Awesome The Q

This wouldn’t be the best use of tennis balls that we’ve seen, but we have to hand it to The Q for his creativity. For no reason other to prove that it could be done, he created a bike tires which never need air because they ride on a cushion of tennis balls. The trickiest part of the build was the rig that crams tennis balls into PVC rings.

The Q has a love for Formula 1 racing. But we’re guessing from his past projects that he can’t afford to own a real F1 race car. He does however have a single F1 wheel and tire, so he got to work building a custom electric skateboard that rolls on it. It works much like the Onewheel, though it’s a bit trickier to straddle.

Each time The Q makes a new bicycle, we think he couldn’t possibly get outlandish. Well, he’s back with another unusual and creative bike build. This time, he arranged and welded together 147 nuts to create a functional bike frame. The structure is weight-bearing and could be used to screw in accessories if he wants to.

The Q couldn’t decide what color tires to put on his bicycle, so he attached RGB LED light strips and diffusers inside of his wheels, wired them up, then modified his airless bike tires to fit around the lights. after adding a battery pack hub to the wheel, he was all set with his amazing bike tires that can change colors on demand.

Are your fingers not long and creepy enough? Perhaps you could use some finger extensions. Maker The Q took a bunch of wooden popsicle sticks and glued them together to make a sort of plywood that he cut into claw shapes. He then cut out a cavity for his fingertips, and added a hinge mechanism to make them move.

People who keep fish as pets can go overboard with their aquariums. Not one to ever be subtle, The Q got to work building a custom aquarium that looks like an actual house. The two-story home has art on the walls, glass tanks with a connecting tube, and a garage with a tiny BMW in case any fish learn how to drive.

The Q typically spends his time building things that aren’t particularly useful. But this time out, he came up with a design for a saw that can cut through tree limbs twice as fast as usual. The saw uses a pair of blades and a spring to clamp down against the wood to double cutting speed.

After showing us it was possible to ride a bike with its rear wheel split in half, Sergii from The Q came up with an even more radical build. Starting with the split rear wheel, he modified the front of a bicycle with an extension arm and split the wheel into thirds. He had to experiment with configurations to make it work, though.

If you split a wheel in half, you shouldn’t still be able to ride on it, right? Well, watch this video from The Q, in which he cut two bike wheels and tires down the middle, connected them with a long chain and positioned them so one half is always touching the ground. Miraculously, the bike rides just fine.

We’ve seen how industrial machines are used to make large sections of chain-link fencing quickly. The Q built a tabletop version of such a device, but his machine is hand-cranked and makes only one zig-zag of wire at a time, so we imagine fencing in his whole backyard this way could take some time.

One of the main benefits of a pocket knife is that it fits in your pocket. That didn’t stop The Q from making a folding knife big enough for Paul Bunyon. The enormous knife measures more than 47″ long when opened and has a hefty steel blade and a rather terrifying automatic mechanism.

Electric scooters usually have tiny wheels, which makes them agile but not exactly grippy. The Q’s oversize scooter has a bit more contact patch thanks to its Formula One wheels, wrapped in slick Pirelli P-Zero tires. It’s powered by a 25kw brushless electric motor and has a battery pack under its riding deck.

Is your finger flick underpowered? Worry no longer! Thanks to The Q, there’s now a solution for weak finger flickers. The maker designed and fabricated a metal cover that gives his middle finger an extra boost of power thanks to a spring-loaded mechanism. This must be killer for paper football games.

We’ve seen how circular saw blades can be used to provide traction on ice – at least until they cut all the way through. The Q modified one of those wheeled “hoverboards” to ride on saw blades. He added metal plates to each of the blades’ teeth so it doesn’t dig in as much, but we still wouldn’t want to fall onto them.

The Q decided that ordinary matches weren’t big enough for him, so he went ahead and made five giant-sized matches out of wood, rope, and a homemade mix of incendiary chemicals like the ones on a real match head. To complete the set, he built a wooden matchbox with a sandpaper striker on its side.

We live in strange times – TV sets are getting larger, yet we watch much of our video on smartphone screens. The Q went even smaller with this build – a teensy working television set with a wood and metal cabinet. He used an Apple Watch as the display, and its curved corners make it look like an old-school CRT.

An ordinary axe only splits wood in one direction at a time. The Q shows off an unusual axe he fabricated with an X-shaped head that can split logs both horizontally and vertically at the same time, ostensibly doubling its performance.

Inspired by the expensive airless tires seen on construction equipment and concept vehicles, The Q set out on a mission to make his own shock-absorbing, puncture-proof bike tires using a similar design. What’s even more impressive is that he built them using only PVC pipe, nuts, bolts, and the tread from a standard bike tire.

Want to play some basketball, but don’t have a court to play on? The Q came up with a version of the game you can play on a tabletop. Players each control a cable-driven robot arm to pick up mini basketballs and drop them through their opponent’s hoop. It’s not as slick as Toyota’s robot, but it’s a lot cheaper.

Frustrated by missing shots on a regular pool table, The Q went ahead and built himself a special kind of pool table where the ball goes in the pocket virtually every time. The trick is its elliptical shape, which sets up the perfect bank shot at every angle. This video from Numberphile explains the geometry at work.

The Q has built more than their share of unusual bicycles over the years. But unlike their earlier approach to making wheel spokes disappear, this time they actually built a working hubless bike. The trick is that it redirects the chain to the outer edge of the wheel instead of its center.

A normal tricycle has one wheel in the front and two in the back for balance. But nobody says the three wheels have to be arranged that way. So builder The Q got to work putting together a tricycle that has all three wheels arranged in parallel. It looks harder to ride than a regular bicycle, but it sure is unique.

We’ve seen how chains are made and learned about of the different kinds of chain. In this short video, The Q shows an unconventional use for chain by building a bicycle entirely from the stuff. The main trick is to weld the chain links together to form a stiff structure for the frame. We’re not sure we’d trust it off-road though.

With enough skill and patience, you can build some impressive structures with Jenga blocks. But if you’re actually playing the game by the rules, you need to remove blocks as you build. You could use your finger, or you could make a wooden mini Uzi that flicks individual bricks out using a rubber band-powered firing mechanism.

Maker The Q shows off one of his more unusual constructions – a mouse-sized wooden staircase that appears to be built into a wall. We’re not sure where the secret door leads to, but we want him to build the rest of the house to go with it now.

We’ve seen some pretty neat stuff created with those 3D drawing pens, but never anything on the scale of what The Q made. After building a skinny metal frame for structure, he painstakingly created the body panels, windows, and wheels for a life-size model of a Smart ForTwo city car. Here are parts one and two.