Awesome Making

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, television cabinets made out of wood were the norm, but modern flat-screen displays are pretty much all encased in plastic. The Q wanted a PC monitor to match his wooden mouse and wooden keyboard, so he built a new case for his display, complete with PHILIPS logo and burnt wood control lettering.

While his designs aren’t as intricate as the Japanese masters, builder Pask Makes is becoming quite adept at the Japanese craft of Kumiko. This time out, he wanted to hide an ugly water tank with a screen, and made quite the beautiful covering by cutting and assembling hundreds of pieces of plywood into repeating geometric patterns.

Maker W&M walks us through the process of turning a couple of muffin tins into a miniature concrete mixer, complete with a motorized stirrer. Though in this case, its purpose is to smoothly blend instant coffee with water. It probably would make a good hot cocoa too.

Carbon fiber is a very versatile, strong, and lightweight material. But it’s not the easiest stuff to work with. Matthieu Libeert shows us just how much work went into making this slick looking version of Pokémon’s carrying container, using carbon fiber, resin, and fiberglass.

Make It Extreme likes to build all kinds of crazy machines and vehicles, and their latest is pretty awesome. Imagine a motorized wheelchair that drives like a tank, and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what you’re about to see. For more detail, check out the tank tread and transmission build videos.

Forgive the punny title, but artist Keith Williams‘ description of his wooden geodesic sphere is factually accurate. Watch as he takes a bunch of pieces of knotty wood into an impressive sculpture. They also briefly doubled as dominoes.

We’re always looking for unique ways to make living spaces more efficient. Dekay’s Crafts shows off a clever piece of furniture he built that can work as either a bookshelf or a desk, keeping the items on its shelves upright as it unfolds from the wall.

Sometimes, the blacksmiths at That Works like to make tools and weapons by recycling old metal. In this episode of their “From This to That” series, they take a big old link of a ship’s anchor chain, and transform it into a beautiful hammer with engraved detailing and a copper, silver, and gold inlay.

How to Make Everything used traditional techniques to construct a set of realistic ancient Greek armor using a fabric made from flower stems, along with cow leather. After testing how well it protected from period weaponry, they decided to see if it could also stop a bullet.

Builder Phil Vandelay needed a door to separate two spaces in his workshop. Rather than just go with a traditional rectangular design, he fabricated a metal frame which folds into triangular sections when opening and closing it. The design was inspired by this one he previously saw online.

Builder Tim Sway always wanted to create a musical instrument without using any wood in its construction. So he set about crafting a fretless bass guitar from a thick sheet of clear acrylic and aluminum. Despite some challenges along the way, the finished result looks amazing.

Donn DIY and his family used to cut, split, and stack all of their firewood by hand. As necessity is the mother of invention, he built a series of rigs which help automate much of the process, making it faster and more efficient, with much less back-breaking work. You check out all of the detailed build videos here.

So you’ve got a rusty old hatchet lying around. What do you do with it? You could remove the rust and polish it up, or you could do what Bobby Duke Arts did, and cut it up into smaller pieces and make a shiny new battle axe – albeit one designed for the world’s tiny warrior.

Pastry artist Natalie Sideserf thought it might be fun to make a cake that looks just like a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin. Her replica is so spot-on that the only way you could tell the difference is once you cut into it and see the shockingly green buttercream frosting layered inside.

As we’ve seen before, Brother in Wood makes some amazing butcher blocks. This time he shows how he made a pair of inlaid maple and black walnut cutting boards with butchering diagrams for two of our favorite sources of protein. We love how he uses technology in his building process. You can place custom order requests here.

Peter Brown makes all kinds of neat things in his workshop. After numerous viewer requests, he decided to try and make popcorn bowl where the bowl itself is made from the tasty snack. We were concerned that the wet resin would deform the popped kernels, but it turned out better than we thought it would.

We’ve always enjoyed watching videos of wood being turned on a lathe. However, the carving part is usually done with metal tools. The guys from the Waterjet Channel wanted to see if the powerful high-pressure cutting tip of their waterjet could be used to smoothly sculpt a spinning piece of wood in the same way.

Model railroad builder Luke Towan shows off one of the coolest miniatures we’ve seen – a 32″ tall HO-scale model of an art deco apartment building. The 450+ piece laser-cut acrylic Majestic Towers kit is made by Custom Model Railroads. Luke’s painting, added 3D-printed details, and interior lighting really bring it to life.

Builder Laura Kampf is making herself a tiny camping trailer. One of the things she needs is a place to store her kitchen supplies. So she set about the task of building a organizer unit to fit inside of a metal suitcase. Along the way, she shows off the slick Shaper Origin CNC router she used make all of the precise cuts.

You can grab a pack of instant ramen and nuke it in about 3 minutes. But Andy from How to Make Everything wanted to see if he could make his own instant noodles and seasoning packet from scratch, using only primitive techniques that would have been available when noodles first came on the scene back in the Bronze Age.

Not too long ago, Colin Furze built himself an incredibly rad, incredibly capable homebrew screw tank. But one thing that it couldn’t do that some military-grade screw tanks can do is float on water. So he’s back to make some mods to improve the balance and buoyancy of his ride, in an attempt to make it seaworthy.

There are lots of inexpensive home projectors these days, but most of the cheap ones aren’t very high resolution. DIY Perks shows us how he built his own that has the same 4K resolution as the ones in movie theaters, using entirely off-the-shelf components, including a bright 100-watt LED and an LCD panel from a smartphone.

M.N. Projects shows off a nifty little weapon he machined from aluminum. It has a set of hinged arms which are attached to springs that store up energy when the bow is drawn back. We certainly wouldn’t want to catch one of those metal-tipped arrows in an eyeball.