Awesome Making

We’re amazed by the things that people can make out of cardboard. In this video from The S, he shows how he built a massive toy blaster that fires a trio of rocket-shaped projectiles. The video also serves as a great demonstration of the bargain-priced Wainlux L6 laser cutter, which makes quick work of the precision paper cuts.

Matty Benedetto is known for making things we don’t need but seem like plausible products. After completing hundreds of projects on his Unnecessary Inventions channel, he revisited three of his earlier builds to apply new skills he’s gained. He started with a motorized ice cream cone spinner, and things get sillier from there.

One of the more entertaining engineering projects we’ve seen is that useless robot that un-flips its switches as soon as they’re flipped. Maker B created a similarly useless machine by fabricating a robotic joystick that records and plays back its user’s movements. The build process is impressive, but if you’re short on time, skip to 16:08 to see it in action.

Maker Xyla Foxlin always wanted one of those little teardrop campers to take on her adventures. But the steadfast and hard-working Xyla wanted to build her own instead of buying one. It took her and her friends about three weeks to fabricate it from marine plywood, fiberglass, and aluminum, and the finished trailer looks fantastic.

Restaurants in Japan sometimes use fake food in their display windows. Shigeharu Takeuchi has been honing his skills in creating lookalike food for over 50 years. In this Process X video, you’ll see how he makes realistic lettuce, omelets, tempura shrimp, and other inedible delicacies from wax, pigments, and plastic. He even makes caulk look like an appetizing dessert.

After seeing another artist make a tabletop by scorching wood, Burls Art was inspired to try the technique with a guitar body. After burning some maple, he coated it with epoxy to preserve its finish, then cut a thick sheet of copper to inlay into its face. He forced the copper into a blue-green patina using ammonia, vinegar, and salt.

We love playing classic arcade games. But an arcade cabinet isn’t exactly the kind of thing you’d put right in the middle of most living rooms. Maker Alexandre Chappel shows us how he designed and built a 2-player arcade machine that hides inside of a sleek wood cabinet that hangs neatly on a wall.

Maker Neil Paskin previously created a cool parts organizer cart. Now, he’s back with another impressive build – a set of curved drawers that fit into a cylindrical tower. It took some geometry skills to figure out the angles for cutting its 24 triangular drawers, which he refined into curved shapes with a jigsaw and router. The whole thing spins on a turntable.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned from makers is that you can create all kinds of things from items bathed in resin and cut into shape. In this video, Peter Brown takes a bunch of shredded CDs and turns the shards into a large iridescent bracelet.

Artist LiuMutou shows off his expert model-making abilities by carving an impeccable replica of a 1959 Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz. Every detail is there, including a tiny steering wheel, a curved acrylic windshield, working lights, and sharp tailfins. And it doesn’t just sit there; it’s got a working powertrain and even can drift.

After building a hubless bicycle, inventor and maker The Q used his skills to create a similar pair of roller blades. He created their wheels using large ball bearings, which he wrapped with tire rubber and sandwiched between layers of steel to create a frame for each boot. They kind of look like tiny TRON lightcycles attached to his feet.

Metalworker Koss shows off a bold knife design with an angular profile, a thick blade, and a built-in knuckle guard. Rather than forging the blade, he started with a thick plate of high-carbon steel that he shaped using power tools and files. He crafted the handle scales from white G10, a strong fiberglass and epoxy composite.

While it’s possible to build a hubless bicycle, it’s a mechanically complex feat. Builder The Q came up with a similar look that does away with the spokes instead, replacing them with thick polyacrylate sheets. We’re not sure how durable they are or how they affect ride quality, but it’s a really cool illusion.

While you could buy some cheap folding chairs, we prefer the modern design of Get Hands Dirty’s design, which has a clean, angular look and is something that you can build for yourself if you’ve got the right tools and lumber. The wood-shaving interlude was a nice touch.

Woodworker Jack Mack shows us how a bunch of wood veneer strips can become a beautiful piece of functional art. He started by placing the colorful wood strips into a bucket he filled with resin, then carved the piece by hand on a lathe into a vase. It’s not until it’s close to its final form that its eye-catching patterns are revealed.

Woodworker Frank Howarth wanted to turn a slice of a fir tree into something different than a typical coffee table. So he set out to create a giant version of a LEGO gear. After patching a crack in the wood with bacon-shaped ties, he encountered a frustrating obstacle while cutting the pattern but persevered.

T-Nu from the wonderfully-named Craftastrophe loves to build tiny things. In this video, you’ll see how he made a mini version of a 1958 Gibson Explorer electric guitar with every little detail. It even has real metal strings and teensy fretboards. They built the whole thing by hand and without any 3D-printed parts.

We may take the roof over our heads for granted these days, but in the 18th century, families venturing into the interior of North America had to build their own shelters to survive the elements as they headed westward. Frontier lifestyle expert Jon Townsend shows us how they might have constructed a shelter without any nails.

When somebody says they’re going to build a cardboard model of a Star Wars ship, we assume it would be something you could fit on a bookshelf. But cardboard artist Bodoc likes to make things at a slightly larger scale. This time-lapse video shows how he created a 1/2-scale version of a crashed TIE advanced X1 fighter out of shipping boxes.

In today’s work-from-home world, having a good desk is a must. You could buy one, or you could do what HomeMadeModern did and build one to your own exacting specifications. We love how Jessie incorporated walls, and sound-deadening felt to make it her own. We’d probably do corkboard for tacking up notes.

Maker Mr Novruz walks us through the process of turning a single length of stainless steel wire into a cool and useful holder for keys. There’s something wonderfully satisfying every time he bends and twists the metal.

From dice towers to dice spinners to dice cups, you can roll dice in many different ways. Pixelcadet’s dice-tossing blunderbuss might be the best dice roller yet. This large-bored, rubber band-powered gun uses dice as ammunition instead of bullets. Here’s how its cartridge works. You can purchase the .STL files to print your own on Etsy.

We hate having random bits of hardware and spare parts lying around our garage. There are some pretty nice mechanics carts on the market, but we really love the one that Pask Makes custom-built for his workshop. He cut and welded it from steel, then finished it with a retro silver-green hammer finish paint.