Important news about HackSpace

We have some important news to share about HackSpace: Issue 81 was the last issue of HackSpace as a standalone magazine, and HackSpace has become part of The MagPi, the official Raspberry Pi magazine. Starting with issue 145, We’ll be adding pages to The MagPi to make room for the stories and tutorials you’ve come to expect from HackSpace.

Measure for measure

By Mayank Sharma. Posted

A tape-measure has a couple of qualities that make it a good choice for an improviser’s toolbox. First, it can measure a significant length, but can still fit inside your pocket, which makes it very portable. Secondly, it’s very dexterous as it helps you measure around curves, corners, and edges. Measuring tapes can be classified into two broad categories, dictated by how they’re made. Those designed for sewing are made of either cloth, plastic, or fibre, while the ones intended for carpentry, or other types of craftsmanship, are usually made of a slightly curved metal strip that can coil into a small box.

The history of measurement runs concurrently with ours. We’ve been measuring stuff in one form or the other ever since we started possessing things. It’s in fact very difficult to separate the exact origin of the tape-measure from the history of measuring distances, in general, by other means such as a ruler. All we can say for sure is that it was developed long before the first modern tape-measure device was patented in the US in 1864.

William H. Bangs Jr. received a patent for the first spring-return tape-measure. His tape could be stopped at any point and made to return to the case by sliding a button on the side of the case, which triggered the spring to pull the tape back into its case. Bangs’s device was actually an improvement on an earlier design patented by James Chesterman of Sheffield, England, in 1829. Chesterman was making tapes he dubbed ‘flat wire’ for dressmakers, who used it to hold the shape of the crinoline hoop skirts. When the skirts went out of vogue, Chesterman repurposed the wires as long steel tape measures, with etched length markings, and marketed it to surveyors as a lightweight alternative to the bulky chains they were using back then.

Despite being mass-produced, the early tape-measures were still expensive and a novelty item. In fact, the tape’s container has long been an avenue for beautiful craftsmanship and later as a popular medium for advertisement. There were containers in the shapes of animals and various objects like violins, each with its own unique winding device. Some were also made with precious metals and are a sought-after collectible. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that the retractable tape-measure, now offered in celluloid containers, overtook the wooden folding carpenter’s ruler.

Tape measure antenna

Project Maker: Chris Ormsby
Project URL: hsmag.cc/mVBhdJ

tape-measure-antenna

To help his eight-year-old nephew get a technical class amateur radio licence, Chris went looking for a project that was “easy, fast, and required few tools or skills”. He adapted the measuring tape antenna, designed by ham radio operator Joe Leggio (hsmag.cc/QcfEZL), to help his nephew understand the fundamentals of antennas and other associated topics.

On his Instructables page, Chris details the process of building the different booms and the frame of the antenna from PVC pipes. He then cut various lengths of a 1”wide measuring tape, and used them as the director, driven, and reflector elements. The end of the cut tapes are very sharp, so make sure you carefully sand them. Also sand off the ends of the bottom side of the tape that’ll act as the driven elements for soldering wires. Use the hose clamps to secure the elements to the frame. Follow Chris’s nicely explained and illustrated details to strip an RG58 cable, and solder its wires to the driven element. He also shares technical notes on fine-tuning the antenna, and the page has useful discussions with other people who have replicated
his project.

Wine tote

Project Maker: Pepper Jordan
Project URL: hsmag.cc/PvcdFF

wine-tote

Pepper’s husband, Ryan McFarland is an avid maker who, by his own admission likes to salvage at the town’s dump “almost every weekend”. On one such outing, he scored 75 feet of measuring tape, but struggled to create something with it. Pepper took over the reins, and set about to weave the metal strips into a tote bag. She first created the base of the tote with 14 pieces of two and a half feet strips, with seven strips placed horizontally, and seven vertically. In hindsight she suggests others don’t try to make a perfect square for the base.

She wove them through each other alternatively, going under and over, and pushed them together to make a tight weave. Pepper has detailed the entire process of weaving the body of the tote, which is the most time-consuming and physically exhausting part of the process. Along the way, she also reflects on the different steps, and how you can learn from her mistakes. When she was done, Pepper trimmed the rest of the strip and used epoxy resin to seal the ends. To create the handle, she punched a hole in a measured length of binding strip, and then connected it to the bag using a rivet.

Measuring tape bracelet

Project Maker: Ariana S. Labus
Project URL: hsmag.cc/yMvySx

measuring-tape-bracelet

Ariana is a 27-year-old, multi-talented maker from The Bronx, New York, with backgrounds in graphic design, painting, digital photography, and performance art, as well as face painting, sewing, and crafting. She was reading Mark Montano’s The Big-Ass Book of Crafts 2 when the chapter title ‘Wristful Thinking’ gave her the idea of repurposing an old tape-measure as a piece of jewellery: “I have a sewing machine, so that actually gave me enough practice working on my stitches, as well as upcycling something old into something new.”

She first cut various pieces of the tape-measure after measuring them around her wrists, plus an extra 1”. Ariana then sewed the strips together, folding and stitching the ends to seal. Finally, Velcro sticky dots attached to both ends of the strips act as the closure for the bracelet.

Snap bag

Project Maker: Julie Jai
Project URL: hsmag.cc/kixkYU

snap-bags

Soon after a friend informed Julie that the closure of her favourite snap case was made from old tape-measures, she found a broken tape-measure while going through her father’s tools. This was enough incentive to get her to use the discarded tape-measure to make her own snap bags: “My parents never threw out anything, and they would be thrilled to see that their frugality and belief that all things could find a use somewhere, ultimately proved to be right, at least for the broken tape-measure!”

Her Instructable is the result of a fair amount of trial and error and help from several online sources. She cut two 4” pieces of tape, and covered their edges with duct tape. Follow her Instructable to create and sew the body of the bag, and then insert the tape in the channels. Lock the mechanism by sewing the second side seam.

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