Awesome The Q

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.

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.

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.

We already know that using saw blades as wheels can provide traction on ice. With this in mind, The Q replaced the wheels on his bicycle with gigantic circular saw blades, then took it for a little spin on a frozen lake. We know it looks cool, but it seems like this could end very badly.

While it’s possible to build a hubless bicycle, it’s a mechanically complex feat. Builder The Q came up with a different approach that does away with spokes, replacing them with thick polyacrylate sheets. We’re not sure how durable they are, or how they affect ride quality, but it’s a really cool look.

The Q shows off a goopy compound they made from wood glue, nail varnish, and match sulfur that lets homemade matches burn even when fully submerged in water. This is definitely one you shouldn’t try at home, given the risks of both fire and the unknown consequences of breathing the vapors the chemicals produce.

Normally, bowling balls are made from a mix of chemicals. But The Q shows us how it’s possible to make one by cutting out 60 identical plywood triangles, gluing them into a sphere, filling it with foam and a weight, then sanding the structure smoothly. We’d like to play with that low-poly bowling ball before he sanded it.

Back in the 1950s and 1960s, television cabinets made out of wood were the norm, but modern flat-screen displays are pretty much all encased in plastic. The Q wanted a PC monitor to match his wooden mouse and wooden keyboard, so he built a new case for his display, complete with PHILIPS logo and burnt wood control lettering.

The Q was looking for a way to power his plug-in gadgets while away from home. While he could have just bought a ready-made power pack, he decided to build his own, wiring together dozens of 18650 batteries, then connecting an inverter to convert the DC power into AC.

Maker of things The Q has been on a bit of a roll lately, producing all kinds of nifty things for us to enjoy. Watch as he takes a copper coin, flattens it out, and turns the sheet metal into a working “paper” airplane. While it isn’t one of his more complex builds, it’s still a cool build.