Retro

How-To:  Make riveted chain mail

How-To: Make riveted chain mail

There are scads of tutorials flushing through the tubes that will show you how to twirl old wire coat hangers into rings, cut them up, and link them together with pliers to make the ubiquitous “butted” chain mail, in which the individual rings are either unjoined, soldered, or glued together. But this recent Instructable from armourkris, for the truly dedicated, shows you how to make a much more serious–and to my amateur eye, authentic–mail, in which each ring is flattened, punched, linked, and then riveted closed.

The music of techno-junk

In this video, “Jankworks,” makes a joyful noise by flicking, banging, twanging, tapping, and triggering various pieces of old tech (drives, phone bells, typewriters, cassette players, etc). Jankworks writes: I loved the pictures of Mark Tilden’s workshop and it reminded me on the many times, while working on some project, that the clutter and tangle […]

More on signwriting

In response to my “Lost Knowledge” column on sign painting (aka signwriting), one of our readers, peterman921, himself a signwriter from Southern, Oregon, sent us links to some YouTube videos of the craft. The one above is by Alicia Jennings, aka monkeysign123 on YouTube, a big rig ‘striper and signwriter from the Great Northwest. This […]

Lost Knowledge: Sign painting

Lost Knowledge: Sign painting

The Lost Knowledge column explores the possible technology of the future in the forgotten ideas of the past (and those just slightly off to the side). Every other Wednesday, we look at retro-tech, “lost” technology, and the make-do, improvised “street tech” of village artisans and tradespeople from around the globe. “Lost Knowledge” was also the […]