Looking for some DIY fun for the family? The Brew it Yourself Root Beer Kit from the Maker Shed includes everything you need to brew root beer right in your kitchen. Make up to four gallons of delicious, old fashioned, naturally carbonated root beer at home in your own soda bottles.
In this how-to video, Lucas Weakley walks you through the process of making paper rockets for the compressed air rocket launcher found in MAKE Volume 15. Based on his experience from making his own rockets, he offers a lot of great tips and tricks. The Compressed Air Rockets Kit is available in the Maker Shed if you’d like to get started launching your own rockets.
We’re in the process of working on another special issue publication for holiday release, like our popular Ultimate Workshop and Tool Guide from last year. This one is going to be the Ultimate Guide to Kits! It will feature over 150 kit reviews plus new kit-related articles and other delectable MAKE goodness.
littleBits is a system of electronic parts for play and prototyping. Designed for children, artists, or anyone shy about soldering, littleBits make electronics easy, fun, fast and accessible. Ayah Bdeir talks about her simple and intriguing system of magnetically connected, expandable electronics, which launched this weekend at World Maker Faire NY.
http://bit.ly/prZRJ1
A true classic for DIY synth makers & circuit benders, the Atari Punk Console can kick out some ear-catching square waves. It’s easy to build and a lot of fun to play around with. It may be challenging to make traditional music with an APC, but hey – there’s enough of that around already, right?
Admittedly, “art” may be, ah, stretching it a bit, but hot-pulling scrap styrene model sprue over an open flame to make plastic rods of various thicknesses is a classic technique in plastic model-building. The resulting material can be as thin as a human hair, and commonly finds use in scale modelling as antenna aerials, wire, bolt heads, etc.
And just when I was getting over my yen for the normal-sized (“chicken?”) eggbot. Like the original, the new Ostrich Eggbot is a spherical-surface plotter, but its capacity has been increased from the original’s 1.25-4.25″ diameter range to 2.25-6.25″. The kits are on-sale now for $250. The original eggbot is still available at $200.
