Month: October 2009

Edwin Wise’s hot web glue gun

Edwin Wise’s hot web glue gun

I have a dirty secret. I probably shouldn’t even admit it here, but I just woke up and my judgment is impaired: I did not buy the MAKE: Halloween Special Edition when it came out back in 2007. Am I fired? Is this thing still on?

Shameful, I know. And most embarrassing when the opportunity to cover the Make: Halloween Contest 2009 beat was presented to me back in September. “You can blog about all your favorite projects from the Halloween Special Issue, too,” they said. And I was like, “Uh huh, yup, sure will. Got a list of those right here.”

So, long story short, my copy just showed up in the mail and I read it for the first time. It’s great! Among my favorite projects is Edwin Wise’s pneumatic spider-web shooter (.pdf) , which turns an ordinary hot glue gun into a faux cobweb-sprayer. It never would’ve occurred to me to marry a glue gun to an air compressor, and now I’ve got all kinds of derivative ideas bouncing around in my head. Which, I should’ve remembered, is why I read MAKE in the first place.

How-To: Scrimshaw

Scrimshaw is the old whaling art of engraving intricate patterns and images into ivory. If you have some old piano keys hanging around, you can make some interesting art pieces using this scrimshaw tutorial by Paul Baxendale of Providence, RI. Growing up I used to go to Mystic Seaport and learn all about whaling culture, […]