Awesome Making

Laser engravers use powerful laser beams to burn designs into wood and other materials. But when Make Anything’s flatbed engraver broke, he decided to take its laser head and turn it into a handheld writing instrument. It’s not the safest thing on Earth, but it is cool.

After building himself an airplane, Peter Sripol decided to make himself something a little less ambitious, but just as fun – a tricked-out sled that can glide across the snow thanks to an airplane propeller on the back. It’s not exactly fast, but it lets him go sledding without a hill.

This wouldn’t be the first time we saw a machine gun that fires rubber bands, but this time out, we’ve got The Q showing us step-by-step how he built his from cardboard, wood, string, hot glue, and popsicle sticks. If you’d rather not DIY, you can buy a wood one here.

Adam Fieldson of WhipWorks makes beautiful bull whips by weaving nylon paracord. Here, he walks us through the painstaking process of making one of his whips – a gift he presented to Tested and Mythbusters star Adam Savage. You can purchase his work in his Etsy shop.

Grant “The King of Random” Thompson shows us how to build a cool looking light-up fountain that not only spins water around in an endless whirlpool, it has a bubbler that he rigged up with propane gas so the surface of the water lights on fire.

Not every knife has to have a single continuous edge, does it? Watch as blademaker Miller Knives cuts out and sculpts a truly unusual knife with a crazy staggered edge. It looks like something out of a video game or a comic book, and also like it would be really deadly.

Footage of a machine that quickly makes wooden beads, using a lathe, hole saw and a drill. A square stick of wood is spun on one axis, and is gradually moved into the saw which spits out a finished ball. Here’s a similar machine that’s equally satisfying.

A video chronicle of the extensive build process that goes into hand-making a custom Goodall Guitar. You’ll need to invest nearly 50 minutes of your time to watch the entire video, but for anyone who appreciates fine craftsmanship, it’ll be worth the effort.

Tony Fisher knows a thing or two about making Rubik’s Cubes. After all, he’s the guy behind the world’s largest working cube, and has also built all kinds of complex variants. Here, he shows off a fully-functional puzzle that he made using ice. Hopefully, he’ll work out a color version.

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.