Gear Patrol | Spirit of Adventure, Passion for Gear

Fly by design

The airplane stands in the pantheon of man’s most amazing engineering feats. So it seems fitting that the folks at Plane Pieces Inc. have developed a knack for recycling classic plane parts into stunning accents for the home. Thanks to relationships with prop manufacturers, repair shops, and designers — they collect and polish vintage parts [...]

Coolbical

The Magazin Secretary Flatmate has all of the qualities we expect from great German design. It’s sleek, functional and backhands your wallet with authority. Fully expanded, the modern secretary provides a 28 x 16.5-inch work space, capable of easily accommodating a 17-inch laptop, along with other peripheral gadgets like an iPad on the included powder [...]

Hipster

Scotch must have been invented for autumn. Whether you’re warding off the chill on a Saturday afternoon in the bleachers, recounting adventures around a campfire or rewarding yourself for an afternoon of splitting wood, nothing warms the soul (and the belly) like a good single malt. And there’s no better way to drink it than [...]

No Average Joe

Auto-drip coffee is entrenched in American culture for three reasons. It’s cheap, easy to make, and has a relatively consistent taste wherever you order it, apart from the random Chicory-spiked landmines you can stumble on down south. Those benefits have been compounded now that the process of measuring grounds, water, and finding a filter has [...]

Bundle Up

In the digital age, the analog markers of a thoughtful desk are disappearing faster than our hopes for a 2011-2012 NBA season. Call us old fashioned, but we still find value in having our work stations stand out from the pack of brushed aluminum and little white cords. If you’re a kindred spirit in that [...]

Cutting Crew

Find yourself habitually reaching for the kitchen shears whenever it’s time for an odd job or chore? Leave the comestible-cutter alone and grab yourself a Fiskars ShopBoss ($30). A veritable Swiss Army Snipper, the ShopBoss offers the best of heavy-duty cutting and a multi-function tool. Titanium coated heavy-duty blades with spring action, wire cutter and [...]

If Apple Got Into HVAC...

If we had to guess what famed Apple hardware and software engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers would do after leading the team responsible for the first 18 generations of the iPod, and the first three generations of the iPhone — revolutionizing the thermostat wouldn’t immediately spring to mind. Now, after launching the Nest Learning [...]

Penchritudinous

Qualities we like in our writing instruments: weight, simplicity, and crisp writing lines. Caran d’Ache, who you boligrafo boffins might know from their mind-bogglingly expensive bejeweled implements may not be the first you’d go to for a first class jotter, but the Swiss brand also creates refreshingly simple writing instruments. The Caran D’Ache Silver Metal [...]

Come Out And Play

Unless your inner child is a cold, emotionless munchkin, he still wants a treehouse. Well, instead of building a rickety, splintered mess in your front yard that will never meet code, consider this — the array of BlueForest Treehouses. The award-winning team at BlueForest has done up numerous projects that take your breath away, and [...]

Office Gym

The Origin Workstation ($4,160) is the kind of office furniture you’d expect to find in the shiny new digs of a silicon valley startup. Weighing in at 250 pounds a pop, each piece is made from reclaimed gym flooring that showcases the original sport lines and features eight below surface storage shelves for organizing office [...]

Bedstand Meets Bandstand

One serious benefit of Apple’s decision to revamp only the guts of the new iPhone is that all of the iPhone 4 cases, accessories, and peripherals received an extended lease on life. West Elm’s new Parsons audio end table ($400) has an integrated dock for charging your precious iPhone or iPod and it’s apparently compatible [...]

Fresh Cut

Thanks to the physics of leverage and well-placed angles the Steel and Walnut Hand Wood Splitter ($280) not only makes for sharp striking fireside wall accoutrement, but backs it up with mighty cutting prowess. With an ability to apply 2.4 tons of splitting force using nothing but one’s bare hands (just add growl) the splitter’s [...]

Scoop de Ville

Sure, your tablespoon does a fine job toting grinds from the bag to your jo-ppliance, but that’s not quite enough now is it? The Kapu Coffee Scoop ($26) takes what might be an otherwise ordinary piece of birch plywood and applies a fine dose of Finnish design, but this scoop isn’t just a one-hit wonder. [...]

Hans Solo

With sculpted mid-century lines so handsome that you’ll want to build an entire room around it, the Hans Leather Chair ($1,980) might just be the lounge chair of the season. An homage to Scandinavian woodworking and built entirely in the USA, the Hans is cast of sustainably harvested and engineered European beech secured with water-based [...]

Cheers Without Fear

The days of housing tequila on a Friday night may be in your taillights, but these Nesting Steel Shot Cups ($32) are still a great-looking alternative compared to typical jiggers. Sets of four 24 gauge 1008 cold rolled steel cups are available in slate gray teflon or nickel-plated finishes, and all are made in the [...]