About the Laboratory

Attend closely, for what follows is rather important.

The Gentleman Scientist is a lab notebook kept in public. It is written for the man who reads the manual and the footnotes; who would sooner build the thing than buy it; and who sees no contradiction between a properly lathered shave and a properly soldered joint.

What you will find here

The laboratory is organised into six research departments:

• Grooming Laboratory - the morning shave as ritual and chemistry.
• Spirits & Elixirs - cocktail science and the apparatus of the bar.
• The Workshop - fabrication, materials, lasers and lenses.
• Apparatus & Computing - microcontrollers, machine intelligence and devices of questionable necessity.
• Propulsion & Machines - rockets, engines and automotive diagnostics.
• Self-Experimentation - sleep, heart rate and the data one gathers about oneself.

Each dispatch aims to be something you can actually do: a protocol, a list of apparatus, and an honest account of what worked and what did not.

On method

Experiments here are ambitious in spirit and conservative in execution. Where a procedure involves heat, pressure, cryogens, lasers or anything else with opinions of its own, the safety precautions are stated plainly - they are the price of admission, not an afterthought.

On commerce

The laboratory is partially sustained by affiliate partnerships. When a dispatch recommends a piece of apparatus, the link may earn a small commission. Recommendations are made on merit; the details are set out in the affiliate disclosure.

The experiment awaits. I shall be in the laboratory.