#making
// 91 posts tagged
May 30 6:11 PM #151 5 min Three Hundred Thirty-Six Ends Before the Edge Pulled Inward
Loom WeavingNinety minutes to thread 336 warp ends. Three inches of weaving to discover they were lying about being evenly tensioned.
May 28 5:26 PM #148 3 min Three Legs Finished and Four Inches Left to Regret
Macramé Plant HangersDiane showed me the knot sequence. Looked simple. Sixteen feet of cord per strand, she said. I cut mine to fourteen. That was the first mistake.
May 21 6:54 PM #141 4 min Six Centimetres of Silver Into a Gap I Couldn't See
Bicycle Frame BrazingMarc heated steel until silver disappeared into gaps I couldn't see. This is either physics or magic, and I'm not sure the distinction matters at 650°C.
May 20 6:34 PM #140 4 min Twenty-Three Stitches Out Before the Snap Held Right
LeatherworkingThe knife came back from the river with a burr. Resharpened it until it would shave arm hair again. Then it wouldn't fit in the sheath—geometry doesn't compromise.
May 19 6:13 PM #138 day 2 5 min Nineteen Hours to Leather-Hard, Twenty-Seven to Scrap
Pottery Wheel ThrowingThumbnail test said leather-hard. Loop tool said otherwise. By 10:47 the bowl was scrap and Diane was explaining why trimming can't fix what throwing broke.
May 19 1:07 AM #139 5 min Three Millimetres of Bronze and the Rest Is Grey
Raku Pottery FiringThe research said copper lustre. The bowl says grey. Turns out there's a difference between 'drop it in the barrel' and 'place it in active combustibles.
May 18 7:06 PM #138 4 min Five Attempts Before the Wall Held Its Shape
Pottery Wheel ThrowingCentering took eleven minutes. Diane said most beginners take thirty, which helped until my fourth attempt collapsed into wet gray chaos.
May 17 7:09 PM #137 4 min Thirty Seconds Working, Eighteen Hours Waiting for Cracks
Glass BlowingDiane handed me wet newspaper and told me to press it against 900°C glass with my bare hand. The steam barrier would protect me, she said, until I flinched.
May 15 5:00 PM #135 3 min Four Litres Waiting for a Quarter Teaspoon
Cheese MakingChymosin cleaves one peptide bond and milk becomes curd—simple chemistry until you're holding $24 worth of raw milk and a quarter teaspoon of enzyme.
May 11 5:59 PM #132 3 min Six Days for Flies, Three to Eight Weeks for Maybe
Praying Mantis RearingThe ootheca might hatch tomorrow or in July. The fruit fly culture needs six more days. If the timing doesn't align, 150 nymphs starve in 48 hours.
May 10 5:09 PM #131 5 min Two Hundred Twenty Hertz of Marshmallow
Fungal Resonance MappingThe frequency sweep produced a curve that looked more like a marshmallow than a resonance plot. Turns out living mushrooms are terrible oscillators.
May 9 5:49 PM #130 4 min Eleven Hours of Silence Then Forty Minutes of Maybe
Bioacoustic Spore Discharge RecordingThe mushroom's been glued to a contact mic for eleven hours. The waveform is mostly nothing, but the quality of the nothing changed at 9:47pm.
May 8 8:34 PM #129 2 min Thirty Days From Now This Will Look Identical
Lichen Growth Rate CalibrationJust took the first baseline photograph. The black prothallus line I'm measuring will move 40 microns this month—less than a single human hair's width.
May 4 2:02 AM #126 4 min Forty-Five Minutes Staring at a Shadow That Might Be Growth
Mushroom Spawn GraftingIt's 2:17am and I can't tell if that dark patch in the jar is mycelium starting to spread or just a shadow from the desk lamp. Either way, I've been staring for forty-five minutes.
May 4 6:42 PM #125 3 min The Jar Started Raining at Minute Eight
Terrarium BuildingThe electronics shop terrarium has been sealed since 2020. Mine started its own weather system in eight minutes.
May 3 5:41 PM #2 day 3 2 min Sixteen Temperature Readings From Eight Sensors I Soldered
Stratospheric Balloon TelemetryThe bench test showed sixteen temperature readings when I'd installed eight sensors. Turns out every solder joint was measuring something.
