Awesome Repairs

Just because your clothes have holes in them doesn’t mean you need to throw them away. Kiriko put together this bundle of Jessica Marquez’s craft tutorial book Make and Mend and a set of unique, assorted textiles for patching torn jeans, worn elbows, and other repairs. The fabric squares come in sizes from 3″ x 3″ to 9″ x 9″.

We love Hacksmith Industries’ YouTube channel. They also have a store that sells gadgets, toys, brand merch, and books. The Handyman Pocket Reference Book belongs in every home, workshop, and work site. It’s packed with facts and figures used in carpentry, construction, and repairs, info about hardware, wiring, building techniques, and more.

Auto mechanics hear all kinds of weird stories about cars and the problems they’re having. Just Rolled In offers up another amusing video of strange sounds that cars are making, then follows them up with the description provided by each customer. Our favorite is the defective blend door actuator, which sounds exactly like the intro to Hot for Teacher.

If you use your knives at all, you need to maintain them to keep them sharp and opening smoothly. Pine and Print makes this wood workstation for maintenance and repairs on knives and other small tools. It’s got a large work area and three parts storage trays lined with black plastic and cutouts for a dozen 1/4″ driver bits.

Say you cracked a tail light on your classic car. You could search eBay or junkyards for a replacement, but if you can’t find one, a repair might be your only option. We watched in awe as this talented craftsman fixed a missing piece of plastic from an old taillight, precisely matching its texture and color, and making it look as good as new.

If you’ve ever curbed the rims on your car, you know how awful it can look. But with the proper equipment and expertise, it’s possible to repair damaged rims. Wheel Restore USA shows how their diamond cut wheel lathe can make even heavily damaged wheels look as good as new by removing a thin layer of metal. They also have a wheel-painting robot.

Fix all the things with iFixit’s professional-grade repair toolkit. It includes precision screwdrivers of all kinds, an antistatic mat, a magnetic repair workstation, suction cups, spudgers, tweezers, picks, an anti-clamp for pulling things apart, a digital multimeter, a digital caliper, and much more, all packed in a single bag.

Imagine trying to patch a hole in a leaky pipe while water is pouring out of it. It’s not an easy task. This video of a construction worker in New Orleans shows one method for fixing such a problem – sliding a metal sleeve over the leak, clamping it down to the pipe, then closing a valve on its side, much like turning off a faucet.

On its own, cyanoacrylate glue, aka “super glue,” is great for holding together broken items. But it can’t fill in large gaps. In this video from The Maker, he shows us how saturating cotton with super glue lets can patch and reinforce holes with impressive results. We highly recommend wearing gloves when handling this stuff though.

Masters of Craft walks us through the painstaking process of restoring a 19th-century violin that came to them in a distressed and unplayable condition. The vintage Stradavari replica required heaping helpings of TLC, but the result is impressive.

With the advent of pay stations and mobile parking apps, meters are becoming a rare sight. But these coin-collecting dinosaurs still have some neat mechanical bits worth exploring inside of them, as Rescue & Restore shows as they down a 1960s Duncan meter and makes it like new again. That shiny red coat is a thing of beauty.

What you’re looking at is a 1969 Ural M63 motorcycle. This particular bike sat unused for years, gathering rust on its chassis and drivetrain. But this is exactly the kind of challenge that an expert restorer like Great Idea lives for. After carefully removing the rust, re-plating, galvanizing, and painting parts, the bike looks as good as new.

When the dreaded “check engine” and other dashboard warning lights flare, discover what’s wrong without a costly trip to a mechanic. The Innova 1000 Car Scan Mobile turns smartphones into advanced OBD2 diagnostic tools. It pairs with the RepairSolutions 2 app for systems health checks of most cars made since 1996.

Extend the life of your gadgets with iFixit’s toolkit. It comes with an extendable 4mm driver and 64 steel screwdriver bits that fit even the most unusual screwheads, along with tweezers, spudgers, a suction handle, and other tools that will help you disassemble and fix most laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Often, the best gear is the stuff you use most frequently. But regular use can lead to wear and breakage. Everyday Carry offers up some great tips on keeping your favorite pocket knives, wallets, bags, watches, and other items in great shape for as long as possible.

Gadgets from the 1980s were lots of fun, but the plastics they used back then had a tendency to yellow, and look awful over time. Watch in awe as Odd Tinkering takes a grubby old Nintendo Game Boy and makes it like new. That soldering iron trick to fix the lines on the screen is nifty.

Auto body mechanic Arthur Tussik shows how – with the proper skills, time, tools, and parts – a totaled car can be made to look just like new. Here, he takes a horribly smashed up BMW 7 series, and brings it back to life. We can’t speak to its structural integrity, but it looks good.

After showing us what it takes to rebuild a couple of V8s, Hagerty Classic Cars captured the restoration of a V-Twin Ironhead engine from a 1957 Harley-Davidson XL sportster motorcycle. The time-lapse condenses what was surely days of work down to just 5 minutes.

Let’s observe Halifax, Nova Scotia shop Camera Repair Centre Ltd. delicately disassemble, clean, and reassemble the intricate mechanisms and delicate wires inside an old Pentax K1000 35mm camera. Isn’t everything better set to In the Hall of the Mountain King.

“Hazard lights are not only for your safety, but they’re really cute whenever they’re flashing, and can draw attention to you.” Brittany Hornick and Rachael Acosta poke fun at female stereotypes in this sarcastic video which does ultimately show how to change a tire.