Awesome Making

YouTuber Not from Concentrate was so disappointed with the “slim” PS5 that he painstakingly showed Sony what a truly compact version of the console should be. The result is a box with almost half the size and nearly 40% of the volume of the PS5 Slim. It even has a removable magnetic charging dock for the controllers and an external disc drive.

We’ve seen how they make disco balls in the last American mirror ball factory; now see how they do it in Japan. Nissho Co., Ltd. makes shiny spheres by bending sheet metal into domes, screwing them together, hand-cutting and gluing hundred of round mirror tiles then filling the gaps with grout. Note that the tiles are different sizes depending on their placement.

After seeing an illustration of a mime wielding an invisible sword, maker Mike Shake was inspired to build one in real life. While his see-through katana isn’t completely invisible, it’s still an incredibly cool and effective weapon. Mike’s opponents will never see what hit them. After considering using a glass blade, he went with a clear and strong polycarbonate.

Typical slingshots fire steel balls. DIY Crossbow built a homebrew version of the elastic-powered weapon that fires deadly ninja stars. The design is simple – wood strips glued together and attached to a handle. A slot down the center of its barrel is just wide enough to hold one of the metal stars, and a guide at the front helps keep the star flat as it exits.

Burls Art is back with another creative guitar build. This time, he made a unique electric guitar with a 3D depth illusion with the same technique used to make some wooden cutting boards. Blake and his friend started by cutting maple and walnut boards into strips of varying thicknesses, then stacked, glued, and cut them into wedges to create the pattern.

This blacksmithing video from Knives Project starts with the satisfying process of ripping apart a molten-hot ball bearing to steal its outer ring. Then, he proceeds to forge and hammer the piece into a flat bar and grind it into a very large blade. The finished piece is somewhere between the size of a bowie knife and a machete.

It’s not often we see a truly unique weapon. In this video from maker DiesInEveryFilm, he shows us how he fabricated a custom sling bow from a kid-sized bicycle wheel and steel tubing. It’s held like a pistol and uses elastic tubing like a slingshot but fires full-length arrows. It looks like something that Hawkeye might have in his bag of tricks.

Damascus steel is made by pressing layers of forged metal together. HANS shows how he made a gorgeous dagger using thousands of steel bearing balls. The resulting metal pattern is something he calls Dragon Skin. After making the blade, he fabricated a brass crossguard and a wooden handle. It’s based on a design by Neels Van Den Berg of Black Dragon Forge.

You know we love a good flashlight around here. While we’ve seen lots of really slick production models, we have to hand it to Maciej Nowak who built a custom flashlight by machining billet aluminum, then outfitted it with a super-bright 30W LED and three lithium-ion batteries. He even etched his own circuit board.

Jonny Builds shows off another impressive piece of furniture – a record cabinet with a segmented wood door. He started by assembling grain-matched panels for the top, bottom, and dividers. To make the door, he took an 8-foot-long black walnut slab, cut it into boards, sliced it into 109 strips, glued them to canvas, and CNC milled the awesomely wavy shapes.

After prototyping a system for organizing the hardware in his workshop (aka “The Cave”), Adam Savage put his nose to the grindstone and built the entire setup. The rolling storage system has a plywood frame and custom-built metal shelves that slide out and hold Sortimo boxes for easy access to parts. It was immensely satisfying to see it all come together.

The Vikings made many interesting weapons, armor, and other battle gear. In this video from metalsmith Freerk Wieringa, he handcrafts a replica of an ancient Viking shield. He starts by hammering its iron center and forging nails. He then cuts wooden planks into a circle and adds canvas, paint, and a rawhide edge before attaching the metal dome.

Iron and steel are the most recyclable materials on Earth. So it’s no wonder we often see items made by melting and reforging metal. In this video from Maker B, the machinist shows us how he took an assortment of steel bolts and removed their threads to create the parts for a working combination lock – no melting required. He made the dial from a brass rod.

A few years back, maker Peter Brown attempted to build an axe with a handle made from gummy bears and resin. Unfortunately, it turned into a sticky mess after sanding. Now he’s back to try it again, but this time he molded his own faux gummies from resin so they’d hold up better to the process.

A vacuum engine moves due to air pressure on one side of its piston and a partial vacuum on the other. The simplest example uses a flame on one side of the piston to create these conditions. W&M Levsha shows the process of making a working miniature of this kind of engine using brass, aluminum, and precision machining techniques.

Maker Neil Paskin returned to his workshop to build another great piece of functional craft. He fabricated this vintage-style industrial chair using hand-cut and bent steel for its legs and support structure and gently curved wood for its back and seat. We love how he made his own plywood from reclaimed floorboards.

The Karakuri Channel loves to make unique mechanical art. This time, they designed and built a gadget that turns nearly 300 brass nails into a moving wave. To make it work, they removed the tip of each nail and attached a sleeve and a ball bearing. A motor turns interchangeable discs against the balls to create wave patterns. Watch with subtitles.

While best known for his paintings, Leonardo DaVinci also invented many imaginative machines. Among his ideas was a crazy weapon that could fire 16 crossbows in a row. How to Make Everything took DaVinci’s drawings and built a real-world replica of the weapon. It works surprisingly well, but loading the thing seems like a precarious process.

In this video from metalworker Koss, he shows how he created a sleek, modern dagger. He meticulously machined its tapered blade from W1-7 high-carbon steel and crafted its handle and matching sheath from hollow copper tubing. Its shape reminds us of a letter opener, but this is a serious knife. We love the bevel detailing on the ends.

Iron Man had armor that was able to fix itself after a fight. JLaservideo took a stab at making real-world armor pieces that heal themselves after being heated, thanks to Nitinol – a nickel-titanium alloy with the ability to return to a programmed shape after being bent. The material is expensive and hard to work with, but Tony Stark could afford it.

Ali Spagnola thought making her car change colors like a gigantic mood ring would be fun. So she sprayed it with thermochromic liquid crystal paint. This stuff doesn’t show if she’s happy or sad but instead reacts to changes in temperature. If you’re wondering what those discs are on her car, they’re the 9,000 PopSockets she attached in a previous video.

Emily the Engineer, proves yet again that just because something CAN be done doesn’t mean it SHOULD be. She recently got a bee in her bonnet about 3D printing a toilet. Before printing the full-size version in pieces, she made a working scale model. After she got the real deal working, she started adding a bunch of unnecessary features.

Paul Jackman has made a lot of drink coasters out of recycled pallet wood. This time, he made a bunch of coasters that look exactly like real pallets. After designing a 1:10-scale model on his computer, he got to work fabricating 200 of the tiny replicas, complete with laser-engraved logos. You can grab a 2-pack on the ISOTunes website for $50.