From traditional crafts to modern crafts, we’re covering news and interesting projects to educate you and keep you inspired. Design trends and pop culture related projects are here to inspire.
Claude writes “My newyear present for all makers: Industrial Design DIY chess pieces out of nuts and bolts, brass and steel. I had seen a picture of similar chess figures in a book about chess, so i decided to build my own using commonly found 8mm nuts, bolt and other metallic pieces, some glue (to fix parts to base, which is a 14mm nut)”. Link.
“Mark McKeown loved the classic RCA Theremin so much that he built one to spec from scratch, down to the vintage power supply, coils, and cabinet. With authentic tubes and other details, this near-perfect replica can reproduce the instrument’s sound far better than a cheap kit. Mark includes links to resources for specs and supplies if you want to try it yourself.” [via] Link.
MAKE photo pool member Shufflehacks writes “I built my own radio-transmitter for my Shuffle, I nicknamed it “iMouse”. It works quite easy, there is a power switch on the bottom to turn it on. Just press play on the Shuffle and tune your radio to the right frequency. The range is about 100 to 150 meters.(500 feet) Now I can enjoy my Shuffle on my car stereo.” Link. It’s made out of an old mouse, excellent.
Rick writes “After reading a post in MakeZine about Kanita shoulder bags, I was inspired to make three shoulder bags from 4.7 liter jerry cans for Christmas presents this year. The Kanita bags sell for a whopping $128.89, which works out to CDN$123 or US$105!! Granted if I took my labour into account, I would have to charge about that much too. But, as a DIY project, it works out to less than CDN$10 to make each of these.” Link.
PDF downloads on how to make those cool (but expensive) enclosed glass ecosystem – “Here you have the choice of two different ecosystems, a “dry land” ecosystem like the one in our Virtual Ecosphere and a marine aquatic one.” [via] Link. If anyone has made one of these, post up in the comments and let me know how it worked out.
Timo Arnall’s excellent experiment with RFID and physical spaces, like his desk…“For the last couple of weeks I have been experimenting with tagging personal space with the NFC. This started by embedding RFID tags in my desk, to use it as an information surface for contacts, SMSes and links. Underneath the desk I have stuck a grid of RFID tags, and on the top surface, the same grid of post-it notes. With the standard Nokia Service Discovery application it is possible to call people, send pre-defined SMSes or load URLs by touching the phone to each post-it on the desk.” Link.
Excellent video on how fiber optics are made – “…”At the Speed of Light” is inspirational on any number of levels. It describes what Corning calls “the union of glass and light”. Developed in the 70’s by a trio of scientists — Drs. Keck, Maurer and Schultz — who went on to win the National Medal of Technology for their efforts, it is truly remarkable. They are making fibers thinner than a human hair. The single mode fiber is a mere 8 microns thick. One micron is one-millionth of a meter.” Link.
