Awesome Dangerous

Electric pencil sharpeners are plenty fast. But say you have 100 pencils to sharpen. Shaving a second or two off of each pencil can add up. Current Concept wanted to see how quickly a pencil could be sharpened by rigging up an off-the-shelf sharpener to various power tools. That exposed sharpener mechanism looks terrifying once it gets up to speed.

A good knife can be a useful self-defense tool. But if you really want to ward off enemies, adding fire to the equation couldn’t hurt. Actually, getting stabbed by a flaming knife would hurt a lot. Integza shows how he made a knife that shoots flames from tiny holes in a porous metal blade. He theorizes that the tech could be used to improve jet engine efficiency.

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.

We already know it’s possible to drive a car on a frozen lake using sawblades instead of wheels. The guys from CboysTV attempted the same feat with a dirt bike. To pull off the crazy stunt, they fabricated 100-pound steel sawblade wheels for both a dirt bike and an ATV. The blade wheels work shockingly well, though falling off could be deadly.

Between the claustrophobia and the potential for nasty things living in it, a drain pipe is one of the last places we’d want to spend time. Daredevil Nicholas Coolridge, aka ModernTarzan threw caution to the wind and skateboarded down a drain pipe on his back for a low-budget thrill. It looked like a pretty clean pipe, but we’d still never do it.

Unless you’re into that sort of thing, you never want to be on the business end of a whip. After learning how to use a bullwhip, YouTuber Mike Shake wanted to know if making one out of stronger, heavier materials would make the whip more powerful. It’s not as easy to wield a chain whip, but it’s definitely more dangerous.

We’ve seen some of Bob “Rocketman” Maddox’s insane rides before. This vehicle is an improved version of his jet-propelled skateboard that he can stand on while riding. This pulsejet-powered board has handlebars to hang onto, though the helmet-less Robert uses one hand to hold onto his selfie stick. The lack of steering and brakes makes it even more sketchy.

Inspired by the Backyard Scientist’s industrial laser experiments, YouTuber Styropyro got a cheap but powerful industrial fiber laser of his own. He started by testing the 2-kilowatt laser’s cleaning and burning capabilities; then, he attached a beam-spreading lens to help light things on fire from a long distance.

Colin Furze has created all kinds of inventions over the years, from useful to useless. This one falls into the latter bucket, though it could be used to get your campfire going. Because nobody was asking for it, Colin created a flamethrower that mounts inside of his pants and shoots fire from his butt. It’s powered by an aerosol can and an electric igniter.

The makers of Clash of Clans asked I did a thing to build something inspired by the game. He decided to build a real-world version of the strategy game’s hidden spring trap. Powered by a pair of car suspension springs and pulled into place with a winch, the final version won’t just launch victims into the air; it might break some bones.

The latest stunt from Nitro Circus’ Life Size Toys is a real doozy. The team built an 8-foot-tall replica of a Duncan butterfly yo-yo. Then, they strapped a pair of daredevils to its sides and lowered it from a 100-foot crane to make it spin. The dizzying ride would test even the most iron of stomachs.

We don’t recommend playing with the electricity from a car’s ignition coil, but Styro Pyro is an expert at these sorts of things. In this video, he shows what happens when the power from these high-voltage transformers is applied to the bare metal traces of a blank circuit board. We’re guessing stuff would start smoking if the board had parts on it.

The Backyard Scientist adds to his arsenal of giant-sized traps with the biggest bear trap we’ve ever seen. After investigating how spring-loaded animal traps work, he took what he learned to supersize the killer contraption. Powered by four coil springs from a Jeep, its ability to cut things in half is terrifying.

Sitting inside a tire and then rolling it down a hill seems like a really bad idea. That didn’t stop Mikey Leach from doing it anyhow. So he and the guys from Travis Pastrana’s Channel 199 created a three-story high dirt ramp and outfitted a tractor tire with a racing seat and a five-point harness for some degree of safety. Kids, don’t try anything like this at home.

The tremendous energy released under a hydraulic press can cause some impressive explosions. In this video from the Hydraulic Press Channel, they show us what not to do when using this powerful industrial machine by placing a watermelon inches away from its destructive forces without any sort of protective gear.

Tod’s Workshop makes replicas of medieval weaponry and has had props featured on shows like The Witcher. Tod also built a working trebuchet, which he’s used to launch all sorts of things. For fun, he tied together 100 crossbow bolts with a fuse, lit that on fire so they would separate upon launch, and fired the whole bundle into an empty field.

There’s nothing inherently dangerous about playing a tuba. Sure, you might run out of breath, but that’s about it. YouTuber and maker MasterMilo has created the most dangerous brass instrument we’ve ever seen. His flamethrower tuba is powered by a chainsaw engine and spews a stream of flaming propane out of its bell.

Sushi Ramen likes to do dumb things in pursuit of YouTube views. This time, he wanted to recreate Mario’s fire-throwing abilities in real life. All he needed was a furnace, a crucible filled with 1800ºC molten iron, a fire suit, and a fireproof room to pull off the stunt. The fiery goodness starts around the 12:20 mark. Here’s the Japanese subtitled version.

It’s possible to make circular saw blades out of paper, wood, or plastic, but the glass saw blade the Waterjet Channel made could be the worst idea yet. Sure, glass is harder than those other materials, but it’s also more fragile, and the flying shards of glass coming off a spinning disc could cause serious injury. But hey, it’s the internet, so here you go.

Inspired by a pair of Civil War-era bullets that collided and fused together, Destin from Smarter Every Day wanted to see if he could replicate the unlikely situation on camera. It took an impressive amount of planning and engineering to set up the shot and perform the experiment in a safe and precise way.

Cannons are generally designed to fire iron cannonballs. Ballistic High-Speed shows us there’s no good reason they can’t fire bowling balls too. In this satisfying slow-motion video, you’ll see what happens when a bowling ball meets various objects at speeds over 300 feet per second. You definitely would not want to be on the business end of this thing.

Bob Maddox, aka The Rocketman, is back with another insane jet-powered ride. This time, he mounted one of his diesel-powered pulsejet engines to a skateboard. It takes serious balls to ride this thing, but imagine if he tried to stand up and ride its deck like a regular skateboard. EA, when can we have Tony Hawk’s Jet-Powered Pro Skater?

(PG-13: Language) It’s really not a good idea to ride a bike down any number of stairs, but that won’t stop someone like daredevil cyclist Adam Hayward. In this POV clip, he takes us on a ride down a seemingly endless flight of snow-covered steps giggling and giving his body the ultimate shake test all the way down.