Awesome Videos

It’s possible to make saw blades out of materials other than metal. GazR’s Extreme Brick Machines not only built a saw blade out of LEGO Technic parts, but an entire working table saw. It uses 14 motors to cut through objects and is definitely not something you’d want to stick your finger into. Here it is using a skinnier blade.

Musician Steve Cruickshank likes to take classic songs and change them up a bit by replacing the original harmonies with their mirror image. The resulting music is at once familiar and pleasant to the ear but also completely different from what we’re used to. Let’s kick the playlist off with his version of The Sound of Silence.

We recently saw a tiny remote-controlled airplane that could fit in the palm of your hand. The guys from Tail Happy Productions attempted to do the opposite and built an R/C plane that’s the same size as the real thing. They built the low-budget plane primarily from PVC pipe and styrofoam sheets. But will it even get off the ground?

Some songs lend themselves particularly well to being played on brass instruments. Musician Seb Skelly shows us just that with his wonderful arrangement and performance of the Tears for Fears track Everybody Wants to Rule the World, another track which reminds us just how great a decade the 1980s were for music.

A matchstick seems like a simple little thing – a piece of wood dipped in flammable chemicals. But this video from Wow Things shows just how many steps it takes to turn timber into thousands of tiny sticks. Pakistan’s Kite Safety Match factory in uses a mix of humans and machines to produce matches and their packaging.

Blacksmith Denis Tyrell of Tyrell Knifeworks shows off the build process for one of the most beautiful bladed weapons we’ve seen. He created this cumai katana with a Damascus blade comprised of twisted layers of steel and copper. He finished it with a copper blade collar and a stingray skin and leather-wrapped wood handle.

Jaan Roose is one of the world’s best slackliners. On August 8, 2022, he showed off his incredible balance – and balls of steel – by slacklining between two buildings and across Rotterdam’s river Mass. The 2cm (.78″) wide slackline measured nearly 500 feet long, with a 24% grade at its steepest angle.

We’ve seen what’s inside of a typical pool ball, and also a cool version made from stainless steel. Now, BensWorx is here to show us how to make a cast resin 8-ball from scratch. He started with a cup full of black resin, which he cured and then turned on a lathe. The trickiest part was creating the numeric insert.

Cars aren’t the most efficient way to get around cities. They cause traffic jams, and are bad for the environment. Not Just Bikes takes a look at an alternative mode of transportation called a Bakfiet. These cargo bikes are popular in the Netherlands and offer a fun ride for kids. They come in 2- and 3-wheel varieties as well as eBikes.

Inspired by the story The Library of Babel, the Babel Image Archives has randomly generated every combination of 4096-color dots that can fit into a 640 x 416-pixel canvas. In theory, that should mean the archive should contain an image of everything that ever has, will, or might exist. Solar Sands explains why it doesn’t.

With billions of letters sent each year in the U.S., it’s amazing that most mail gets to its destination. While automated processing equipment handles the majority of the mail, Tom Scott explains how the U.S. Post Office deals with hard-to-read addresses using a mix of technology and people typing on custom computer keyboards.

Farming is a tricky business. When growing a crop like rice, it’s not easy to access the plants to apply nutrients or pesticides. This clever farmer uses a set of large balloons to suspend spray pipes over the plants, minimizing damage and keeping vehicles from getting stuck in the marsh.

We’ve seen some big remote-controlled airplanes, but this tiny flyer sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. Joe Malinchak built this minuscule R/C tri-plane with a 1.5″ wingspan. It weighs just one gram, and in addition to its tiny motor, it has a working rudder mechanism for steering. Watch it fly at the 3-minute mark.

Normally the only hole on a soap bubble is the one that you blow through to fill it with air. But science vlogger and teacher Steve Mould shows us how it’s easy to make a perfectly circular hole in a film of soap using a loop of thread. He goes on to explain how it’s a useful metaphor for the way cell membranes work.

Musician Jacob Collier is known for ending his concerts with singalongs. At the end of his performance at London’s O2 Academy, he turned his entire audience into a choir. He achieved this impressive result by dividing the audience into three sections, assigning them a note, and conducting them to raise and lower their pitch.

The guys at Corridor Crew thought it was time to expand their repertoire beyond being VFX artists and into product design. So they came up with the idea of creating a line of toys that nobody in their right mind would put into production. Then they pitched their concepts to a group of similarly fake investors.

People who keep fish as pets can go overboard with their aquariums. Not one to ever be subtle, The Q got to work building a custom aquarium that looks like an actual house. The two-story home has art on the walls, glass tanks with a connecting tube, and a garage with a tiny BMW in case any fish learn how to drive.

Recently, The Hacksmith and his team built what is likely the world’s largest Thor’s hammer. At the end of that video, he promised they would drop it from a crane to smash things, and now we can share that footage. Among 2-ton Mjolnir’s victims were watermelons, a washing machine, a piano, and a pickup truck.

Last week, the Fagradalsfjall volcano erupted not far from Reykjavik, Iceland, and the Keflavik International Airport. Photographers descended on the area, including Jakob Vegerfors, who captured this extraordinary footage of fiery lava exploding into the air and a river of lava flowing around the eruption site.

There’s no escape; I can’t wait. The exceptional electromechanical Device Orchestra is back to perform another pop music hit. This time, the band of electric toothbrushes, credit card terminals, and typewriters were joined by an Epilator hair remover which added a spinny new sound to the Britney Spears track Toxic.

LEGO enthusiast Brick Technology is back with another cool LEGO vehicle video. This time, they created a series of remote-controlled mechanisms that move inside clear plastic spheres, allowing them to roll around like BB-8 or a Sphero robot. They then put the designs to the test to see which was most agile, fast, and powerful.

Musician Demin Vladimir created this electromechanical rig plays an acoustic guitar. It has one set of actuators that hold the frets while others strum the strings. It’s not the most expressive instrument, but neither were vintage player pianos, and we still love those. He’s also built an accordion that plays the notes itself.

We’ve seen how powerful lasers can be used to remove dirt and grime from surfaces. Flare Fabrication shows us how a tightly-focused laser can clean years of tarnish off of copper penny, and programmed the beam to perform the task with style. Watch the laser clean and embellish a dime here.

After Adam at North of the Border made his last blue-haired monster, many of us suggested that he use the leftover fur to make Cookie Monster. He obliged and sculpted Sesame Street’s #1 carb addict chomping on Shrek’s Gingerbread Man and his family. He didn’t bother using the fur because it was a pain in the ass.

2-liter bottles are pretty good at holding air, so they work well as floatation devices. Maker Chris Notap took this idea to the next level by gluing together 280 of plastic soda bottles with silicone sealer, transforming them into a totally legitimate raft. We wonder if there’s a limit to how large a raft you could make this way.

Musician Astrophysics takes songs from various genres, and slathers them with a thick layer of 1980s electronic sounds, then complements them with appropriately retro graphics. There’s lots of great stuff to enjoy on their YouTube channel, but this synthwave remix of Outkast’s 2003 hit Hey Ya! is our favorite (so far.)