Awesome Making

Like many of you, we enjoy spicy foods. In this wonderfully satisfying video from a factory in China, we see how they combine spices, oil, herbs, sugar, and even beer to create mass quantities of delicious chili oil for hot pot cooking. While we couldn’t find where to buy this exact product, there’s a similar hot pot base available on Amazon.

Creative Workz takes us inside a factory where workers make beautiful chess sets by cutting, milling, and polishing marble. Each piece – from the squares on the boards to the individual game pieces – is made by hand. We’re guessing OSHA wouldn’t approve of the lack of respiratory and eye protection, though.

Black Beard Projects shows us how he created a unique weapon that looks like a single blade but can become two for dual wielding. Its halves required great precision to interlock and sandwich together so well. The design was inspired by Blade of the 47 Ronin, in which a mythical sword is split in two.

Despite its outrageous product placement, Pepsiman was a shockingly fun PlayStation game. Its protagonist was a metal superhero who had to run through towns gathering up cans of its sponsor’s soft drink to save the day. Minimaus Crafts created his own model of Pepsiman using skinny Pepsi cans as his medium.

Scott from Wonder World was fascinated by a video that showed how large metal spheres are made using explosive hydroforming. Here, he dives deeper into the process, along with other methods used for making spheres from steel, such as the shiny art pieces made by Shenzhen Maoping Sculpture Arts.

Adam from North of the Border was trying to come up with a way to sculpt Sonic the Hedgehog that was different from what’s already out there on the internet. So he created a clay sculpture of SEGA’s mascot in his iconic “Naruto run” pose, then covered the figure with flocking to give him a delightfully fuzzy blue finish.

Ghost in the Shell fans will recognize this spider-like mech as Tachikoma. The walker-roller tank turned up in the Stand Alone Complex universe, offering personnel transport and a mobile weapons platform. DanCreator built a giant cardboard version of the mech. Like his Scopedog, it’s big enough for him to ride inside of.

Concrete seems like a strange material to build a boat out of. But apparently, they are a thing and can float if they displace enough water to keep them buoyant. Peter Sripol and his pals attempted to build a remote-controlled boat out of the material with the goal of making the fastest concrete jet boat ever.

Basketball shoes are meant for playing basketball. But Marko took the concept literally and crafted custom sneakers out of a Wilson basketball. The leather and rubber from the ball look like they were difficult to work with, but the finished shoes look like they were worth the effort. That flame paint job is sweet!

Placing a one-way mirror in front of a regular mirror can create an infinite reflection illusion. It’s typically used to make glitzy disco-style lighting, but in this video from Wiz’s Woodwork, he shows us how to use the effect to make it look like his coffee table leads down a very long mine shaft.

Making things from wood takes time. But if you’re a stop-motion animator like Omozoc, everything goes much, much faster. In the latest video from their Stop Motion Woodworking series, they created a small tray using nothing a thumb and an index finger as tools.

At the end of the day, most power tools require one consistent element – a motor. In this video from KJDOT, they show how they redirected a drill’s rotational energy 90-degrees to create a compact circular saw. We imagine there’s some drivetrain loss here, but it still seems to get the job done.

Woodworker Frank Howarth has two cats: Cinnamon and Waffles. He wanted to give them a place to hang out in his craft room, so he built a series of hexagonal units that hang on the French cleats that he previously installed. The modular system allows for reconfiguration without permanently mounting its units.

Since the advent of flat screens, TVs are thinner than ever. But they also keep coming in larger sizes, dominating many living rooms. Matt from DIY Perks wanted to hide his big screen in plain sight. The wall unit he built conceals a 75″ LG QNED mini LED TV, a full home theater sound system, a PS5, a gaming PC, and more.

Ukraine-based blacksmith Shurap has made Damascus steel from a variety of unusual items. For his latest blade-making experiment, he took stacks of staples, nested them into star-shaped clusters, added steel flux powder, then forged and hammered them to create a pattern we’ve not seen on a knife before.

It’s rare that we come across a weapon we haven’t heard of, but this is the first time we’ve seen a kanabō (金棒). This ancient Samurai war club was basically a spiked or studded baseball bat. Diesineveryfilm created a replica of the Japanese weapon, and it appears highly effective based on the melon and coconut carnage.

Black Beard Projects created this dagger as his entry into the Fantasy Challenge. He starts the build by layering steel into a Damascus pattern, then forming it into a triangle and twisting and honing the metal to create its unique blade. After that, he made an engraved brass guard, a wrapped wooden handle, and a brass pommel.

Since the start of the pandemic, the world has been using huge amounts of personal protective equipment. The Brothers Make teamed up with recycler ReWorked to see what they could do with the plastic found in disposable face masks. They melted and extruded the resulting polypropylene granules into the parts for a park bench.

Totally Handy walks us through the process of building a custom electric bicycle from scratch. In addition to its low-rider style, it has an extra-fat car tire on its rear wheel for added stability. The second part of the video shows off a totally different build – a custom made branding iron made from a melted-down engine.

Black Beard Projects shows off an interesting way to create a steel ring. The blacksmith started with a rusty bandsaw blade and chopped it up into flat pieces. He then welded, forged, and hammered them multiple times to create a Damascus pattern before twisting the metal into a cylinder and refining it into its final form.

Metalsmith Koss shows off the build process for a rather distinctive modern knife with a chisel-style blade. They started with a rusty bar of W1-7 high carbon steel, then cut it down to size, shaped it with a cutting wheel, and refined its razor-sharpened edges. Those handle scales are made from brass flat stock.

Steel rebar is a stiff metal bar typically used to reinforce concrete. But like any metal, with enough force, you can bend it to your whim. Metalsmith Gavin Clark shows us a series of maneuvers he used to tie a length of 1/2″ rebar into a clove hitch knot. We’re impressed that he did it without applying heat.

We always enjoy seeing craftspeople turn one kind of object into another. Maker Jimmy Diresta shows off his blacksmithing skills by melting down a steel crowbar in his forge, hammering it into the shape of a bowie knife, and crafting a wood and brass handle. He only used about a third of the metal, so he could probably make another.