Foosball Tables Marseille Soap Laguiole Pocket Knives
Today on "how it's made"... Table football was first patented by a british inventor in 1923. It became popular throughout europe with leagues forming by the 1950s. A decade later, an american working in west germany brought the game to the u.s., trademarking the german word for it, foosball. In france, the game of foosball is known as baby foot. This company produces ready-made, as well as custom-made tables like this one featuring biker players. Production begins at a foundry, where workers melt down bars of aluminum. An injection-molding machine shoots the molten aluminum into molds in the shape of players. A robot removes the casting from the injection machine. The mold yields four players, each one sporting the manufacturer's name on the front of his jersey. A worker places each casting on a press then, with one strike, separates the four players and cuts off excess metal. A computer-guided machine drills a hole in the center of each player, through which the rod will pass. Then the machine threads a hole through the player's back for the screw that secures the player to the rod. Another machine saws a 2-millimeter gap in the back to allow clearance for a screwdriver to tighten the player onto the rod. Once ready, the players move to the foosball table factory, where a worker sprays on a base coat of white paint. Once that dries, workers continue painting the players but, now, using an airbrush. They mask the player's body to paint only his head. The company offers a selection of skin tones. Then they mask the player with another stencil, covering the skin and exposing the shirt and socks. Next, they mask everything except the player's head and feet. A player can be brunette, blonde or redhead. They paint the shoes black then the player's eyes and mouth. Manufacturers construct the table out of solid beech. A computer-guided milling machine profiles the wood components, drills the required holes, and engraves the company name. Workers then assemble the parts, starting with the four sides, which connect with bolted steel rods and glue. After closing up the ends with wood panels, workers install wood support bars which will reinforce the table and, after a goal, direct the ball to the ball return tray. The table now goes to the paint shop where workers either stain the wood or leave it natural. For this model, they also spray red stain into the recessed stripes and logo. All tables receive a finishing coat of transparent varnish to protect the wood. They install the sloped ball-return panel. When a player scores, the ball rolls down the panel to an aluminum ball-return tray. After sliding the plywood table bottom into place, workers turn the table right-side up, mount the aluminum goal nets, and the scoring units right behind them. Then they lay the playing surface, made of green vinyl on pressed wood, on top of the wooden support bars. Wood trim around the perimeter holds the surface in place. A worker mounts the players for each line onto a hollow stainless-steel rod. Using a template to space them correctly, he bolts each player to the rod then attaches a rubber bumper to the players at each end to prevent them from slamming against the side walls. He inserts a narrower stainless-steel rod into the hollow bar to make it telescopic. After preparing eight rods of players, a worker installs them in the table. The telescoping handle end of the rod has spring-loaded bearing that fits in a hole in the table. He secures it from the outside. After bolting the opposite end, workers protect the top edge of the table with a plastic trim. After threading plastic handles to the telescopic end of the rods and mounting the tables on four sturdy, solid-wood legs, this foosball table is ready for kickoff. Marseille soap is a vegetable oil-based soap first handcrafted in the port city of marseille, france, in the middle ages. This gentle hypoallergenic all-purpose block soap became prized across europe for washing clothes, dishes, floors, and cleansing oneself. Marseille soap is crafted from just four traditional ingredients with no animal fats, colorants, perfumes or preservatives. It's still produced today as it has been for more than 600 years. The four ingredients are sea salt, water, on the right, caustic soda and either coconut oil, palm oil or, most often, olive pomace oil, the second oil extracted from olives after they've been pressed to extract virgin olive oil for consumption. A worker releases the required quantities of oil and caustic soda into a cooking cauldron, then brings the mixture to a boil while stirring for 1 to 2 days. The fatty acids in the oil react to the alkaline caustic soda, producing a thick soap paste containing glycerin, a natural compound. This transformation is known as saponification. Workers add more caustic soda and cook to 248 degrees fahrenheit for another day. They wash the paste with saltwater two or three times, each washing lasting half a day. This removes impurities and glycerin. Without glycerin, the soap has better detergent power to remove grease stains on fabric. Next, over the course of a day, the workers repeatedly rinse the boiling soap paste with freshwater. Then they let it set for 2 days. They reheat the paste for about 10 minutes at 158 degrees fahrenheit, just to resoften it enough to be pumped to a series of super heaters. The super heaters heat the paste to 230 degrees fahrenheit, liquefying it. As the liquid soap leaves the last super heater, it passes through a nozzle, which sprays it onto the walls of an atomizer. The atomizer cools the soap under a vacuum, solidifying it into a dry moldable consistency. Motorized blades then scrape the dried soap from the atomizer walls. The soap falls directly into an extrusion machine, which works much like a pasta maker. The machine forces the soap through small round dies as revolving blades chop it into noodles. As the soap noodles fall into the conveyer belt, the soap workshop chief inspects the quality by assessing the color, the aroma, and the texture. At the company's in-house lab, a technician conducts quality-control tests on samples drawn from each production run. In this test, he measures the percentage of pure soap. He weighs the sample, then heats it in a microwave oven for 10 minutes to evaporate all the moisture. This leaves only pure soap without water. He reweighs the sample to calculate the percentage of pure soap as well as the oil content, which must be 72%. The factory sells a portion of its marseille soap noodles to companies who mold their own soap bars. It also molds a house brand right here, compressing the noodles into a homogeneous paste that extruding the long continuous bar. An automated guillotine slices the bar into the selected shape. The conveyer belt ferries the cubes to the stamping machine, which stamps all six sides. Each cube bears the company's name and logo, the soap's oil content, and the savon de marseille designation, attesting that this is indeed authentic, traditionally