Weaving In Ends: Invisible vs. Visible Methods
Finishing up some knitted gifts? Make sure that you weave those ends in properly with this thorough tutorial by Jane Richmond for Very Shannon.
techniques
Charles Guan: Build Your Everything Really Really Fast
Charles Guan is an MIT alumnus, and has been making projects that have been festive and amazing over the past few years. Charles has been influential in the MIT Makerspace/club MITERS, where students create all manner of great projects. He and MITERS members have been frequent fliers at various Maker Faires, so you may already be familiar with his work.
Charles has served as a Teaching Assistant at MIT in Mechanical Engineering, helping his fellow students to fabricate the contraptions of their dreams. As a TA, he’s heard the same questions over and over, so he created some instructional documentation to make his and his fellow students’ lives easier. This was a set of lectures and handouts he called How to Build Your Robot Really Really Fast (HTBYRRRF). In more recent times, he set out to update this as a more inclusive set of building guides. Drawing from his own online documentation, he was able to codify his ideas into a thorough Instructable: How to Build Your Everything Really Really Fast, or HTBYERRF.
How-To: Splice Wire to NASA Standards
Developed during the heydey of the telegraph, the Lineman’s splice is designed for connections that will be under tension. It is commonly claimed that, properly made, a Lineman’s splice is stronger than the wires of which it is composed. In any case, it is a time-proven method, and, coolest of all, one of NASA’s Required Workmanship Standards. To wit…
Using a Washer as a Soldering Aid
Very clever trick from next month’s issue of The Family Handyman, submitted by reader Joseph Johnson. If you have “helping hands,” clamping wire leads against a washer, as shown, stabilizes the whole setup dramatically by connecting the two arms with a rigid member, so you can bear down a bit more with the iron without […]
Retracting Key Ring Corrals Chuck Key
Using a retractable-chain key ring to keep your chuck key close at hand.
Grinding Lathe Tools on a Belt Sander – Why and How
A three-part series from Mikey over at MachinistBlog.com. Mikey has been a machinist for 15 years, and has come ’round to the belief that high-speed steel (HSS) cutters, rather than the pricier, lower-maintenance, carbide-tipped bits, are the way to go on a hobby-sized metalworking lathe. He also makes a compelling argument for using a belt sander, instead of the traditional bench grinder, for making, shaping, and sharpening HSS lathe tools.
How-To: Center Stock in a 4-Jaw Lathe Chuck
Quick, handy video tutorial from Jeremy Bloyd-Peshkin of tiny workshop, demonstrating a fast method of centering a piece of round stock in a 4-jaw chuck using a magnetic-mount dial indicator and a pair of chuck keys. If you’ve never seen this operation before, Jeremy’s video makes it clear and simple to understand. [Thanks, Jeremy!]
