Awesome Making

Shawn Woods is a fanatic when it comes to ancient archery. Here, he shows us how to use primitive hand tools to take glass from an old whiskey bottle he found, and transform it into awesome and deadly glass arrowhead.

Master builder and effects artist Frank Ippolito saw what appears to be a photoshopped image of a refrigerator done up to look like Han Solo frozen in Carbonite. Inspired by the pic, Frank decided to build the actual fridge for himself. Tested shares the build process.

You might not know it, but store-bought aluminum baseball bats are hollow inside. MP Dragon decided to create a solid, if flawed, aluminum bat by first sculpting his own wood bat, then creating a sand cast, pouring in molten metal, and finishing it on a lathe.

Primitive Technology inches towards the metal age by making an alternative to bellows: a rotary fan driven by a bow. It allows his furnace to get hot enough to extract iron from iron ore, though he’ll need a bigger setup if he wants to get usable amounts of the metal.

After showing us how to make tools and build a house, John Neeman Tools presents the steps of completely handcrafting a traditional English longbow – starting from a log, and finishing with a functional weapon. Handmade bows are available for preorder from Neemanbows.com.

Ever wonder why if you’re gonna drop a couple of Benjamins for your fancy kicks that they’d come in a cheap cardboard box? Woodworker Kyle Toth shows us how to make a proper box for your spendy, trendy sneakers. Ironically, Kyle uses the box to hold his camera gear.

While you could run out to the hardware store and just buy a leaf blower, there’s something to be said for making your own stuff. MrGear shows us how to turn a DVD spindle case, a soda bottle, a drink can, plastic pipe, a motor, and hot glue into a homebrew mini blower.

Kentucky’s Omega Mirror Products is the last American maker of the shiny dancefloor items of the disco era. In this brief profile from NBC Nightly News, we meet Yolanda Baker, who has been handmaking the mirrored orbs since their 1970s heyday.

Time-lapse footage of carver Valeriano Fatica as he spends 18 hours sculpting an intricate bust of Game of Thrones’ imposing Night’s King from a watermelon. Previously, he made a white walker from a pumpkin.

Primitive Technology makes building your own home look easy in his latest episode. In fact, it took him 7 days to put it together – five of which were spent gathering grass. Psh. One time we missed winning the lottery by just four numbers.

A look behind the scenes at Louisville, Kentucky’s Kelvin Cooperage. The family-owned plant handmakes new oak barrels for aging bourbon and wines. The barrels may only be used once for bourbons, but will live on for many years providing a home for other spirits.

Last year, PlayStation held a giveaway for custom-made life-size replicas of the magmatrooper and rebel commando helmets. Super Gamer Builds documented the helmets’ production and presentation to the lucky winner. Skip to 6:19 for the reveal.

YouTuber HMS2 makes accurate, but teensy replicas of real world items for dollhouses. Out of all of the creations on their channel, these miniature cups of instant ramen are our personal favorites. Though the tiny Pocky sticks and potato chips are equally impressive.

John Heisz previously showed us how to take an old saw blade and turn it into a folding knife. Now he applies his craftsmanship to transforming a rusty circular saw blade into an elegant, traditional woodworking tool.

Despite having limited reference materials to work from, Baltimore Knife and Sword’s talented swordsmiths, machinists, and armourers managed to build an impressive replica of Voltron’s iconic blade, complete with propane jets that shoot fire.

Made by Destruction shows how the copper wiring in old copy machines can be reclaimed to produce shiny new products like brass musical instruments. Along the way, we get to see these defunct office machines satisfyingly ripped to pieces by an industrial shredder.

Hagerty shares this time-lapse of an old Ford Flathead V8 engine being stripped down to its block, then painstakingly rebuilt to like-new by Thirlby Automotive with the help of Edelbrock. It’s amazing how good something this old can look with enough time and effort.

Artist Kyle Toth demonstrates the painstaking process of transforming boards of bocote and ash wood into an intricate donut-shaped sculpture. The finished work contains 2,340 individual pieces of wood, and took Kyle about 90 hours to complete.

Primitive Technology made a yam and sweet potato garden. He said he got the sweet potatoes from “civilization”, but we’re okay with that. If you left us with nothing but sweet potatoes and cargo shorts we’d be dead by sunset.

Science Channel’s always enthralling How It’s Made shares a look inside a candy factory that makes those little colorful sprinkles (aka “jimmies”), and the process that it takes to turn sugar, shortening, and food coloring into the decorative treat.

Carpenter Matthias Wandel demonstrates the complicated process of creating links in a wooden chain from a single block of maple hardwood without using any glue. To add to the challenge, he did it almost entirely with power tools rather than hand carving.

Sure, you could go to the store and buy a skillet for about 10 bucks, but you won’t get the satisfaction that Tito4re got when he made his own from scratch, using a sand mold and some molten aluminum. Though he did need another skillet to make the mold too.

A compact vacuum former that gets its suction from a vacuum cleaner. Use the FormBox and thermoplastic sheets to make small molds, prototypes and more. It has a 7.9 cu.in. build area and comes with 30 thermoplastic sheets.