The holiday season is in full swing! Everywhere I look there are twinkle lights, ornaments, and Christmas trees. Even us design junkies get into the holiday spirit and want to make our homes festive while still keeping in the classic retro look we all know and love. Last year I made this DIY Silver Retro […]
Unlike all the other men in my family (and most of my friends) I am not an electrical engineer by training. I’ve spent my life around electrical engineering, and although I’ve known about the historical details of the invention of the transistor since I was a wee lad, I can’t claim to have understood how the first transistor worked until I saw Bill Hammack’s video for this week. So, thanks for that, Bill, on a personal level.
With a very few notable exceptions, there was really nothing punk about The Fad Which Shall Not be Named. Steampop might really have been a better word. Fortunately, the steam in these posts is not, generally, even aspiring to punk status, although the word itself may, regrettably, appear a couple times in the copy on the linked pages. Please accept our apologies–we were excited–and enjoy this hot steamy content entirely on its own merits.
I found this cool light blacksmithing video from YouTuber SgtViktor at How to History, an online clearinghouse of traditional handwork tutorials. To be fair, the bucklemaker in question uses all kind of modern power tools and abrasives, but the site is nonetheless a great resource. Other personal faves include How to Build a Coracle, How to Set a Copper Rivet, and How to Make Handmade Nails. [Thanks, Matt Fedorko!]
3 barrel hand cannon fired after 500 years (video)…
Here is the second installment of our series of Make: Shorts covering “Maker Pioneers,” inventors, entrepreneurs, makers who are dreaming up clever solutions to today’s energy and environmental problems. In this video, we meet Beth Ferguson, Sachi DeCou and Sol Design Lab. Among other things, they turn lovely vintage gas pumps into solar-powered electronic device […]
Bill Hammack’s video confection is especially sweet this week. Bill scored a vintage Delta “black box” on eBay and, in this week’s installment, tears it apart on camera to show you how they built ’em in the old days to stand up to “three-thousand gees and one-thousand degrees.” I just watched it, and I’m having a hard time resisting my ebullient urge to spoil the ending for you, so I’ll just shut up and let Engineer Guy take it away. [Thanks, Bill!]
