Awesome Making

We live in strange times – TV sets are getting larger, yet we watch much of our video on smartphone screens. The Q went even smaller with this build – a teensy working television set with a wood and metal cabinet. He used an Apple Watch as the display, and its curved corners make it look like an old-school CRT.

We never heard of a portative organ before, but it’s a type of small pipe organ that uses a bellows to push wind through its pipes. Nippocast spent a year building such an instrument from scratch and boiled down his efforts into this 20-minute time-lapse video. You can hear how the finished organ sounds here.

What you’re looking at here isn’t a real robot, it’s a really impressive costume, built by artist XiaoQianFeng. She created the wearable mech outfit for her brother using wire mesh, paper mache, cardboard, wood, and if you can believe it, ceramic tile. The finished costume is too heavy to move around in, but it looks amazing.

We’ve taken you inside of a factory that makes plastic bottles, now see how more environmentally-friendly glass bottles are born. New Age Media posted this video of a high-speed production line that takes molten blobs of glass, blows them into molds, then passes them through a series of conveyors as they cool.

Most smartphone headsets have tiny microphones built into their cords. W&M Levsha took one of those mics, pulled it from its case and created a new enclosure for it out of brass. The finished microphone has a 3.5mm jack for plugging it in and looks like a miniature version of one of those fancy studio microphones.

After making a small parts organizer, Neil Paskin challenged fellow builder John Heisz of I Build It to create his own. John’s version has 18 swing-out “butterfly” drawers, each with dividers for keeping parts readily accessible. Other than the tiny set screws, he built it entirely from wood. He also posted a build guide.

Woodworking Art continues to fill out their garage with awesome handmade wooden vehicles. Their latest build is a miniature version of the Ferrari SF90 Spider. It has lots of wonderful details, like a retractable hardtop roof and working suspension and steering. Its seats even slide back and forth, and we love the red brake calipers.

Miller Knives decided he could use another keychain knife so he set about building one that actually looks like a key. To make it work, he layered together three keys, cut the middle one to allow space, machined a butter knife for the blade, then joined the pieces together with a couple of nails.

Iron fences are typically made by shaping and welding together multiple pieces of metal. But this factory uses a technique where entire fence sections are cast in large molds, with multiple workers pouring in molten metal to fill in the complete pattern at once.

After working with some black palm wood and seeing its unusual end-grain pattern, artist Andy Phillip wanted to make a piece of art from it. So he cut some slices of the wood, attached them to a plastic form, covered them in resin, then turned the whole thing on his lathe. The finished piece looks like it could make a cool bowling ball.

For thousands of years, gold has been one of the most valuable commodities on earth. In this video from Factory Monster, they take us inside the Korea Gold Exchange for a satisfying look at how nondescript bars of gold are melted down, flattened, cut, and stamped into pristine 999.9% pure gold ingots for resale.

Corian is a durable polymer typically used for sinks and kitchen countertops. But in the hands of maker Tim Sway, it’s the body for an electric bass guitar. He used his Avid CNC router to carve both the neck and body out of some reclaimed pieces. Given the material’s stone-like qualities, he went with an ancient Greek motif.

Maker The Metalist took the head from a well-used axe and reworked it into the most heavy metal tool ever. He first built up some extra metal with his MIG and Tig welders, then engraved a badass skull image that wraps around both sides of the blade. We love the iron fist hammer he used to reattach its head.

The Front Man’s mask in Squid Game is just one of the hit series’ many great design elements. Ben from PressTube made a replica of the iconic low-poly mask by melting down empty brass bullet casings and then casting them in a sand mold he made from a 3D-printed model.

Karambits are known for their distinctive claw shape. Metalsmith Koss took advantage of the circular shape of a miniature saw blade and transformed it into a tiny, razor-sharp version of the unusual Indonesian weapon.

Liam Thompson’s cat is currently 20 years old. The old guy is having trouble getting around these days – especially going up and down the stairs. So Liam, being a nice guy and an industrious builder, fabricated a custom elevator just for kitty. The basket rides on rails and is powered by a small electric hoist.

An ordinary axe only splits wood in one direction at a time. The Q shows off an unusual axe he fabricated with an X-shaped head that can split logs both horizontally and vertically at the same time, ostensibly doubling its performance.

Ben from Woby Designs in an expert at making things by recycling skateboard decks. Watch how he made this awesome looking dining table by stacking thin slices from more than 30 skateboards on edge, nailing them together, and then sealing them with clear epoxy. The metal table legs came from Semi Exact.(Thanks Zico!)

The Braun S9 shaver is pretty slick looking as electric razors go. But even if you squint really hard, it’s hard to envision this thing turning into a mech. But model maker RAY Studio used his imagination and crafting skills to transform this $300 groomer into a detailed figure inspired by War Machine from the Iron Man series.

Simone Giertz was tired of looking at the boring IKEA ceiling light she had hanging from her ceiling, so she decided to replace it with something more interesting – a combination lamp and a hanging plant basket. She managed to keep the water and electricity away from each other with a bit of epoxy.

After seeing a bowling ball with a square center, Ben’s Worx was inspired to make his own colorful sphere. So he submerged a Rubik’s Cube in a vat of resin, removed the bubbles in a vacuum chamber, then turned it on a lathe. The refraction of the clear resin makes it look like the cube’s corners were rounded inside of the sphere.

Leaf springs from cars and trucks might not offer the best ride quality, but they make some pretty awesome weapons when recycled by a skilled bladesmith. Faraway Forge crafted a beautiful Japanese tanto-style knife from one such rusty piece of metal. We love how he kept the pitted texture as part of the finished piece.

If you want to keep people from breaking into your workshop, a big steel door can certainly be a deterrent. Builder Paul Pinto shows off the impressive 400-pound door that he built for his shop with the help of a CNC plasma cutting table. Those rivet heads and wheel mechanism make it look even more impenetrable.