about your own build is you can tailor it to any custom needs you have.

The listings below are not recommendations, bur rather are good examples. If you look online for “best photography light box” then you’ll get a slew of results, each of which has a year in the title (e.g. “best light boxes for 2021”). The majority of these are crap recommendations that have no research to back them and rather were constructed by the author just winging it with his own search results. In fact this is the case for the large majority of “best <product> in <year>” web pages.

• Folding light box: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1558600-REG/godox_lst80_power_60w_cri.html
• Folding light box: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1407128-REG/orangemonkie_foldio3_25_mini_studio.html
• Folding light tent: https://www.amazon.com/Neewer-Shooting-Diffusion-Backdrops-Photography/dp/B00GKGGICC/
• Camera ring lights: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/buy/ring-lights/ci/48386
• LED light pair: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078Z99GQB/
• Rotating platter: https://www.amazon.com/fotoconic-Motorized-Turntable-Revolving-Collectible/dp/B081F1N83C/

Reclaimed wood is a popular thing these days. You can build a rustic fence or home siding that gives an old-timey look while making you feel good about the trees. It costs a bit more, but you’ll feel more warmth from doing good than you would get from burning it in the fireplace.

Big-box reclaimed redwood

I was at a big-box home improvement store and they had a display selling boxes of “reclaimed wood”:

Will it turns out this is probably a lie. I took a look at this wood up close and it’s clearly not old wood at all, but rather new wood stained in a way that looks old-timey. If it was truly reclaimed wood then it would be different in multiple ways:

• It would have weathering other than colored stain.
• It would have nail or screw holes somewhere along its 4 or 5 foot lengths.
• The underlying wood would have evidence of wet/dry cycles as opposed to being fresh.
• It would not likely be perfectly flat or straight.
• It will have physical surface wear from things bumping into the wood or scratching it.

Yet the wood sold here is none of the above. As if the supposed original structure for this wood was placed in a vacuum sealed time capsule. And there are hundreds of boxes of this stuff sold at multiple locations and they all look uniformly weathered. My next door neighbor has a fence made of actual reclaimed wood and it has some tell-tale signs of it, such as truly older weathering and having thinner planks due to being lightly planed (unlike the wood here).

My guess is that the suppliers of this wood are taking liberties with the meaning of “reclaimed.” I could not find any regulations around the depiction of wood as reclaimed, nor any product labeling referring to and standardization or regulations. Probably what’s happening is that somewhere in the supplier chain there are some liberties taken and making some faux aging happening in which redwood planks are left outside for a month and then sold to aggregators for packaging and distribution.

Actual reclaimed redwood

What does actual reclaimed redwood look like? Below are some pictures from around the Internet. Wood that has been built into structures and exposed to the elements for years will have characteristics like those listed above, which you can see in many of the pictures below.

While I believe that this big-box reclaimed wood is of dubious origin, I’m not arguing that you shouldn’t use it for your projects. There’s nothing wrong with the old-timey aged look, and not-actually-reclaimed redwood probably will last longer and be easier to design with. So feel free to use it; just beware it might not actually be reclaimed wood.

Links

• https://www.thebasicwoodworking.com/where-to-find-reclaimed-wood/
• https://www.diynetwork.com/made-and-remade/learn-it/6-tips-for-working-with-reclaimed-lumber
• https://www.homedepot.com/b/Lumber-Composites-Boards-Planks-Panels-Appearance-Boards-Planks-Barn-Wood-Reclaimed-Wood/N-5yc1vZ1z18gp3
• https://www.lowes.com/pl/Reclaimed-wood–Wall-planks-Wall-panels-planks-Moulding-millwork/4294518225?refinement=1952006067

Any comments or dispute of the claims above?

I’m going to get straight to the point and say that it’s time for Robertson screws to be retired and supplanted by Torx. This posting is to explain why and is partly motivated by lots of existing Robertson devotees expressing doubt that something could be better. If you are a fan of Robertson screws, consider recognizing that Torx are better, even if you’ve liked Robertson. I liked Robertson screws too until I started using Torx and found they worked better. We’ll use the names Robertson and Torx here while recognizing that these are original trade names which aren’t used by screw makers due to trademark ownership.