May 2 7:37 PM #124 5 min Three Point Two Microvolts From a Single Breath
Thermocouple Lace MakingBreathed on the lace, got 3.2 microvolts on the oscilloscope. Every junction where copper crosses bronze is a thermocouple. This was supposed to be decorative.
Apr 30 7:04 PM #123 4 min Six Tiles Held to the Light, Three Passed
Fipple Harmonic Lithophane TilesPhysics says slide whistles can only produce odd harmonics. The glowing tiles show which ones are cheating.
Apr 29 7:50 PM #122 4 min Twelve Whistles and a Harmonic That Shouldn't Exist
Slide Whistle TuningTwelve whistles for fourteen dollars. I've spent two hours filing the fipple edge on one of them.
Apr 28 8:31 PM #120 4 min Six Draws Past the Point Where Bronze Forgives
Bronze Wool SpinningThe sticky note said "anneal after three draws." The wire snapped on draw six. The note is still there.
Apr 28 1:49 AM #121 4 min Forty-Seven Kilohms of Wire That Should Have Been Scrap
Bronze Wire Coil Pickup WindingThe multimeter reads 47kΩ. A normal pickup reads 6kΩ. I'm calling it a feature.
Apr 27 8:38 PM #115 4 min Thirty-One Hertz Between One Tine and the Other
Tuning Fork MetallurgyThe tuner says 387 Hz. It should say 440. I filed the tips to raise the pitch. The pitch fell anyway.
Apr 26 10:30 AM #113 3 min Three Hundred Strikes Before It Stopped Being Money
Coin Ring ForgingForty-five minutes of hitting a coin with a hammer and I can't stop thinking about it.
Apr 25 4:42 AM #112 3 min The Disc Heard Footsteps the Air Never Carried
Piezoelectric Contact Mic BuildingPlug a raw piezo into your recorder and enjoy the majestic sound of a telephone held underwater. One transistor fixes everything.
Apr 23 4:11 AM #110 4 min One Semitone Past the Point of No Return
Tongue Drum TuningFlattening a note takes seconds. Raising it takes forty-five minutes. Guess which way I overshot.
Apr 22 3:16 AM #109 4 min Three Blanks Shattered and the Drivers Still Waiting
Wooden Headphone Enclosure TurningThe chamber volume was mathematically perfect. The walnut exploded anyway.
Apr 22 4:42 AM #108 3 min Three Springs Cracked Before the Walnut Got Its Voice
Kalimba MakingThree tines snapped. Not from playing — from existing.
Apr 20 8:57 PM #106 4 min The Pin Sits Forward of Where the Wind Lands
Weather Vane WhittlingThe tail needs more area, the nose needs more weight. Carving a contradiction and hoping brass sorts it out.
Apr 19 5:46 PM #105 4 min The Grain Runs One Way and So Must the Knife
Spoon CarvingFrom 0.1mm kumiko tolerances to hacking at birch with a hatchet. The wood has opinions about where the spoon goes.
Apr 18 2:38 AM #104 3 min The Motor Hummed Till Dawn and the Film Took Dictation
Pinhole Streak Camera BuildingThe math says width equals constant over velocity. My stationary coffee mug begs to differ.
Apr 16 7:43 PM #101 4 min A Tenth of a Millimetre and the Rest Is Friction
Kumiko WoodworkingForty-five minutes of watching a man slot wood into wood without speaking. Then I ordered the jig.
Apr 15 7:08 PM #100 4 min Arctan of My Latitude Times a Week Without Sun
Sundial MakingOrdered brass and a protractor before realizing I'd committed to a hobby that requires going outside and waiting for the sun.
Apr 14 6:30 PM #99 4 min The Air Had Geometry That Brass Could Shape
Theremin Antenna Pattern TuningMapping an invisible 3D field with fishing line and shallow breaths. Two hours in, I have half the data.
Apr 13 7:18 PM #119 4 min Thirty-Five Microns Between Green and Gone
Verdigris Electroetched PCB ArtThe board now displays my thumbprints in perfect copper-negative detail. This was not the pattern I intended.
Apr 12 6:05 PM #118 4 min Twenty-Four Hours Before the Green Decides
Vinegar Patina Etching on BronzeI sealed a cracked singing bowl in a container with ammonia-soaked paper towels. This is either chemistry or a cry for help.
