Awesome Making

Modustrial Maker shows us how to build a sweet looking ceiling pendant lamp that looks like it came from an expensive modern lighting store. The trickiest part was getting the wood pliable enough to bend in two directions without cracking, but the finished piece looks like it was worth the effort.

Popular Mechanics presents the best kind of factory video – one without narration or commentary. This clip will get your sweet tooth buzzing as workers at Hammond’s Candies plant make candy canes, marshmallows, and other goodies the old-fashioned way. The Denver-based company has been creating sweet treats since 1920.

It’s not the first time someone has built a guitar out of cardboard, but we still think that The Q’s homebrew cardboard Fender Strat is pretty darned awesome. Thanks to an ample coating of epoxy resin, it’s rigid and fully playable.

As we’ve seen before, it’s possible to make a weapon out of melted washers. But Hassan Abu-Izmero was challenged by a friend to build a viking axe by welding the washers together, rather than melting them down and forging them. The resulting axe looks super cool, and actually works thanks to its razor-sharp cutting edge.

(PG-13: Language) Maker Simone Giertz took a page of the old improv handbook, and asked viewers to toss out ideas of things for her to make out of other things. Her first challenge: make a piece of furniture out of 20,000 matches. Since she built it out of metal, the table still remains after setting it ablaze.

DiesInEveryFilm Customs found a beat-up, rusty old helmet from the World War II era, and decided to restore it to its former glory. It took crazy amounts of sanding to get it smooth and clean, but the end result is quite impressive. Sandpaper ASMR ahead.

The Q takes a gamble with this build – a fully-functional slot machine built from cardboard, popsicle sticks, and hot glue. We love the detail he included on the reels to make it look like the real deal. Stick around for a few other fun DIY builds in this compilation video.

Artist Ilia Gyrevich makes unique and functional objects by machining metal. In this video, he shows off how he creates his EDC pens from brass rods, as the metal shavings fly forth in a most satisfying manner. You can buy his wares from the MachinedGift Etsy shop.

Metalsmith Shurap shows off yet another unconventional material for creating damascus steel. This time, he took the woven metal of protective chainmaille butcher’s gloves and turned the mesh into a beautifully-patterned blade with a cool blue sheen.

This impressive model of Tony Stark’s office tower from The Avengers series was built by FoBIRD using skinny wooden sticks and glue as its primary building materials. Watch as he painstakingly builds up the facades section-by-section, using architectural elevations he initially drafted onto paper.

There was a time when floors made out of wooden bricks were commonplace. In this serene DIY clip from Mr. Chickadee, he takes us through the process of building such a floor for a blacksmith shop by pouring and smoothing dirt, cutting wood logs into bricks, hammering them each into place, then finishing them with fire.

We’ve seen lots of cool things turned on lathes over the years. But one thing we’ve never seen is what the wood sees as it spins around. Mr. Michal decided to clamp his GoPro into the business end of his lathe to see just what that might look like, and the result is unsurprisingly dizzying as it ramps up from 14 to 1800 RPM.

Russian YouTube channel Creative Forging shows off a neat technique for creating an awesome dragon scale patterned handle from a solid bar of steel. The trick involves making a series of 45º cuts into the metal, then heating it in a furnace and twisting it while still pliable.

After their run on Man at Arms Reforged, Matt Stagmer, Illya Alekseyev, and the swordsmiths of Baltimore Knife and Sword are back with their own channel, That Works. Their first build is an impressive replica of Asta’s imposing sword from Black Clover. It’s not as slickly produced as their previous series, but a bit more informative.

Artist and builder Uri Tuchman is working on an automaton which will presumably be using some tiny tools. As part of the project, he created this miniature hammer and chisel set, which look just like the real deal after they went through a shrink ray.

Roman Khramov of 5 min Minibricks shows us how to create a tiny diorama of a boat and ocean waves inside of a tea cup using 3D printing, paint, cotton, and resin. The base was created with a Snapmaker 3D printer, but it required craftsmanship and skill to bring the scene to life with such detail. (Thanks Niklaus!)

This excerpt from Science Channel’s How It’s Made takes us inside of a factory that churns out millions of paintballs every year. It turns out these painful projectiles are basically made from the same stuff that gummy bears are made of – though we bet they don’t taste as good.

While the idea of a real-world lightsaber sounds awesome, the amount of power required makes the idea impractical. But to celebrate the release of Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order, The Hacksmith came up with the next best thing, a battery-powered version of the predecessor of the weapon, known as a Protosaber. Demo at 14:03.

As metalsmith Shurap has proven before, you can make damascus from just about any kind of steel hardware. In this clip, he melts down thousands of tiny ball bearings, and transforms them into a uniquely patterned blade. Because of their sheer number, they appear to be one of the more challenging materials to work with.

Using a mix of off-the-shelf and 3D-printed parts, maker Ivan Miranda built himself an enormous 3D printer. It took a little trial and error to get the printer set up, but the first example print turned out perfectly – a 31″ wide replica of a combination wrench. If you want to make one like it, Ivan says he’s going to post the plans online.

Inspired by other videos of guitars being made with unconventional materials and techniques, Cranmer Guitars decided to build a custom electric guitar featuring a scene from Super Mario Bros. He created 29,000 pixel blocks by slicing popsicle sticks into perfect squares, dying the wood, then gluing them in small sections.

We’re not sure if the surface of a ping pong table made from concrete and rebar is ideal for gameplay, but Modustrial Maker’s heavy duty outdoor table build still looks amazing, especially with its LED under-lighting and light-up net, and set against the desert sunset.

While flat screen TVs are all the rage these days, sometimes a projector is still a better solution – especially if you want a huge image. Builder Laura Kampf shows off a neat design for a coffee table that has a cubby for concealing a projector neatly beneath its lid.