Robertson screw drives are also known as square drives. They are a simple and elegant design which looks good and is relatively easy to manufacture. They have been around for over 100 years. Robertson drives were invented in Canada and are a source of Canadian pride. While ubiquitous in Canada, they were rare in the US for decades because the inventor P. L. Robertson refused to license the system to anybody else and thus drove away interested parties from the US and other countries. For a history of Robertson screw drives, see the ThomasNet page.

Torx screw drives are also known as hexalobular or star. They have been around for about 50 years, though only commonly available for the last 15 years. Torx has been widely replacing Robertson in the United States since then.

Phillips drives will likely continue to exist for decades due to momentum and because they are cheap and because they don’t suck so bad that they are unusable. Eradicating Phillips drives in the US is about as hard as eradicating the Imperial measurement system, and for many of the same reasons. I can’t think of a single technical reason why Phillips should exist in this modern world. A big reason why we are all stuck with it is that Ford a hundred years ago went with it due to being denied licensing by Robertson! For more about Phillips, see this.

What makes a good screw drive?

FeatureRelevanceTorque supportPoor systems will strip or cam-out if too much torque is applied.Cam-outThe tendency of a driver to push itself out of a screw head.Driver wobbleHow well the driver engages the screw head without jiggling around.ManufacturabilityHow hard it is to construct the screw and its drivers.CostHow expensive it is to construct the screw and its drivers.Size range supportThe range of screw head sizes the system can support.AppearanceHow pleasing the screw face looks when used in decorative construction.IP statusWhether there are active patents or copyrights affecting use of the system.SacrificeA potential need to save wear on either the screw face or the driver.AvailabilityHow readily available the drivers are available.

I’m going to address each of the features above, but the primary argument as to why Torx is superior to Robertson is about torque and cam-out. Torx screws handle more torque, with less cam-out, than Robertson, especially at smaller sizes. And that difference is significant in practice. It’s the reason it was named “Torx” in the first place.

To understand the torque handling differences between Robertson and Torx, let’s look at some diagrams illustrating the situation. The picture below depicts a driver head (black) engaged in a screw head (silver/white). The red angle indicates the driver’s torque vector relative to the surface it’s pushing against. That angle is about 45°, while an ideal angle would be 90°.

Torque

Compared to Robertson, Torx has a better angle of torque application. The torque is closer to being perpendicular to the interface, and there are six interfaces vs the four of Robertson:

If we zoom in to this interface we can see below that the Robertson driver/face connection is a sharp point of contact, due to the two surface profiles being linear. An ideal interface would have a lot of contact area. Theoretically two flat surfaces would have a lot of contact area if they were perfectly matched (e.g. no gaps below). But in practice that’s not what happens due to manufacturing differences and driver wear.

Torx on the other hand has a wider area of contact. This is primarily due to the matching of two curved surfaces, which is more forgiving of manufacturing differences and any wear of the driver and face.

And Robertson bits are tapered, which weakens the engagement with the screw head and increases the cam-out problem because the taper helps the bit climb out of the screw head. Robertson doesn’t cam out like Phillips – the king of cam-out – but it rears its cam-out head when subjected to higher resistance and increasingly worn drivers.

Torx bits are not tapered and thus lend no help to camming out:

The 45° torque angle and sharp contact area cause the corners of bits to get blunted relatively easily, which leads to a looser fit and more cam-out problems. Here is a magnified picture of a Robertson R2 bit after moderate use. Note the bit damage at the corners as predicted by the contact area diagram above:

Below is a picture demonstrating the common result of the Robertson cam-out problem, which is present on the fence at the top of Mount Diablo. The wood in this fence is hard enough and internally discontinuous enough that you need to be constantly pushing very hard with the driver to try to avoid this cam-out stripping. With Torx screws you don’t need to push nearly as hard and the cam-out rarely occurs. I see this problem frequently in Robertson applications with hard woods, and rarely see it with Torx.

Such were the weaknesses with Robertson that at least a couple improvements were created while attempting some backward compatibility: Nüvo Robertson and LOX-Recess .

Other considerations

Let’s go over some of the other driver feature considerations listed above. How important these are depends on your requirements, though generally there is a concept of ‘better’ for each of them.

Driver wobble – The more securely the driver engages the head, the better. This comparison between Robertson and Torx is roughly a draw. Examples of poor driver wobble include the slotted or Phillips drive types. This is another factor that leads to face stripping.

