THE CYLINDER HEAD

Most people have at least one inexplicable habit—something you do in private or late at night, thankful that no one’s watching. This probably marks me as a brand of especially boring weirdo, but I read old airplane service manuals. My favorite is a 1953 Air Force publication called Powerplant Maintenance for Reciprocating Engines. The front jacket holds a drawing of a nine-cylinder radial, and the book’s 452 pages contain everything from a treatise on the disposition of aviation fuels to prose and diagrams outlining the operation of a Curtiss electric propeller governor.

Dangerous stuff, if you’re wired a certain way. But its joys are mostly in the little things. The elegant, brutally efficient language of the government repair manual, applied