Weekend Watch: “Ron’s Stuff” Is a Collection of Kinetic Wooden Sculptures

Ron’s stuff is a collection of intriguing videos from retired mechanical engineer, Ronald Walters. He had a varied career mostly centered around the oil and gas as well as mining industries, but his projects and videos now revolve around woodworking and clockwork. In fact, in the introductory video on his channel he shows “everything I do to cut out wood gears and clock wheels.”

I, and probably many other Makers, tend to just make stuff, but that video, as well as a lot of the others on his site, should give you some ideas for new projects, as well as techniques to make sure they turn out well. His sander jig seen around 4:30 in the video above is a great idea, as the scroll saw file shown just after is a tool that I hadn’t heard of before. You can see one of his beautiful finished clockwork pieces around 7:20.

We featured his interesting reciprocating rack and pinion device here, but he has many other videos to check out (including a different take on the reciprocating rack mechanism). In fact, since uploading his first YouTube video in October of 2010, he now has 278 videos ready for your viewing pleasure, with more uploaded and waiting to be released.

One especially interesting video can be seen below, featuring his “Gear Head” contraption. The device is literally a head filled with gears. It’s an amazing device mechanically, but be sure to turn the sound on to hear the satisfying sound the clockwork clicking away.

Another video of note is his skeleton hand. According to Walters, it took “much Longer than I ever expected.” Like many great projects, it started off as a Halloween project.

Besides woodworking (if that wasn’t enough), Walters also experiments with all kinds of other devices. In his uploads section, you can find such varied subjects as B-2 Spirit flybys, casting experiments, remote control vehicle commentary, thoughts on air filtration, and various other electromechanical endeavors.

Perhaps calling Walters “retired” is a bit misleading. Be sure to subscribe to his channel to see what comes next!