[Bryson]

Dammit. Someone always has to go one better.

[RowdyScot]

I wish I had pictures, but a few of my buddies up in Ann Arbor and I decided to insulate the windows in their apartment. After putting the shrink wrap stuff over the windows, we noticed there was one spot where we'd fucked up, and a small area at the bottom of their large window had a jet of cold air. Cue the lightbulb above my head, as I quickly suggested a "fix" with some styrofoam coolers and PVC pipe. We managed to generate an airflow and get some damn cold air flowing straight into the styrofoam coolers, where we placed many "best served cold" beverages Awesome enough, the spot for the coolers happens to be directly between the couch and the dinner table. For the record, the air flowing into the coolers is 10˚ colder than the fridge. It allows for some very cold beer, and some very cold Dew you might say.

[bassplayinMacFiend]

Originally Posted by Windswept *Research* purposes, huh? Uh-huh, yeah right. I think chainmail is extremely cool. (I've always had a 'thing' for knights and all that. )

I used to have a friend who made chainmail brassieres & bikinis. While they looked cool I can imagine how it would feel to get pinched by such clothing.

As for me, the only thing I've made lately is music which is really difficult to show in picture form.

[zsummers]

Originally Posted by Brad Do share! Looking forward to pics.

Better late than never...

Click for a bigger pics:




Notice the one candle has gone nuts and formed quite the wax pillar.

[Windswept]

Originally Posted by bassplayinMacFiend I used to have a friend who made chainmail brassieres & bikinis. While they looked cool I can imagine how it would feel to get pinched by such clothing.

Like this?

(Probably NSFW. )

I doubt if chainmail would pinch. I think it probably feels... ''very' nice.

(And, *no*, that's not a pic of 'me'. )

[Brad]

*bump!*

Originally Posted by Windswept I doubt if chainmail would pinch. I think it probably feels... ''very' nice.

Yes and no. If you have any body hair exposed, it will catch on the links. And pull. Painfully. Although, I imagine (or would hope ) that most ladies in the bikinis don't have that particular problem.

Normally, though, chain mail does have a very nice feel, especially with smaller links. It's truly a unique texture; I can't think of any material that feels quite the same. As Bryson said, it's very flexible and just "flows".

But, damn, does it take a long time to make. Granted, I only work on it for a few hours each week nowadays, but I'm still only about halfway done.



Also, I forgot to add a month or two ago that I made another pneumatic Nerf gun. It's at the office now, of course , but I do have an old photo taken before I finished and painted it a nice blood red crimson color.



It's tough to see in that pic, but the improved design has an electric trigger, manual sliding breech, and pseudo-silencer. Oh. Yeah.

Anybody else here working on new or ongoing projects?

[drewprops]

I am.... and it's something that a pneumatic gun-making, chainmail-wearing guy like you might enjoy.... hoping to start a thread about it by the end of the week. In the meantime, I'm holding out for video of you shooting nerf torpedoes at a chainmail bikini-wearing girl.

Seriously.
I want video of that.

[Brad]

If it's anything approaching the level of badass that last year's storm trooper armor reached, I'm sure I'll love it!

Oh! Also, I've already tried stabbing myself in the chain mail with an open pair of scissors. Since I'm not in hospital, I think the chain mail sufficiently did its job!

[Souflay123]

with that you can go a beowulf!

[Brad]

Ah, now that's a Nerf gun.

[Mac+]

OMG - That's awesome. Seeing you hold it gives a better perspective of the size.

Shit, I just can't write that without it coming out perverse.

[Brad]

Originally Posted by Mac+ OMG - That's awesome. Seeing you hold it gives a better perspective of the size.

Yeah, baby.

Originally Posted by Mac+ Shit, I just can't write that without it coming out perverse.

Wait. Were you talking about the gun?

[zippy]

I made some concrete countertops for my parent's patio. They kinda look like granite after I ground and polished them up. Very nice for a first timer, I must admit.

I'll get some pics this weekend.