Manufacturability – Torx would have been significantly more difficult to manufacture 100 years ago when Robertson was invented. But today the difference is insignificant.

Cost – Today Robertson and Torx screws, bolts and drivers cost about the same. There is no longer patent encumbrance for Torx an in fact it’s an openly available ISO standard. The costs of either today are far more driven by logistics, marketing, competition, etc. than driven by the cost of the physical manufacturing process.

Size range support – Robertson drivers range in six sizes from #00 (1.3 mm) to #4 (4.85 mm). Torx drivers range in size from T1 (0.9 mm) to T100 (22.4 mm). There is a lot wider range of support for Torx. Additionally and more significantly Robertson drivers perform poorly at the lowest sizes (#00, #0, #1), as they very easily strip. This is an easy win for Torx.

Appearance – Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder, and so this is subjective. But I think Robertson screw faces look better for most uses. My guess is that most people would have the same opinion. Hex drives and triangle drives might also look nice. I think the ugliest screw drive type is the Bristol type; they should just rename it Covid-19 drive.

IP status – Robertson is over 100 years old and i believe the only significant current IP is the Robertson name trademark. The original Torx patent expired in 1988, though new variants have since been invented which remain under patent though they are irrelevant to the usage of original Torx. The Torx design has an ISO standard now which anybody can implement, though if you want to have certified compatibility with Torx you have to submit to a compliance program run by the renamed owner of Torx: Acument Global Technologies.

Sacrifice – This is the idea that you intentionally design a system to avoid destroying your driver or screw face by having one fail before the other. In the days before automatic torque limiting drivers this was more important. Today most cordless drivers support torque limits, and commercial manufacturing machines have sophisticated torque controls, so this is not as relevant. As a result, the higher engagement and lack of driver taper with Torx drivers is not the kind of issue it might have been in decades past. So this topic is mostly irrelevant in the discussion of Robertson vs. Torx except that Robertson’s tapered design more easily allows for cam-out as discussed above.

Availability – Torx is actually now more prevalent in the US than Robertson, whereas the opposite was true before around 2012. The reason for this switch-over is primarily because Torx is superior and contractors prefer them. Torx has been off patent for 25 years but it takes a long time for switch-overs like this to happen.

Hex drives

I’m going to briefly mention hex screw drives, because they provide an interesting comparison to Robertson. The torque angle of hex is worse than Robertson, though there are six faces to distribute it instead of just four:

But hex bits aren’t tapered. My experience is that Robertson cams out more than hex. This suggests that the tapered driver is more of the cause of cam-out than the torque angle. Consider Phillips drivers which have a very high taper and cam-out so easily that they are hated by just about everybody. My experience is also that hex drive faces get internally stripped more easily that Robertson. I’m not advocating hex drives over Robertson.

Why so many screw drive types?

There are dozens of drive types beyond Robertson and Torx, with new ones coming out every few years. Some of these claim to be superior to Torx, including Torx’s own Torx Plus and the even more recent Torx Paralobe .

While it’s true that varying requirements for screw drives can result in different designs, I think there’s still a lot of redundancy in the designs and more than half of them could go away and we’d all be better off. Some designs like slotted stick around for historical reasons. Other redundant designs such as pentalobe exist because manufacturers are intentionally divisive for competitive reasons. And there are the ‘security’ designs which serve no purpose other than to make it hard to find drivers, which lasts for a few years (and hardly even that in the new Amazon economy) until drivers become common and they move onto another security redesign.

Conclusions

I’m arguing here that Torx is better than Robertson and not that Robertson sucks. Robertson is far better than all the slotted and Phillips variations out there, as well as some of the other types. But there’s a good reason why Torx has been replacing Robertson (and Phillips variants) in all the hardware stores: people who use them recognize the superiority.

Links

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_screw_drives
• https://www.thomasnet.com/articles/hardware/robertson-screwdriver-history/
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torx
• The ISO standard for hexalobular: https://www.iso.org/standard/63207.html
• The original Torx patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US3584667
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cam_out
• https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/tools/reviews/a10417/these-are-the-screws-you-should-be-using-16729784/
• A history of the screw: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684867303

What opinions do you have about Robertson, Torx, or other screw drive types?

