Two musicians are making Lego stop-motion videos of classic NES video games in a bid to raise enough money to fire 62 pianos from a giant home-made crossbow into buildings. OK, this is fucking awesome. FOCUS: What cool thing have you built? RULES: First person to mention something from IKEA gets a hatefucking. ALTERNATE FOCUS: Discuss the giant piano-throwing crossbow.
I like creative threads, so let's run with this. I'm a little worried that the ultimate result of this is going to be 600 boring-ass pictures of crown molding, back decks, and duck blinds, but we'll just ignore those for the diamonds in the rough. Probably my favorite thing I've ever built was a newsfeed device. I turned a scrolling LED name badge similar to this into a wall-mounted scrolling news display that would pull headlines from any RSS feed I wanted, so I'd usually have it running Fark headlines. On second thought, I guess that would be a not-newsfeed. EDIT: As noted below, posts about your children are not allowed in this thread. Unless, of course, you did build them in the traditional sense of assembling them Frankenstein-style, in which case we definitely want to hear about that.
THIS IS AWESOME... and I haven't even seen any more of it than the mental images I have had at "piano-throwing crossbow". The only way to beat it would be to add a trebuchet. Can I add that the child you had doesn't belong here either? Everyone's kids are wonderful, but post 'em elsewhere. FOCUS: My dad, brother and I each made a full tang Bowie (type) knife when I was just into high school. Dad used to have an engineering supplies business and came into possession of all sorts of weird stuff. One time some second-hand stuff included some off cuts of tempered spring steel. We each took a piece and formed, edged and polished blades out of them. Then we hand made brass guards and fitted wooden hilts. They were prone to spot rust, but how many 12 year old city kids had made their own knife?
I built a kegerator. Whats a kegerator? It's a full sized chest freezer that has been modified with a temperature regulator, a hardwood top, and beer taps to hold three kegs (not those tiny torpedo kegs) of beer (taps two at a time) and a 5lbs CO2 pressurization system. Right now I've taken it fully apart, so I can refinish the bar surface and apply wood laminate to the side. I'd use real wood for the sides but I'm worried about how insulation it would be and how that will effect the whole setup.
17 foot wooden sea kayak. Built it all by hand, and yes, it floats. Thing's a damn speedster, and one hell of a workout too. Looks very similar to this (except without the rudder, and add a mounted compass in front of the cockpit, and black hatch straps to keep them tight): Spoiler
This one was kind of a joint effort. My boyfriend at the time made the table, and I made the collage on top. It's been a few years, and the collage held up pretty well, but the table itself has seen better days. My apologies. I had just woken up when I posted the picture and did not think to Google "re-size picture".
I built an automatic can crusher. I made it out of one of those old horizontal power hack saws, and it'll crush 86 cans per minute. It's fully enclosed, so you put cans in the box, and they drop out of the bottom fully crushed.
So if you've seen the Guns and Ammo thread, you know I make guns. But, adding to that (and something I haven't really explained either), I do my work by hand. Like with chisels instead of a bandsaw and sanding blocks instead of an orbital sander. The old-school way your grandfather only knew. Spoiler Here's me working on the grip of a stock I designed in my parents' garage. I'm attacking the grip with a paring chisel and holding the stock still by pinning it between the wall and my hip. You can see my other tools, including a hammer, small plane, rasps, and a utility knife. Here's how it turned out (mid-painting)... This design was made two years ago, finished this summer, and will be duplicated and mass produced (not a ton, but some) this fall/winter. Spoiler I bought a few stocks in a rough-finished state and went to work re-shaping them. The one in front has not been changed. They ended up like this. No machine touched them- not even the cast-steel grip caps. I used chisels, various rasps and files, small block planers, and a myriad of sanding blocks and sandpaper to carefully shape and polish both the wood and metal to not only a quality, polished sheen but a perfect, seamless fit between the wood and metal. I polished and blued the grip caps myself (turned them from rough in-the-white (plain) steel to finely polished and blued (chemically treated) and never touched a Dremel. It takes a shit ton of time to do this. Look carefully- you'll see that none of the grip cap angles or curves match. They were all cut by hand (I chopped them off guessing where it'd look good) and as a result, no two are the same. All of them look great and styled the same way, but they are still unique. Some parts of the operation definitely require large power tools (i.e. a router table and drill press for inletting stocks), but if it's feasible for me to use hand tools, I do it. I started out using them because they are A. affordable and B. don't require a dedicated shop- perfect for a kid hacking out stocks. I have since upgraded my hardware, except it's better chisels, better files, and what looks like an investment in sandpaper. I simply believe that patience and persistent attention to details will give you the same results with hand tools as what a machine can do... it just takes a helluva lot longer with a different skill set. My paring chisels are razor-sharp and almost sacred to me, as my carefully chosen and formed sanding blocks are prized possessions. Eventually, as my business grows, I will build up a shop full of big, fancy tools for mass production of my own stocks, but I will still design and form the original designs the fun way.
I'm pretty good with woodworking. My best accomplishment was a pine coffee table with a glass inlay on top, and a series of slats for a second level. The thing I'm most proud of is how well it has held up over the years. I made it about 7 years ago and it has never had anything go wrong. I attribute it to the mortise and tenon joints. Those things are quite strong it seems. Unfortunately, it is at my parents house so I can't get a picture at the moment.
I’m at the tail end of a major reno, as a result I’ve got tons of crap laying around the place. I got inspired a few Saturdays ago to turn a solid core door and a couple of old hardwood sleepers into a French provincial styled outdoors table. The bastard weighs in at about 90lbs so no one will be bumping it and spilling any beer. Next free time I get I’ll be building some benches to go with it.
I built a ditch house/fort structure when I was 11. It was fairly impressive. There's a concrete ditch that runs along the back of our property. It runs under an extra tall privacy fence that comes together at one point in an L shape. I placed 2x4s across the ditch in intervals, starting at the crook of the L, and laid planks of flat wood perpendicular across the 2x4s to create a platform. Then I nailed a couple of boards horizontally between the outside corner of the L and a small tree. I used that horizontal piece to attach planks to form a wall. Lastly, I placed galvanized tin roofing on top. It was structurally sound but looks terribly hodgepodge. All the wood were scraps that I got from God knows where (the trash). It's actually still standing. My mother has urged me on numerous occasions to dismantle it though. I'm surprised I didn't get West Nile from all the damned Alabama mosquitoes back there.