MAKE subscriber Pete Marchetto pointed us to this awesome site covering all manner of backyard metal casting. In fact, that’s its name: Backyard Metal Casting. Peter writes: Blame Kaden Harris. He got me onto this wonderful site describing many metal casting and metalworking projects. Okay, Kaden. It’s all your fault we’re posting this link. You […]
OMG! If I’d found this gem glowing underneath the aluminum Christmas tree when I was a kid, I’d have sprained something in my geekly excitement. I think I’d sprain something now… my wallet. This kit sold for a rather steep-at-the-time $50 and goes for 100 times that now. But I’d still be tempted. I think […]
Today is the birthday of Joseph Priestley, the 18th century scientist, teacher, and political wonk who had a tremendous impact on the worlds of science and politics. He is credited with the discovery of oxygen (isolating it in its gaseous state). Priestley has been the subject of two “recent” books, The Lunar Men (actually five […]
People sometimes ask us what’s the big deal with the Maker’s Notebook. Why should they care about a book largely filled with blank pages? Well, obviously we think there are all sorts of reasons to care. We spent a lot of time designing a book optimized for makers. It’s hard-bound, sturdy, contains high-quality engineering graph […]
Have you noticed how old plastics yellow in the sun? Well, now there is an easy way to restore the original color! Retr0brite is an easy-to-make open-sourced gel that un-yellows the flame retardants found in ABS plastic. It started as a chance discovery that hydrogen peroxide partially helped banish the yellow… but then it was […]
Spatula Tzar, who brought us the controversial fly plane, offers a number of other interested projects, including this ball mill (a device used to crush metals and chemicals into a fine powder), made from mainly junk lying around the lab. Ball Mill
While researching a new project (as us mad-scientists-types are prone to do), I found this amazing video. It’s basically a clear chemical that undergoes a reaction in the presence of UV light that makes it very quickly turn green. But, the key here is that the reaction is also quickly reversible – in about a […]
