Awesome Cardboard

Cardboard isn’t exactly a conventional material for a sword. But with enough resin, pretty much any material can become rigid enough to be used as a weapon. In this video from Connor Creates, he shows how he glued together layers of cardboard, then coated the stack with epoxy and cut and sharpened it into a blade. Hit play to see how effective it is.

Lady Luck? More like Kitty Luck. This silly cat scratch toy from SuckUK looks like a roulette wheel from The Cosmopawlitian Casino. It even spins like the real deal and comes with a jingling ball for your kitties to play with. Place your bets on how long the cardboard layers will last before your kitties rip it to shreds.

Yutaka Yamaguchi aka Aidakko Shisho is blowing up on TikTok and Instagram because of his jaw-dropping cardboard creations that he enthusiastically showcases. He’s made toy weapons, jet packs, helmets, and even a monobike out of the humble material. His props have satisfying moving parts and seem to be made of the world’s toughest cardboard.

Pastry artist Amaury Guichon’s Amazon orders don’t come in regular boxes. That’s because everything in his life has to be edible and delicious. Amaury shows how he made a picture-perfect replica of a shipping box with caramelized white chocolate cardboard and filled with layers of caramel, cremeux, mousse, and marshmallow packing peanuts.

In 2020, more than 120 billion pieces of cardboard were used to pack and ship items in the U.S. – and that number keeps growing. Cardboard is also one of the world’s most successfully recycled materials. New Mind digs into the history, science, and success of the ubiquitous corrugated paper.

The S is back with another really cool looking cardboard weapon. The laser-cut blaster looks like something straight out of a sci-fi first-person shooter, and fires projectiles by igniting small bursts of butane gas stored in water bottles hidden inside its ringed cardboard cylinders.

It’s amazing what you can make with cardboard. The S shows off a fantastic cardboard blaster he built called “The Transformer.” Rather than cutting all the pieces with a hobby knife, he used a Two Trees laser cutter to get nice sharp edges and repeatable shapes. The blaster doesn’t just look incredible; it fires projectiles using exploding butane.

Carpenter John Heisz of I Build It typically makes things out of wood. However, with the high price of lumber these days, he decided to use cardboard boxes to build this parts organizer. We appreciate the attention to detail he put into crafting this multi-drawer parts storage unit.

Dan Creator is an expert at making models out of cardboard. After creating an R/C truck out of the stuff, he’s back with another cardboard vehicle – a city bus. He started with an off-the-shelf R/C car, which he cut into pieces, extended its chassis, and then added a detailed interior and body. His pet hamster, Natsu, finally has a ride to work.

Weapons are usually built from durable materials like metal or plastic, but The S built this one primarily from cardboard. The oversize toy blaster fires plastic balls and uses a corkscrew to feed them into its motorized chamber for launching. Bonus points for incorporating those flip-flops into the firing mechanism.

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.

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.

The S adds to his arsenal with an impressive-looking cardboard machine gun that can rapidly fire numerous rubber bands. It has a motor drive mechanism that turns a pair of gears when its trigger is pulled, sequentially releasing 16 rubber bands in just a few seconds. We wonder if he could double or triple up on rubber bands or if that would jam it.

DanCreator has made some pretty amazing cardboard objects over the years. Now he’s gone and built not one, but three full-size vending machines out of the corrugated brown paper. Not only do they look like the real thing, but the soda fountain, can dispenser, and instant ramen machine are fully functional.

After buying a remote-controlled model of a Bugatti Divo, master of papercraft Dan Creator decided he’d prefer to drive a truck. So he got to work stripping down the scale supercar, removed its body, and reconfigured its chassis and drivetrain to ride beneath a cardboard model cargo truck loaded with tiny Amazon boxes.

In this video from The Q, he shows us how he made a hand-cranked machine for displaying animations using cardboard, rubber bands, and a few pieces of hardware. The zoetrope-like device has a series of 25 animation frames on each of its tiers, creating the illusion of movement when it spins.