Sandpaper

The Fire Piston

The Fire Piston

Carl von Linde was dead tired. The eminent engineer, considered the father of the modern refrigerator, had just returned to his home in Germany from a lecture tour that took him to, among other places, Malaysia. This being the late 19th century, the voyage had taken months. Von Linde had seen and learned much during […]

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Paint a Glitter Guitar

Paint a Glitter Guitar

Completely makeover a lackluster guitar with a gleaming glitter finish. Don’t be intimidated to dismantle the pieces of a beater guitar and customize your instrument with a coat of paint. Add vivid, colorful shine with a gorgeous spray paint from Krylon called Glitter Blast. It is fully saturated sparkle. The paint dries into a pure […]

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Bright and Fresh Garden Furniture

Bright and Fresh Garden Furniture

After spending summers in the sun and winters in the rain, outdoor furniture begins looking tired. Without stain or paint, the elements will eventually ruin the look and the wood itself will begin to rot. Krylon’s new Dual spray paint is a combination of primer and paint. It’s a great way to apply a layer […]

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Corrugated Glow

Corrugated Glow

A friend of mine recently finished a deck remodel, whose highlight (literally) is a transparent corrugated roof that diffuses sunlight in a delightful way. This inspired me to find some way to continue that glow after sunset, in the form of a lantern illuminated by tea light candles. There are many colors and styles of […]

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Homemade Frame

Homemade Frame

Some scrap plywood and a sheet of plexiglass fitted with a few cents’ worth of hardware is all it takes to get those must-frame items out of your drawers and onto your walls. This framing project can be built to suit, but for the sake of a starting point, I’ve sized the frame to accommodate […]

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Ball Clock

Ball Clock

The George Nelson ball clock is a neat little slice of mid-century art and architecture, but with the current licensed reproduction selling for around $265, I decided that if I were going to have one, it would have to be an unofficial version. I made my first ball clock as an exercise in learning how […]

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Marble Adding Machine

Marble Adding Machine

Computers add binary numbers constantly, but we never see how. This elegant machine does the math using glass marbles. I started building marble track machines years ago using Lego. I experimented with all sorts of crazy ways for the marbles to descend. One was a rocker that shunted a stream of dropping marbles one-by-one to […]

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