Awesome Making

Ivan Miranda built himself a massive 3D printer, so what better to use it for but to make a 3D-printed tank that’s big enough to sit inside of and drive? He’s been working on the tank for some time but only recently added the seat and control pedals. He plans on adding a turret and a cannon soon.

Patrick Adair makes some really beautiful jewelry, specializing in unique rings and pendants. In this video, he walks us through the process of creating a golden ring wrapped in TruStone malachite, a composite stone stabilized with a polymer resin with stunning green marbling.

If you’re going to live off the land and build everything from scratch, you should probably start by building a shelter. Primitive Technology shows us how he made a large shelter out of skinny tree trunks and the leaves of native plants. It’s not only big enough to sleep under; it’s got space for him to work on other projects.

Carpenter Frank Howarth has made several wooden spheres in the past. This time he painstakingly assembled a globe with a funky mosaic pattern made from scrap wood pieces. It’s not as successful as his traditional globe design, but the build process was still quite interesting to watch.

A normal turbo-jet engine runs entirely on ignited fuel. Integza built something a little different – a jet engine that uses an electric motor to spin its compressor. He made its main chambers out of empty butane cans, while its fuel source is a mix of butane and propane. Along the way, he built a low-budget spot welder.

John Wick and Heath Ledger’s Joker have both proven that a pencil can be a highly effective weapon all on its own. But it’s makeITcool’s job to make things cooler, so they got to work turning a saw blade into a tiny sword that stows inside of the body of a No. 2 pencil.

Artist Blake McFarland previously impressed us with his sculpture of a bear that he carved from wood and epoxy resin. Now he’s back with another amazing animal sculpture he made with the same technique. The finished piece looks incredible and now lives at The Founders Room at The Beacon in Topeka, Kansas.

My Mechanics was inspired to create a unique circular lighter after seeing a similar design from fellow maker W&M Levsha. They built this one entirely from scratch using stainless steel. It has a donut-shaped body that hides a wick, cotton and lighter fluid inside. A fake wick sticks out in its see-through center.

We love watching rusty old objects get turned into shiny new ones. In this video from Random Hands, they transforming a weathered railroad track into an elegant Japanese weapon. The process starts by cutting off a hunk of steel, forging it into a bar shape, then gradually shaping and grinding it into its final form.

Over the course of four years Benjamin Workshop created his dream car – a working replica of Ford’s Le Mans-winning GT40 race car. He’s posted numerous videos of the design, engineering, and build process, and now he’s condensed that all down to a 17-minute time-lapse. The finished car is truly a work of art.

DiesInEveryFilm saw a video of workers swinging sledgehammers with a flexible handle that are supposed to optimize kinetic energy. Inspired by the unusual tools, he decided to apply the same idea to an axe to see how well it would work to chop wood. His version uses a piece of thick aircraft cable for the handle.

Musician Rob Scallon has been working on a series of DIY instruments that can be assembled quickly and inexpensively. For this build, he and his buddy Simon created a makeshift piano in less than a day, using a bunch of spare guitar strings, tuning pegs, door stoppers, and other bits and pieces from the Home Depot.

Keymacs makes high-end keyboards. In this video, they show how LEGO bricks and polyurethane can be used to create a double-shot keycap. They then use a CNC router to engrave the details and refine the shape of the mold, then make an additional set of molds to produce the contrasting letter embedded in each key.

This unique dress is worth far more than the sum of the 2652 pennies it’s made from. Textile artist Crescent Shay spent nearly a month collecting pennies and fabricating the copper and zinc dress by drilling holes in 1-cent coins and stitching them together like scalemail armor.

Russian bladesmiths Vasver Blades shows off the process of making one of their impressive handcrafted knives. This particular specimen is an imposing 20″ long bowie knife, crafted from D2 steel, with a titanium and Karelian birch handle and a mammoth tooth inlay. You can find a selection of their knives for sale on Etsy.

It’s easy enough to build a simple sorter that organizes coins based on size, but Daniele Tartaglia went the extra mile. The maker created an electromechanical coin sorting machine that not only separates and stacks coins based on denominations but counts and totals them as they drop through a curvy maze.