[billybobsky]

i... haven't made anything new recently... not even a new chemical...

that's depressing...

[Koodari]

I haven't really done anything that would qualify as an arts and crafts project I'm afraid. The closest that comes to mind was a semi-open, friction fit camera pouch with bubble wrap and duct tape. Not cool otherwise, but I realized I need one, looked at the materials there were at hand, and completed it in about two minutes. It's been totally functional for two or three years now, and the camera has survived some pretty evil circumstances. Long projects with an insane amount of work can be great when they succeed (and sometimes even if they don't) but there's a different kind of kick to be had from a spontaneous hack that ends up working.

What I'd like to do at some point is to put together a LED lighting system, for instance inside a translucent plastic table. We'll see.

Chainmail and origami are cool. I knew a guy who made a chainmail, at least some kind, for himself.
Windswept's chainmail find is plain awesome

Oh yeah, and from nerf guns I suddenly remembered I want to buy, make or mod a serious slingshot. Arm support, enough pull for a grown man, and ball bearings for ammo. There would be an infinity of possible ways to use this. Some of them would even be legal and not very hazardous.

[709]

I've got a bunch of projects on the back burner....just don't have the damn time to commit.

I have about 100 10MB Bernoulli disks that are fucking huge, and I'm dead set on making a table or something out of them, a half-dozen old school hospital wheelchairs (the ones that have 4 small wheels) that I need to weld together and make a couch out of, a small hospital bed (with a huge crank on the side!) I need to sandblast down to the bare metal and make a glass top for (table for said couch), a 1950s wheelchair I plan on pimping (can you tell I like old hospital furniture? I have an IV hanger for use as a coat rack ), a huge pile of old 1" tape reels I need to figure out something to do with....and tons more stuff too much or too weird to list.

*sigh*

I need to get some land and put up a frickin' pole barn for all my shit.

[CitizenTony]

Not really arts and crafty so I'm not sure any of this counts, but I just moved into a new house last December and I've been busy making it mine.

I Started by painting one of the bedrooms that was previously painted butter yellow with a pink ribbon around the entire length of wall. Moved to the living room and stairs after that. I don't like white walls so I have the rest of the house to go, but that's a lot of walls and will take the rest of the year I think.


Mounted the TV to the wall and got rid of any trace of wires. The IR receiver still needs a place in the wall, but it gets interference from the Plasma display so I have to get one that doesn't first. Still need to run the rear speakers as well.

TV and living room 1
TV 2
TV 3


I ran two lines of Cat6 to every room and centralized everything into the office closet. I need to get a wall mounted box to clean it up but haven't yet. I plan to route the cable through this as well and get one line to every room. It's nice being able to monitor everything from the one location and not having to rely on wireless for big transfers.


Right now I'm on a lunch break, but I'm in the middle of flooring the upstairs attic. Trying to get it done before it gets too hot outside. I'm about a quarter of the way through.


After that I'm moving on to the garden. I cleaned it out last week but it's bare right now.

[leachboy]

I did this a while back. I also did a dogcow, but it's not close enough to me to post it here.

[Brad]

That's awesome!!

[drewprops]

Leachboy, what's that made from? Is it Legos or something more unusual?

My big "arts and crafts" project was building the rPhone that I posted a few weeks ago. It started as a series of sketches in my sketchbook and finally went into full production after a month or so of planning. I built it primarily using a matte baord that we called "museum board" during architecture school.... it comes in 2-ply and 4-ply and is quite tough when cut into small pieces....

So the rPhone is actually NOT built of brass and rosewood, it's built of paper and glue and bits of styrene.

I built the pull-out earpiece using one of those inexpensive "travel style" USB cable keepers with a built-in inertia reel. So when you pull on the cable it actually unspools.

The rotary dial ALSO uses an intertia reel... when you "dial" a number the rotary dial spins back into its original place.

[Wrao]

I'm assembling something this weekend(hopefully), just got all the parts.

[leachboy]

Originally Posted by drewprops Leachboy, what's that made from? Is it Legos or something more unusual?