Apr 11 6:44 PM #116 3 min Seven Thousand Years Before the First Stitch Could Unravel
NalbindingFound a bone needle I bought in Reykjavík seven years ago. Finally googled what it was for.
Apr 10 5:23 PM #98 4 min Three Stitches Gathered Before the Wave Let Go
Sashiko StitchingThe name translates to "little stabs." Three hours in, I can confirm the accuracy.
Apr 9 7:32 PM #97 4 min Fifteen Seconds Before the Wax Stops Listening
Wax Seal MakingTwenty minutes examining the seal under a loupe before I remembered to open the envelope. The wax won.
Apr 8 4:16 AM #96 4 min The Click That Refused to Become a Clack
Telegraph Sounder RestorationThree adjustment screws, twelve hours of forum reading, and I still can't make it clack properly.
Apr 5 8:29 PM #94 4 min Fifty Years of Basement Cold and Three Pieces of Nylon
Typewriter RestorationThe drawband snapped in my hands. This is not how the restoration forums said this would go.
Apr 4 8:35 PM #93 4 min Four Bags of Green Where Pink Should Have Been
Oyster Mushroom CultivationOyster mycelium hunts nematodes with paralytic toxins. Mine got outcompeted by green fuzz in three days.
Apr 3 6:35 PM #92 4 min One Baked Bone Before the Metal Stayed
Pewter CastingPet stores sell cuttlebone for birds. I bought twelve and filled them with molten pewter.
Apr 2 7:41 PM #91 3 min Four Dark Sockets and Three Weeks to Wait
Nixie Tube Clock BuildingTwo tubes glow, one turned purple, and the "3" displays as a backwards "C." That's not a clock.
Apr 1 8:36 PM #90 4 min Twenty-Five Turns for Every One the Speaker Needs
Vacuum Tube Audio Amplifier BuildingA 5-watt Class A amp draws 30 watts from the wall. The other 25 become heat. Audiophiles call this warm.
Mar 30 8:01 PM #88 4 min Eight Hours Before the Brass Remembers Flow
Espresso Machine RestorationThe eBay listing said it smelled of mould. The listing was accurate.
Mar 29 7:06 PM #87 2 min Six Weeks Before the Fat Forgets Itself
Cold Process Soap MakingSearched "sodium hydroxide disposal" and ended up with a silicone loaf mould in my cart.
Mar 28 6:09 PM #86 4 min Three Coats Before the Cloak Caught Light
Miniature PaintingI was researching ant farm decoration. Three hours later I'd ordered soldiers for a game I don't play.
Mar 27 7:31 PM #85 2 min She'll Eat Her Own Wings When She Gets Here
Ant KeepingA founding queen digests her own flight muscles into eggs. I have an empty test tube and a wait until spring.
Mar 24 5:10 PM #82 4 min Nine Rotations Before the Thread Trapped Itself
Fly TyingA mayfly hatched from my bonsai's drip tray. Now I'm learning to counterfeit insects.
Mar 23 4:44 AM #81 4 min The Blank Remembered It Was Glass
Telescope Mirror GrindingTarget tolerance: 50 nanometres. My grinding stand was off by 3mm. The blank lasted twenty minutes.
Mar 22 10:45 AM #80 4 min The Furnace Registers at 3.2 Hertz
Geophone SeismographyThe amplifier works perfectly. I can now confirm my furnace oscillates at 3.2 Hz. Earthquakes remain elusive.
Mar 19 5:58 PM #77 4 min Three Instruments, Three Answers, One Atmosphere
Weather Station BuildingMy phone says 1018 hPa. The new barometer says 989. The airport says 1016. One atmosphere shouldn't need this many opinions.
Mar 16 8:23 PM #74 4 min Five Signatures for Five Hundred Years of Circuits
Coptic Stitch Flight Logbook BindingMy Jeppesen spine cracked again. Transport Canada doesn't mandate logbook format. Coptic monks solved this 1,800 years ago.
Mar 15 5:45 PM #73 3 min Nineteen Pins, Sixty Keys, and a Spacebar That Finally Quit
Mechanical Keyboard BuildingThe spacebar quit after fifteen years. Three hours later I had sixty switches on order and seventeen browser tabs open about lubricant grades.
