Quick and easy rocket stove

Quick-and-dirty-rocket-stove

[Simon], a gardener in the United Kingdom, created this super cheap and easy to build rocket stove. The great thing about this little guy is that the methods and materials used to create it are so basic, anyone should be able to quickly make their own for just a few bucks. If nothing else, this is a good introductory … Read the rest

Sand casting motorcycle cases

Sand casting has been around since, well, since a really really long time ago. For thousands of years, people have been pouring molten metal into finely crafted sand casts, and there’s really no reason that someone can’t do the same thing in their garage or workshop today. This article covers the process of sand casting new case parts for antique Read the rest

Bassoforte and other new instruments

[Diego Stocco] makes music with instruments he assembled. For instance, his Bassoforte uses piano keys, the neck and strings from an electric bass, and what look like some cymbals. Throw in a hammer from that piano and a double bass bow (plus heavy use of audio software) and he’s in business. Big business actually, his work has been in video … Read the rest

3D printing on a much larger scale

The end goal of this giant rapid prototyping machine is to print buildings. We’re not holding our breath for a brand new Flintstones-esque abode, but their whimsical suggesting of printed buildings on the moon seems like science fiction with potential. The machine operates similar to a RepRap but instead of plastic parts, it prints stone by binding sand with … Read the rest

Beach stereo

[Adam] wanted a stereo that could stand up to rain and keep sand out. He ended up building this beach stereo out of a cooler. The cooler’s already made to be water tight. He cut holes in the front and back for marine speakers and added a water-tight bezel and cover for the controls on the deck. Inside you’ll … Read the rest

Wine glass time keeper

We’ve seen a glut of time-keeping projects lately. We guess time was the original motivator for technology so we’re okay with it (but we’re not calling ourselves Clockaday quite yet). This clock, or more appropriately this timer, is a homemade hourglass that [Andrei] put together. The finished look is simple but he put some real time into its production.

The … Read the rest

A random USB… hourglass

[Peter] thought of a creative, way to generate random entropy for under $100.

The USB Hourglass combines a sand timer with a rotating mechanism and an optical beam through the center of the timer to observe the falling sand. The amount of light reaching a detector is digitized at frequent intervals and processed by a microcontroller to determine when to … Read the rest