Awesome Satisfying

Modelmaker Excessively Sentimental shows off the painstaking process of building a 1/48-scale diorama of a rickety old barn. The level of detail is astounding in the balsa wood model and its surroundings, from the distressing on each wood plank to the individual blades of grass and leaves. (Thanks, Orion!)

While some cars still offer the ability to wash the dirt off of headlights, today’s tech relies on powerful sprayers. Back in the day, car companies came up with all kinds of clever designs for tiny wipers to keep headlights clean. After you watch that, enjoy a satisfying montage of modern headlight washers.

Today’s most satisfying video comes in the form of this short clip from candle artist Charlotte Martel. Each time she creates a candle in her dip tanks, a bit of wax splashes on its sides. Now and then she needs to clean it all off and return the excess wax to the heat.

This short, but highly satisfying video takes us inside a workshop for a look at how to make perfect spheres from wood. The process involves using a curved cutting blade against a dowel that’s been attached to one end of a lathe. Be sure to check out tesssxkiersten82’s TikTok for more hypnotic woodworking videos.

Expert LEGO builder Brick Bending loves to make complicated geometric structures using repeating patterns. In this clip, they wanted to see how large of a structure they could build using interlocking circles. Watching the 3200-piece build come together is quite satisfying and reminded us of the Olympic rings more than once.

Industrial laser cutters can slice through steel, but they leave behind bits of metal called slag on their work surfaces. While placing materials on support slats helps, there’s still a mess to clean up. This slat cleaner from TRUMPF offers a satisfying way to remove that debris. We want something like this for our BBQ grill.

Get your daily dose of engineering porn with this video from Uwe Krumm GmbH. The company makes precision tooling for manufacturing, including the press brake tools shown here. It’s a hypnotic and satisfying 6-minute sequence of sheet metal being bent into complex shapes through the simple application of force.

We’ve seen all kinds of specialized factory equipment over the years, showing off some ingenious engineering to perform repetitive tasks. One of the more satisfying machines we’ve seen in recent times is this contraption that rapidly applies stickers to lemons as they glide along on the conveyor belt below.

You might think that a flood-damaged car would be bound for the scrapyard, but the guys from WD Detailing did an amazing job removing layers of caked-on mud and grime from this Pontiac Firebird WS6. It was originally going to be sold for parts, but it’s actually running again after the cleanup. Original video here.

There’s something so satisfying about how you reload weapons in video games. In this compilation video by Kommander Karl, he shows how you can use the same method to reload everyday items like a vacuum cleaner, a toaster, and a pencil sharpener. We do the same thing every time we use a caulk gun.

It doesn’t matter how many domino videos we watch, we always enjoy watching them topple. But if we ever have a pallet of bricks delivered, we’re so doing what the family in this video did, and use them like giant dominoes. The sound they make is so incredibly satisfying.

An Omega Seamaster watch can fetch $3000 to $5000, but we’re guessing it was sentimental value behind this time-consuming restoration of a Seamaster that was roasted beyond recognition by a fire. Watch Restoration vlog shared this incredibly satisfying footage of a master watch technician at work.

Every time we’ve tried to write “Happy Birthday” on a cake, it comes out a sloppy mess. Pastry artist Manna-Tanuki shows us how it’s done, creating incredibly precise and clean lines in the icing of a Pocket Pikachu cookie. Check out their YouTube channel for more complicated designs, like this epic My Neighbor Totoro cookie.

When there’s caked-on dirt and grime on the underside of a car, it can be difficult to get it all off. I Am Detailing shows off an awesome cleaning technology that blasts surfaces with dry ice pellets to remove dirt instantly without the abrasiveness of other cleaning methods. Their subject: a gorgeous green 1971 Porsche 911T.

We’ve previously seen a LEGO machine that could neatly distribute and space wooden dominoes. But this one works a bit differently. JK Brickworks‘ machine carries stacks of LEGO bricks in a cartridge then dispenses them to form perfect lines of dominoes. Its drivetrain allows it to be driven in straight lines or curves.

We spotted Tony Romero’s video on the Oddly Satisfying subreddit, and it definitely satisfies that criteria. What you’re about to watch is footage of an industrial lathe spinning an off-center workpiece with a centered hole drilled into it. The result is the illusion that the hole is staying in one place the whole time.

’80s kids might remember an Atari arcade game called Klax, a puzzle game where bricks dropped down the screen sort of like Tetris. Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza thinks this house remembers the game too, as it satisfyingly drops snow off its roof in perfect brick-shaped pieces.

Artist Rayclay used a combination of 3D modeling software, 3D printing, and hand-finishing to create miniature models of a freediver and a manta ray. He then precisely painted the pieces and submerged them in transparent resin to create the illusion they were swimming beneath the ocean’s surface.

We’re all feeling the stress lately, so it’s nice to have something to relax our brains. We turn once again to the Hydraulic Press Channel to help us release some tension, with a series of 65 different soft, squishy, crunchy, fragile, and bendy items meeting a satisfying end.

Despite their YouTube channel’s name, The Philadelphia Robot Factory has significantly more magnets than robots. In this highly satisfying video, they disassemble a hefty hexagonal structure they made from 50,000 individual magnetic spheres, layer by layer. Now enjoy the same in reverse.