Hammer

Laminar Flow Water Fountain

Make a cheap, high-tech nozzle to eliminate turbulence and create incredible water effects.

World’s Cheapest Monopod

A quick and easy way to steadier photos.

When you picture a steam engine, you likely imagine a giant cast-iron contraption festooned with knobs, valves, gauges, linkages, and wheels. This steam-powered toy boat has no moving parts and needs only a flame and the surrounding water to zip around and make its distinctively happy sound. My interest in pop-pop boats began when I […]

Gravity Catapult

I have long been enamored of catapults. Invented around 400 B.C., they were used until nearly A.D. 1300. So for 1,700 years, catapults were arguably the largest, most expensive, and most powerful machines on the planet. Today, people build catapults for fun: Scout troops, historical reenactors, fathers and daughters, beer-stoked college students. Having built more […]

Carve a Stone Bowl

Ever thought about trying to make something to last? It’s a hard problem: moths, rust, fire, thieves, and time versus the works of the mighty. Take a walk through an old cemetery. The Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., is one of my favorites. Acid rain is dissolving some of the marble and limestone headstones […]

Pinhole Panoramic Camera

I bought a new scanner recently, and soon found myself spelunking through drawers of old photos from my many misspent years in photography. Some of the most interesting shots were the pinhole camera experiments I had done as a teenager. With ghostly outlines from multi-minute exposures, and shapes warped into boomerangs by curved film, these […]