I’ve seen this thing referred to as an “Ocean Mat,” a “Prolong Knot,” a “Ladder Mat,” and a “Sailor’s True Love Mat.” Whatever you want to call it, it’s a noble expression of the manly art of knot-tying, and this tutorial at the UK’s Scullion Enterprises will show you how it’s done. More: Rope bending […]
By Alden Hart The “LED Light Brick” project in MAKE, Volume 18 has generated lots of good feedback for us, so we went back and asked Alden to explore a few variations on the theme of the brick casting itself, how you might be creative with it. This article is the result. Be sure to […]
Uber-bender Pete Edwards of Casper Electronics shares his recipe for cooking up some tasty mods for Casio ‘SA’ series keyboards – This is an engineered modification which works on most of the Casio SA series ( SA-1, SA-5, SA-7, SA-8 etc). There will be an Amplifier chip ( No AN8053 ) common across the SA […]
A former chemistry teacher of mine provided a great definition of “pyrophoric:” [It] means that if you playfully squirt some at your lab mates, they will burst into flame. In other (less amusing) words, a “pyrophoric” substance is one that ignites spontaneously on exposure to air. Pyrophoric iron, however, isn’t as dangerous as that makes […]
The Fire Piston Kit is a neat physics experiment based on the heat created when air is rapidly compressed. Bill Gurstelle, author of Backyard Ballistics and Barrage Garage, created this kit for us. If you were at Maker Faire you might have seen him demonstrating his kit in the Maker Shed. [Thanks Bill!] More about […]
What do you do when someone at work has a Desktop Onager? Maybe it’s time to get your own desktop Desktop Trebuchet and start a mini war. Or maybe you want to build one so you can hurl mini cows at any invading knights? Then again, that might not be a good idea since both […]
This Desktop Onager is constructed out of only wood and twine. That’s right, no metal parts here! These types of war machines were the predecessors to cannons and modern artillery. This desktop model uses the torsion skein for all of its power. Using this ancient power mechanism, it can launch the wooden projectiles up to […]