It's made of Legos. It's on a 48x48 light gray baseplate and it's made using the dark gray 1x1 plates. Here's the dogcow that I mentioned before.

[crazychester]

In the tradition of my triumphant piece of theatrical stagecraft, the Kennel People, I'd submit my recreation of the crypt from my contemporary dance version of Edgar Allen Poe's "The Cask of Armontillado" as performed to the Alan Parsons song of the same name, and complete with 12 year old child being choreographically buried alive. However, I'd have to look for some pics or video.

Instead, I thought this might provide you with some inspiration, Brad. The Canberra Battle Group were the subject of one project I was working on when I got expelled from school for being naughty. We had to do a short video on hobbyists. Here's a pic and how they describe their particular obsession, and a grab bag of some footage I shot of their October 2005 "Big Battle".

The whole swiveling turret thing is very cool IMHO. While the mind boggles at the idea of you and drew combining skills and creating a scaled down pirate galleon with cannon firing some sort of simulated cannon balls (squash balls perhaps?), a swiveling cannon firing ball bearings atop the head (mounted on a tin foil hat!), would no doubt strike fear into your enemies while also giving you the added advantage of being able to shoot without turning around!

We build radio controlled scale model warships and merchant ships and emulate historical WWI and WWII naval battles between the Allied and Axis fleets - protecting convoys etc. The ships are armed with Co2 powered cannons that fire ball bearings and the ships are designed to sink if hit sufficiently. The ships have pumps to simulate damage control and the balsa wood 'armour' is to scale, dependent on the real ship's armour thickness. Any ship (except sailing ships) laid down or in commission between 1901 and 1946 inclusive is allowed. The electronics are treated to withstand dunkings and each ship has a float to mark the spot where it sinks - we just haul them up, patch the holes and send them out again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpoTGCvOsRo

The ball bearings don't hurt. Much.

Shit! I forgot. There's special bonus footage of a dog that spotted a kangaroo while we were filming and the roo's demonstration of its aquatic supremacy over the K9.

[zsummers]

Originally Posted by 709 I've got a bunch of projects on the back burner....just don't have the damn time to commit. I have about 100 10MB Bernoulli disks that are fucking huge, and I'm dead set on making a table or something out of them, a half-dozen old school hospital wheelchairs (the ones that have 4 small wheels) that I need to weld together and make a couch out of, a small hospital bed (with a huge crank on the side!) I need to sandblast down to the bare metal and make a glass top for (table for said couch), a 1950s wheelchair I plan on pimping (can you tell I like old hospital furniture? I have an IV hanger for use as a coat rack ), a huge pile of old 1" tape reels I need to figure out something to do with....and tons more stuff too much or too weird to list. *sigh* I need to get some land and put up a frickin' pole barn for all my shit.

If this turns out well, you could become a furniture designer. I recently read a piece about some people who visited a furniture show for the first time, and it sounds like your plan would fit in very well with what those shows are like. The newbie visitors liked the themed pieces (though they didn't like the ones that were pretentious). Their beef was that many of the themed stuff wasn't comfortable. So if you make your hospital/living-room comfortable, you could have something quite brilliant.

p.s. Is it David Sedaris who has shares your fascination with old medical equipment?

[Fahrenheit]

Not to sound a bit limp or anything, but your parents must be pretty proud of you WLP, you have turned that attic into a really great space, using hard work, a lot of manual skills, really impressive.

And you survived a deadly spider attack. (3/8/2007)

[turbulentfurball]

*bump*

[Fahrenheit]

Thats 4 kinds of wrong.

[turbulentfurball]

Inspired by a t-shirt I saw someone wear at one of the Live Earth concerts on TV.

[AWR]

Originally Posted by Farenheit Thats 4 kinds of wrong.

As for WLP's painting, finishing and polishing thesis, all I can say is:

Do you ever sleep?

[Bryson]

Spotted on Boing Boing today:

FSM Christmas Decorations

Is that your missus, Brad? Or just someone she needs to sue...?