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[Jer Schmidt] needed a way to put a lot of M8 bolts into a piece of square steel tubing, but just drilling and tapping threads into the thin steel wouldn’t be strong enough. So he figured out a way to reliably weld nuts to the inside of the tube, and his technique works even if […]
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Perfectly clear ice spheres are nifty but can be a bit tricky to make without an apparatus. [Seth Robinson] crafted a copper ice press to make his own. Copper is well-known for its thermal conductivity, making it a perfect material for building a press to melt ice into a given shape. Like many projects, a […]
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River tables are something we’ve heard decried as a passé, but we’re still seeing some interesting variations on the technique. Take this example done with bronze instead of epoxy. Starting with two beautiful slabs of walnut, [Burls Art] decided that instead of cutting them up to make guitars he would turn his attention to a […]
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We’ve all probably come across hunks of junk that used to be tools, long-neglected and chemically welded into a useless mass of solid rust. Such items are available for a pittance at the local flea market, or more likely found in an old barn or rotting on a junk pile. They appear to be far […]
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To grind or not to grind? What a question! It all depends on what you’re really trying to show, and in the case of welded joints, I often want to prove the integrity of the weld. My ground-back piece of welded tube. Eagle-eyed readers will spot that the grinding reveals a weld that isn’t perfect. […]
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We have no idea what a playing card press is, nor do we care. All we know is that after watching [Chris] from Clickspring make his playing card press, we want it. Digging a little deeper, [Chris] offered to make this card press for [Chris Ramsay], a magician who specializes in cardistry, or the art […]
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Which to buy first, a lathe or a mill? It’s a tough question for the aspiring home machinist with limited funds to spend on machine tools, but of course the correct answer is a lathe. With a lathe, we are told, all other machine tools can be built, including a milling machine. Granted that might […]
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When you’re going to build something big, it’s often a good idea to start small and work out the bugs first. That’s what [bitluni] did with his massive 1200-pixel LED video wall, which he unveiled at Maker Faire Hanover recently. We covered his prototype a while back, a mere 300 ping pong ball ensconced-LEDs on a […]
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Beginning metalworkers are often surprised at just how cheap steel can be. It’s a commodity made by the gigaton, and there are always plenty of extra pieces and scraps left over from big projects that are available for pennies a pound. But what you’ve got is often not what you need, especially when it’s steel […]
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Four times the holes, four times the trouble. With the fate of repetitive motion injury looming due to the need to drill 1,200 holes, [bitluni] took matters into his own hands and built this nifty DIY hole punch for light-gauge sheet metal. A little backstory will probably help understand why [bitluni] needs so many holes. Back […]