made marseille soap. For centuries, people have migrated back and forth across the french-spanish border. The traditional laguiole pocketknife is a result of the mixing of these cultures. It's a blend of an arab-hispanic knife, called the navaja, with a southern french knife, known as the capuchadou. These are not pocketknives for camping trips. They're high end cutlery, perfect for slicing through delicious french cheeses. They feature the unmistakable wavy pattern of damascus steel. To recreate the legendary metal known as damascus steel, a cutler, who is an artisan who specializes in knifemaking, stacks alternating layers of nickel and carbon steel. He then uses a grinder to even the edges for the next step. He welds the nine layers of carbon steel and eight layers of nickel steel together. He begins the forging process by placing the layers in a coal-fired forge where they heat up to 1,472 degrees fahrenheit. Step-by-step, the layers will be forged into a single piece of damascus steel. An automated hammer pounds the layers, forcing them to bind to each other at the molecular level. As the powerful hammering process forces the layers together into a unified piece of steel, it also flattens out and lengthens the metal. The cutler can then break the piece in three places and layer them all together. This triples the number of layers from 17 to 51. The cutler will repeat this process again and again until the steel has around 300 layers. Here, a cutler prepares a specialized model of laguiole pocketknife, which will have a distinctive shape. He continues the forging process of heating and hammering. The carbon steel will give the knife its sharp edge, while the nickel will provide flexibility. This manufacturer uses the forged steel to create several different types of blades for its pocketknives. A cutler places the formed blades in an oven where the intense heat will help flatten them. Once a blade has cooled, a cutler cuts it to size, drills a hinge hole, and uses a belt sander to reduce its width to about a tenth of an inch. Next, a worker will heat and rapidly cool the blades to temper them before sharpening them. He then dips then into a solution of ferric chloride to reveal the unique wave patterns in the damascus steel. There's more to a pocketknife than just the blade. This manufacturer hand crafts each component of its knives. To create the bolster component, a cutler starts by heating a third-of-an-inch stainless-steel rod. Once the steel reaches 1,562 degrees fahrenheit, he then stamps it into a mold. The production process can stamp out 20 bolsters in just 12 seconds. Once they've cooled, a cutler spot-welds them to a blade. To shape the spring plate, which forms part of the folding mechanism, a cutler heats one end up to 1,562 degrees fahrenheit. He uses a specialized tool to stamp the top portion flat. This flat surface will be the starting point for cutlers to create the bee figure, an emblematic feature of laguiole knives. Workers start by reducing the surface to a triangular shape. Using a series of different files, the cutler carefully sculpts the bee's eyes, body, and wings. It seems that pierre-jean calmels, the inventor of the laguiole knife, used a bee symbol in 1829, and the cutlers have been using ever since to set the knife apart from other types. Cutlers shape the entire spring plate, and it takes more than skilled work with a few files to complete. Stay tuned to see how high-tech instruments refine the images before workers assemble the rest of the knife. Even the simplest one-piece knife requires 109 production steps to complete. In the 1820s, cutlers began crafting laguiole pocketknives in aubrac, france. The tradition came to an end after world war i but was revived in the late 1980s. Today, the artisans of aubrac blend time-honored craftsmanship with advanced technology. To carve each unique spring plate, a cutler starts by placing one in a vice. With the metal stabilized, the cutler can focus on carving with the aid of powerful magnifiers. The tungsten carbide drill bits he uses are no larger than four-tenths of a millimeter. No wonder the details on each spring are so precise. To temper the steel, the cutler heats it to 1,886 degrees fahrenheit for several minutes. Next, he cools it suddenly in a bath of oil. He will then heat it to 446 degrees fahrenheit for 1 hour to complete the process. This manufacturer makes the knife-handles from different materials, including antlers, wood and bone. When making a handle from bone, a cutler starts by slicing it into sections with a specialized blade. He then cuts the slices into smaller sections that approximate the sides of a knife-handle. Cutlers can use the bone with its natural color or immerse it in a stain for several hours. All of the components for this laguiole pocketknife are complete. The cutler uses a belt sander to give the spring a light sanding. Next, using the same tool, he begins working the bone handle components. With the framework of the knife as a template, he carefully reduces both of the components to their required dimensions, achieving a perfect fit. With the metal as a guide, he uses a drill press to pierce holes in the bone. With the practiced hand of a skilled artisan, the cutler drills the famed shepherd's cross pattern by eye. The shepherd's cross is another signature of laguiole knives. The cutler connects the spring to the components known as scales, which form the internal structure of the knife. To join the parts, he inserts stainless-steel pins and hammers them flat on either side to hold them firmly in place. He inserts short lengths of thin steel wire into the holes drilled to form the shepard's cross. He now begins adding the bone side covers, which will form the knife-handle. He carefully screws the bone covers securely to the scales from the inside with three stainless-steel screws per side. He then snips off the ends of the screws that protrude. Now, he can install the damascus steel blade. He does this by inserting a stainless-steel pin through the hinge hole. Teflon washers will keep the opening and folding operation smooth and functional. The cutler uses a specialized clamp to grip the knife as he installs the pin at the back of the spring. This pin, together with the one that holds the blade, are the two essential elements of the laguiole knife mechanism. With the belt sander, the cutler now refines the handle, smoothing the pins, and rounding the edges of the bone covers. A final polish gives the bone a shiny finish that highlights the iconic shepherd's cross, an innovation introduced to allow shepherds to celebrate mass, even when far from a church. A cutler puts an extra fine edge on the finished knife with the help of a belt sander that has a fine-grit sandpaper. The cutler makes several passes on a piece of leather with a practiced hand to give the knife its final edge. This knife is now ready to join the legendary company of other laguiole pocketknives and peel a ripe apple or slice some aged cheese. Bon appétit.