Awesome Making

Given how soft copper is, it seems like an unlikely material for a sledgehammer. But it sure looks pretty, so that’s probably why Robinson Foundry decided to make one out of the eye-catching metal. To fabricate it, he first created a 3D-printed form for a sand mold, then filled it with molten copper and machined its final shape.

We always enjoy watching rusty metal objects being reworked into new ones. In this satisfying blacksmithing video from Faraway Forge, they start off with a big old industrial hook, get it fiery hot, and hammer it into a bar shape. From there, it takes huge amounts of handwork to shape and hone it into a blade for a katana.

Modelmaker Excessively Sentimental shows off the painstaking process of building a 1/48-scale diorama of a rickety old barn. The level of detail is astounding in the balsa wood model and its surroundings, from the distressing on each wood plank to the individual blades of grass and leaves. (Thanks, Orion!)

Artist and maker Peter Brown found some western salsify, a plant that looks like a gigantic dandelion and dipped it in a vat of clear resin. After a couple of failed attempts, he managed to keep one of the seed pods intact and centered, then gradually shaped it into a perfect sphere.

Engineer James Bruton is fascinated with omni-directional wheels. For this video, he set out to make a vehicle that rolls on three split-hemisphere balls which can move in any direction. He’s since added a seat to it, resulting in what is basically the world’s most powerful office chair.

When is a trash can not just a trash can? When it’s a beautiful work of art. Frank Howarth needed a place to toss the garbage in his family room, so he used his woodworking skills to conceal a plastic pot. He formed its hyperboloid shape by cutting maple into segments, which he glued into rings, then turned on the lathe.

Many of the things that Primitive Technology makes are larger structures, but sometimes he needs to build tools to help build other things. In this video, he gets down and dirty with some branches, leaves, reeds, and clay to create a fan that he can spin up to help stoke a fire.

Glass artist James Mongrain and a team of assistants demonstrate the painstaking process of turning a molten blob of glass into an intricately scaled dragon in this 1-hour video from the Corning Museum of Glass. It’s also the most soothing thing you’ll watch today.

Patrick Adair usually makes really cool custom rings. But in this video, he uses his skills to create something totally different. Starting out with a bag of shredded currency from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, he cast the former cash in resin to create a unique conversation piece.

Charged with moving the pistons in and out, a crankshaft is like the beating heart of an engine. While crankshafts need to be finished by machining, they start by forging and stamping steel, then twisting the molten metal to form the journals and counterweights that comprise this critical car part.

In the past, Burls Art has shown off his guitar-building abilities by making instruments out of jawbreakers, Himalayan salt, coffee beans, and more. This time, he’s changed things up by building an electric bass guitar, using about 2,000 LEGO bricks to form its body. We love the colorful pattern he came up with.

Last Leg Woodworks shows us how they made this cool piece of modern wall art using Inventables’ X-Carve Pro CNC machine and their free Easel software. The piece was carved out of 77 slices of baltic birch plywood, then hand-assembled using mortise and tenon joints.

Wood seems like a terrible material to make a cushion out of, given its hardness. But Kurahito Craft shows how – with a little ingenuity – it’s feasible to build a pliable (and possibly comfortable) wooden seat using a wooden spring-making technique.

The YouTube channel for Mr Custom Crafts is loaded with unique works of art created from metal. In this video, they show how they turned a metal rod and nails into the immensely creepy and crawly scolopendra gigantea, aka the largest centipede in the world. If you enjoyed watching that, check out the scorpion they made.

If there’s one thing city dwellers can relate to, it’s that living space is at a premium. So if it’s possible to replace multiple pieces of furniture with a single item, it’s worth doing. Get Hands Dirty shows off a versatile coffee table that they built that also serves as a platform for a murphy bed and a pop-up desk.

One of the main benefits of a pocket knife is that it fits in your pocket. That didn’t stop The Q from making a folding knife big enough for Paul Bunyon. The enormous knife measures more than 47″ long when opened and has a hefty steel blade and a rather terrifying automatic mechanism.

We’ve always been wowed by the craft of Kumiko. Inspired by the elegant Japanese latticework, Make With Miles created a unique electric guitar with a body that incorporates the technique. After cutting and assembling the wood, he filled the openings with tinted epoxy for contrast. He also made a matching amp.

A store-bought pizza cutter is usually made from stainless steel. The guys from Waterjet Channel decided to make one from Damascus steel and titanium instead, so they teamed up with Jesse and Jeff from Vegas Forge to create this impressive wheel for slicing with style. Though we’d hate to get cheese all over it.

After building three electric guitar bodies out of colored pencils, Burls Art has stepped up his game by making one with more than 2000 individual pencils, nearly doubling his last effort, and incorporating the neck into the same mold as the body. Watching that crystal clear epoxy poured over the pencils is just so satisfying.

Make Anything’s Tippi Tree is a party game that challenges players to stack and interlock blocks but in a more organic way than Jenga. Maker Devin Montes has now built a giant version of the game out of wood. If you want to play some Tippi Tree for yourself, you can purchase the design for 3D printing from MyMiniFactory.

Electric scooters usually have tiny wheels, which makes them agile but not exactly grippy. The Q’s oversize scooter has a bit more contact patch thanks to its Formula One wheels, wrapped in slick Pirelli P-Zero tires. It’s powered by a 25kw brushless electric motor and has a battery pack under its riding deck.

Unexpected is an expert at building things out of popsicle sticks and glue. Unlike other constructions that still look like sticks, he manages to create objects that look more like carvings from a block of wood. Here, he show off a popsicle Ducati 899 Panigale, which is one of four wooden motorcycles he built.

Go inside of Italy’s Beta Utensili factory, where they take pieces of raw steel, heat them, hot roll, and machine hammer them into their rough shapes, before cutting them out, sand blasting, grinding, tumbling, and refining their openings before hardening and plating each piece into a finished combination wrench.