Awesome Ollari’s

When is a fire extinguisher not a fire extinguisher? When it’s designed to stoke a flame instead of putting it out. Ollari’s took an empty old fire extinguisher, polished off its paint, and sliced it down the middle – turning its bottom half into a grill and its top half into its lid. The chainlink hinges are a clever design touch.

Drink spills are no fun – especially when your mug contains searing hot coffee. Ollari’s wanted a solution for carrying their morning joe and crafted this drink tray that takes advantage of physics to keep drink contents from spilling when walking on bumpy ground or even spinning in a circle.

Builder Ollari’s takes a rusty old hammer head he found at a flea market and makes it look good as new after polishing away the rust and creating a new wooden handle from a hunk of ash. We’d be proud to hang the resulting sledgehammer over our workbench.

Maker of cool stuff Ollari’s shows us how to turn plywood into a sweet modern ceiling lamp which has a shade made from bent slats placed around its circumference. It actually doesn’t look that hard to do yourself with a little time, effort, and the proper tools.

Ollari’s shows us how to take slats of wood from a rickety old door and pallets to create a nifty new piece of outdoor furniture. If you put your mind to it, it’s amazing what you can achieve with a saw, some screws, and glue. We dig the burnt look of the finished piece.

While the weight of a suitcase made from wood makes it a bit impractical, we still love the look of this beautiful piece of luggage that Ollari’s created from bent pieces of 8mm thick plywood. It always amazes us the kind of things you can do with just wood, glue, and some skill.

Looking for a project to put basic welding skills to use? Check out this DIY idea from Ollari’s – a lamp with a shade made by welding a bunch of steel nuts around a curved form, and a base made out of the same. It’s a cool enough design that we’ll forgive his spelling of “baking soda.”

Woodworker Ollari’s shows us how – with enough talent and creativity – something as mundane as a hunk of old firewood can be transformed into a beautiful piece of art. We got a little nervous when he started drilling the holes, but it turned out brilliantly.

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.

Most beer koozies are made from foam or fabric. But Ollari’s shows us how to make a super slick koozie from carefully segmented blocks of walnut, maple, and padouk, glued together, then turned on a lathe. A layer of clear lacquer protects it from condensation.

Ollari’s walks us through the process of transforming rough reclaimed wood into a gorgeous hand tool we’d be thrilled to have on our workbench. There are few things more satisfying on Earth than turning things on a lathe. Full build details on Instructables.