Awesome Making

We learned from Mythbusters just how versatile duct tape can be. But here’s one use we never thought of – making a spare tire out of the sticky stuff. Life OD tried just that with surprisingly usable results. Unfortunately, it cost more to make than buying a cheap rubber tire.

Kiwami Japan’s collection of unusual kitchen knives continues to grow on a regular basis. Here, he manages to transform ordinary white rice into a extremely sharp blade after a bit of grinding, sifting, and milling… and milling… and milling some more.

Adam Savage gave a speech at the 2018 Maker Faire Bay Area that focused on sharing creations, and more importantly ideas. Savage reminds us that we don’t create in a vacuum, and even if we did, it is only right that we share for the betterment of others and the world.

Maker of things Izzy Swan shows off a building technique that makes it look like layers of wood have been woven together into a form that should be impossible to pull off. We won’t give away the trick, but it takes a whole lot of work to pull off the illusion.

Kiwami Japan has made quite a few unusual knives, but we never thought we’d see one made from this jiggly dessert. Despite the challenges, he managed to transform the gelatin into a surprisingly rigid cutting utensil by drying it out with an air purifier.

Blademaker Kiwami Japan continues to hone his skills and add to his collection of unusual knives. This time, he takes advantage of the properties of carbon fiber to make an extremely sharp, strong, and lightweight kitchen knife. There’s something so soothing about his videos.

Most of the builds we’ve seen from The Q are small enough to carry, but the serial maker’s latest construction is substantially larger. It took over 400 hours to put together this 1.5:1 scale model of a Formula 1 race car, made entirely from soda cans and glue set onto a PVC chassis.

M.N. Projects likes to give new life to old junk, transforming the otherwise wasted materials into shiny new objects. In this clip, he takes an old mechanical bearing, heats up its outer ring, and painstakingly shapes it into a beautiful and substantial new blade.

The Q shows off one of his cooler builds in recent memory – a soda can that conceals a pop-up dart gun. He uses homebrew hydraulics to raise its lid and to fire its rolled-up paper projectile, and it mounts to his wrist using a couple of rubber bands.

Watch as maker of things The Q crafts a fully-functional giant padlock from cardboard, plastic, hot glue, and syringes. While this oversize lock would easily be defeated with a cigarette lighter, it’s still a pretty nifty build.

BOSSlaser shows off a slick design – a decorative bowl that can be cut from a single sheet of plywood or acrylic. It comes into shape as it stretches like a giant spiral Slinky onto its stand. Gorgonaut’s original template is available on Thingiverse for download.

After creating knives from fish, foil, and chocolate, pasta, Kiwami Japan shows us how to make a surprisingly sharp knife using ordinary plastic kitchen wrap. The main trick is to melt it down and flatten into a hardened sheet before sculpting it into a blade.

Adding to his collection of cool and dangerous toys, The Hacksmith and team recently built an insane working version of Doomfist’s spiked gauntlet from Overwatch. The unwieldy pneumatic fist can exert over 2600 pounds of force. Talk about a One Punch Man.

The Hydraulic Press Channel usually destroys things with their press, but this time they used the tremendous pressure it exerts to smoosh together a giant ball of aluminum foil, then shape it into a usable frying pan.

After showing us how to make surprisingly effective kitchen knives from chocolate, dried fish, and pasta. Kiwami Japan is back with a razor sharp blade handcrafted by hammering, heating, shaping, and sharpening an ordinary roll of aluminum foil.

Adam Savage recently found himself in need of a more versatile workbench lamp. So being the maker that he is, he crafted a snake-like LED light using off-the-shelf parts. Here’s the LED panel, Loc-Line, ball socket, flare nozzle, armature wire, and power supply he used.