Awesome Making

Get Hands Dirty made a beautiful two-player pinball machine mainly by carving wood and acrylic parts using the X-Carve CNC machine. It doesn’t have electronic parts, but the execution is still top-notch. Complete design files and parts list available on Inventables.

…or: How to Make a Huge Wooden Hammer. YouTuber John Heisz undermined his editing and crafting skills by giving away his video’s twist right from the get go. But it’s still DIY porn, with bonus revenge for anyone who’s ever been frustrated with gadgets.

“I think the strongest paintings reflect the highs and lows, kinda like the full spectrum.” Callen Schaub makes gorgeous abstract paintings that combine energy with serenity, but watching him at work and hearing him talk about his process will make you appreciate them even more.

YouTuber Thehollandrocket is going to make bank from ants on the Fourth of July. He made dozens of working miniature fireworks including labels and a stand to sell them from. We love how he was able to make all of that but he doesn’t have tiny money.

Instructables member bongoboy23 won the DIY site’s Lights Contest 2017 with his programmable infinity mirror coffee table. It has forty individual infinity mirrors and over 960 LEDs. It also has four USB ports, two AC outlets and an inductive pad for charging.

There are many easy ways to magnify your phone’s display. But DIY Perks shows us how to make a phone projector that produces a large and relatively clear image, while still being made of off-the-shelf materials. You can get the templates he used here.

Man At Arms: Reforged made a huge lemonade out of an even bigger lemon. Made of over 500 pieces, their scale model of Optimus Prime’s sword from Transformers: The Last Knight is their largest and most complicated build yet.

We had no idea that it took so many steps to create a table tennis ball, but if this video of the Double Happiness ball factory is any indication, it’s more complicated than you might think, as discs of plastic are individually heated, curved, trimmed, glued, and tested before packaging.

It’s common knowledge that you can generate a small amount of electricity from a potato paired with copper and zinc electrodes. Engineer Marek Baczynski decided to take this idea to the next logical step, harnessing this potato power and using it to drive a robotic brain and wheels.

The next time you launch a rubber band, watch this video as a reminder of the manual labor that goes into the production of these stretchy office supplies, which start as the extract of a rubber tree, which is dyed, dipped onto rods, peeled into tubes, then cut into thin slices.

Leather goods maker Equus is back with another soothing and intimidating making-of video. This time their craftsman makes an elegant alligator skin watch strap from start to finish. We like to think he makes goods out of the skins of his fallen enemies.

Since butterfly knives are illegal in many places, Miller Knives decided to make something that borrows heavily from the balisong’s design, but is far less dangerous – unless you’re a bottle cap. If you’re a bottle cap, you’re done for.

Primitive Technology made a reusable facility for producing charcoal. He builta conical wood frame, walled with mud, then burned the wood to harden the mud and make his first batch of charcoal. If only he had someone with whom to trade the charcoal. For like three sheep.

Agustin Flowalistik made a fully 3D-printed letter board that looks nearly as clean and solid as one made from off-the-shelf materials. He’s sharing his 3D models for free. The set includes four different board sizes; subscribe to his Patreon and you’ll get access to the source files.

“Everything here has at least two purposes.” Architect Zui Ng designed and partially built his own home, intending to make a modern version of the shotgun house. He ended up saving a lot of money while maximizing his environment by carefully considering practically every part.

In the latest episode of Man at Arms: Reforged, the folks at Baltimore Knife & Sword Co. find out just how much of a pain in the ass it is to forge and grind titanium. They used the rare metal to make replicas of Logan’s clone, X-23.

At first we thought shurap was fixing a bowl of cereal for Bender the robot, but what he’s actually doing in this video is creating a hardened damascus steel knife by melting together spring washers and powdered iron and smashing them together, over and over.

DIY Perks made an accent light using RGB LEDs and a Selenite crystal. It sounds like a straightforward build, but he custom made most of the electronics. It does involve a few tricks that will come in handy for other projects, and the result is, in his words, “not bad.”

HomeMadeModern made a simple but stylish stone bench. In particular, he used four slabs of bluestone, which is readily available as it’s often used in patios and walkways. He used a circular saw with a diamond blade for cutting and synthetic rubber to hold the slabs together.

A Guy Doing Stuff walks us through the process of building an absolutely stunning handmade canoe in his garage. The body of the boat was made using dozens of thin strips of cedar, bent, glued, and cut along plywood forms. All told, it took eight months to complete the canoe.

The Q’s latest build is a desktop gumball machine, made primarily from cardboard, hot glue, and a pencil. Despite its rudimentary build materials, it’s capable of requiring payment by coin before it will release its chewy reward.

After creating a replica of Wonder Woman’s shield, Man at Arms: Reforged takes on the Amazon princess’ God Killer sword. From the pommel’s dragon scales to the patterns on the damascus steel edge, there’s a lot to take in about this build.

We’ve seen several impressive DIY fidget spinners, but if you just want a simple and cheap version check out this 1-minute guide by 5-Minute Crafts. They require only common materials like ball bearings, hot glue and modeling clay.