Awesome Making

To celebrate the holidays, true DIYer How To Make Everything decided to take a stab at making some candy canes, starting out by extracting sugar straight from cane, and using natural flavorings and colors. Will they turn out better than his candy corns?

Artist and goofball Bobby Duke laminates together a few hunk of bass wood and carves them into the shape of a mug. But his craft project doesn’t end there, as he eventually transforms his creation into an awesome sculpture with the help of some colored pencils.

There are lots of cool lightsaber replicas you can buy right now, but those ones just light up. The Hacksmith set about making a brightly glowing blade that can actually cut and burn things. Watch it heat up and start a fire at 12:38.

We’ve seen knives being made using classic blacksmithing techniques, but Gough Custom, shows off how they make their Resolute MkIII knives using modern materials and CNC technology. Machines or not, there’s still a ton of labor and craftsmanship in each knife.

Knives are typically made from tool steel. But the guys at Ollari’s show us how with the proper cutting blades and an angle grinder, a block of granite can be transformed into a sharp-edged cutting tool as well. We’re betting Primitive Technology would do the same with only a rock.

What starts out as a nondescript blob of clay provides the foundation for an impressively detailed recreation of Chewbacca’s head as artist Steven Richter creates a mold, then painstakingly places and trims hair to replicate the wookiee’s distinctive good looks.

Jewelry artist Patrick Adair wows us with another incredible ring design – this time using a slice from a superconductor rod, then sanding facets onto it and acid etching the surface to create an incredibly cool texture. Check out one of his other superconductor designs here.

Jackman Works‘ manly new take on the iconic leg lamp from A Christmas Story. Gone is the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window, replaced by a masculine carved wood limb, its foot wrapped with a rugged Carolina Boot. Complete build log on Instructables.

Got a broken washing machine and some woodworking skills? Then check out Scrap Wood City’s clip in which he shows how to convert the metal tub from a washing machine into the body for a fretless acoustic contrabass. It’s only got two strings, but it still sounds cool.

Primitive Technology hit the proverbial reset button on his live-action Stone Age role-playing game. He’s starting on a new and different map – a tropical rainforest with a permanent creek. We like to think he bartered for it with cargo shorts and cameras.

SKM has shown us some pretty awesome things you can make from cardboard. His latest build is a model of a quadcopter made entirely from cardboard and hot glue. Sadly, it doesn’t actually fly, but perfectly balancing it would probably be quite challenging.

(PG-13: Language) How to Make Everything gets a lot of rude and hateful comments from vegans whenever he kills an animal for his projects. So for this year’s Thanksgiving, he decided to make a tofu dish instead of shooting and cooking a turkey.

Making weapons in Warframe is time-consuming. But that’s nothing compared to what Man at Arms: Reforged had to go through to make a replica of Hate, one of the scythes in the game. But they still managed to copy the weapon’s unconventional shape and details.

A few days ago, Peter Sripol shared a video of him doing short hops on his homemade electric airplane. It was a sight to behold but technically… that wasn’t flying. This is. Peter got better batteries and finally gave the people what they want. Amazing stuff.

Furniture maker Lignum walks us through the painstaking process of transforming dozens of straight slats of wood into a beautiful handbuilt bench with smoothly undulating curves. It amazes us that most of the work is done using only clamps, patience, and lots of glue.

A look at how the Northmen Guild make their White Wolf Bowie knife. The blade is mainly made of stainless steel, carbon and chromium. The handle is made from walnut while the guard and pommel are made of silver. The knife also comes with a custom made leather sheath.

Flight fanatic Peter Sripol has built his share of small, unmanned flying machines, but he’s now turned his attention to something a bit bigger, building himself a single-seat aircraft powered by electric motors, and airworthy enough that he was willing to be its test pilot.

Sometimes when we play tennis, we we like to fool around and play air guitar with the rackets. But Scrap Wood City went one better, and shows us how they transformed a racket into a fully functional electric guitar. Though it does only have three strings.

Jewelry artist Patrick Adair walks us through the complex and precise process of converting a chunk of meteorite rock into a sweet ring inspired by the design of The Green Lantern’s iconic power ring. Check out part one here.

Continuing his attempts to reach the Iron Age, Primitive Technology is experimenting with furnaces that can reach high temperatures without using bellows or charcoal. This tall furnace sucks cold air through the bottom and reached around 1200ºC.

Woodworker Frank Howarth shows off a truly amazing build – a giant version of a human eyeball, meticulously handcrafted by layering and turning rings of cherry, birch, walnut, and ebony wood. We love the way it shines in the light under all that lacquer and wax.

The Q shows us how to use plastic soda bottles, tire valves, tubing, and a few other bits to build a homebrew compressed air weapon which can fire a seemingly endless stream of pellets. We’re thinking you could ramp this thing up to include as many soda bottles as you can carry.

After showing us how to damascus steel using a bunch of melted down steel washers, metalsmith Shurap is back with another cool upcycling video, as he takes a few sections of braided steel cable, heats them up, and works them into a sweet looking blade.