And yet Chinese smoke detectors look good.

You have these smoke detectors on your walls and ceilings, so you want them to not look like some kind of industrial abomination, right? Then why do American smoke detector companies produce this awful devices? Look at these things:

These ugly smoke detectors are have too much physical detail. Too much writing. No attractive curves. There’s nothing about these designs that make them work any better. I would not want this on my ceilings if I can at all help it.

Now look at these Chinese company smoke detectors, available online at sites such as Amazon. They have symmetry. They have balance. They have an aesthetic:

I’m not saying that every single Chinese brand looks good. There are a few odd ones out there. But almost all the good looking ones are foreign brands, while almost all the bad looking ones are American brands.

Oh wait, there’s one American company that gets it: Nest. And people act like Nest has some kind of magical design expertise, while the Chinese have been doing this for years. I’ll admit that I like the nest design below maybe more than the Chinese versions, but the Chinese brands are still way better than the ugly ones by Kidde, First Alert, etc.

Am I imagining this? Is there some rational reason why these American smoke detectors look like they do?

PCB Rulers are cool looking, and it turns out they work very well as rulers. Their edges are straight, the sizing is very precise, the lines are fine, and they often have lots of useful information printed on them. Here we show a few premium PCB (printed circuit board) rulers which you can buy, and show you where you can learn to make your own.

The NVidia PCB Ruler

This is the benchmark for PCB rulers and one of the hardest to come by. The NVidia campus store is frequently sold out, but you may be able to find some second-hand through EBay or maybe you have a friend at NVidia. I got mine from an insider at NVidia who my company (Oculus) worked with and for whom wish I could have done more for while there. Each time the ruler appears at NVIDIA’s internal company store — which has sold thousands of these rulers thus far — it sells out in minutes. Apparently these rulers are used to entice the best college graduates too. NVidia wrote a blog about this ruler back in 2017, which you can find here.

Now admittedly it seems odd that this ruler has wire hole sizes and resistance formulas printed next to some GTX 1080 pins, but I’m going to guess that when they designed this ruler they had a little beer bash brainstorm for all the silly things they would include. There’s even a V=IR equation written on the ruler, in case you forgot the most fundamental equation of electricity: Ohm’s Law. A nice thing about these NVidia rulers is that they are a full 12″/30cm in size and include conventional inches and centimeter markings for it. A lot of other rulers are shorter or have odd markings.

Your best chance for acquiring one of these NVidia rulers is on EBay, where they go for $20-$40. There are a couple generations of these rulers and surely they will be updated to reflect the new 3000 series GPUs if only those chips aren’t too big for this ruler.

Below are high resolution images of the full NVidia ruler, front and back. You can click on the image to zoom in to super high resolution. I suppose you could fabricate a poor man’s version of the NVidia ruler with a printout of these:

The Ultimate PCB ruler

Tindie.com is a website that sells elecrtronics-related products directly from the makers, much like Etsy sells crafted products direction from the makers. One of those things is a half-sized PCB ruler titled the Ultimate PCB Ruler, currently for $6.50:

I’m not sure this is really an ultimate ruler. But hey it has more entries in its wire gauge table than the NVidia ruler does. Another tindie PCB ruler is this one for $3:

Rush FPV Ruler

The Race Day Quads website (quadcopter racing) will sell you Rush Racing products PCB rulers for only $2.69. It’s a decent ruler though not full sized:

Other rulers on EBay

There are various other PCB rulers on EBay, available for $3-$60. Just do a search for PCB rulers like so: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=pcb+ruler .One of the nicer ones is the Midnightek ruler for $20:

Make your own PCB ruler

It turns out that Instructables has a DIY post by user Clebstech (Caleb Terawskyj) which tells you how to design and fabricate your own PCB ruler. It’s mostly handled by a company called JLBPCB which lets you design your own circuit boards and have them printed. If you are clever enough you can probably get a picture of your cat printed on one of these things. To design such a ruler, you use the freeware EasyEDA app, which is online or as a separate download. You will want to read about the various options that JLBPCB has in constructing boards, such as surface finishing.

EasyEDA is like a paint program for your PCB ruler (or whatever):

JLCPCB is like a printer which prints your ruler (or whatever):