Mar 11 10:36 AM #69 4 min Seven Millimetres of Brass and Everything Else Is Wood
Pen TurningTurns out superglue makes an excellent lacquer if you polymerize it with friction and optimism.
Mar 10 8:28 PM #65 3 min Sixty Thousand Workers and No Org Chart
BeekeepingSixty thousand decision-makers, zero central authority. Still better organised than my last project team.
Mar 8 5:26 PM #63 3 min Four Weeks Before the Gravel Remembers How to Shine
Rock TumblingSilicon carbide is stardust. I'm using it to polish gravel in a rubber drum for a month.
Mar 7 5:34 PM #68 3 min Two Mirrors and an S That Landed Right
Linocut PrintmakingThe S is backwards. No—wait. The S is correct. My brain keeps tripping over the double negative.
Mar 6 8:35 PM #66 1 min One Streak of Char and a Letter to Tomorrow
PyrographyTwenty years of soldering, and the iron finally found a better job: writing in smoke.
Mar 5 8:02 PM #62 2 min Forty Minutes Until the Tomato Apologized
Knife SharpeningThe knife was tearing tomatoes. Forty minutes with a wet rock later, they started apologizing.
Mar 4 6:15 PM #61 4 min The Fifth Pull Finally Looked Like Weather
Paper Marbling (Ebru)A sample sheet of marbled paper arrived with my bookbinding thread. Forty-eight hours later I'm buying ox gall.
Mar 2 4:16 AM #58 3 min Four Sheets Folded Before the Thread Knew When to Stop
BookbindingDocumenting kintsugi repairs in a disposable spiral notebook finally felt too absurd to continue.
Mar 1 5:51 PM #57 3 min Seven Pieces and a Box Full of Humidity
KintsugiDropped the mug I spent days engraving. Now I'm fixing it with gold and developing a rash.
Feb 28 10:00 AM #59 day 2 5 min The Patch Kept Running While I Wasn't Looking
Monthly RetrospectiveTwenty-eight hobbies. The coils kept finding me, the music box defeated me, and a patch in the basement drifted into minor keys while I wasn't listening.
Feb 27 6:25 PM #54 4 min The Sounder Learned to Hold a Pitch
Harmonic Telegraph Key RestorationBell accidentally invented the telephone trying to build a musical telegraph. I'm finishing his original project.
Feb 26 6:54 PM #53 2 min The Air Between My Fingers Wouldn't Sing
Theremin Circuit VoicingTwo oscillators fighting, my hand as a capacitor plate, and my nervous system as the noise floor.
Feb 25 10:10 AM #52 2 min Eight Thousand Turns Before the String Could Sing
Guitar Pickup WindingEight thousand turns of hair-thin wire. One sneeze and you start over.
Feb 24 8:33 PM #50 2 min The Jar Started Pinging at Four in the Morning
Fermentation Sensor LoggingSix hours after the starter showed life, I had a time-of-flight sensor pointed at it like a balloon payload.
Feb 23 5:57 PM #51 2 min Eleven Minutes Before the Chaff Caught Fire
Roasting Profile Curve EngravingThe popcorn popper caught fire at minute seven. I still engraved the mug.
Feb 21 5:00 PM #48 4 min The Wind Found Its Way to the Cathode
Nixie Tube Flight Instrument ClocksThe Soviet "5" is just an upside-down "2". I'm trusting it to show me the altimeter setting anyway.
Feb 20 5:16 PM #47 4 min Fourteen Pins, One Crooked, and a Hymn Stuck in Brass
Cylinder Music Box Transcription PunchingFourteen pins. That's all I punched before I ruined the cylinder.
Feb 19 5:31 PM #46 4 min Three Cups, One Wobble, and a Northwest Gust
Mechanical Weather Vane InstrumentsPerfect day to build a device that measures exactly what I'm already annoyed by.
Feb 18 10:00 AM #45 4 min Eighty-Five Teeth and Mars Still Drifted
Orrery Clockwork Escapement PrintingEighty-five teeth for Mars. Forty-five for Earth. A fishing sinker doing orbital mechanics on my workbench.
Feb 17 7:13 PM #44 2 min The Box That Learned to Say No Seven Different Ways
Puzzle Box Mechanism DesignForty-four hobbies in, and this is the first one designed to frustrate someone else on purpose.
Feb 16 5:50 PM #2 day 2 3 min The Payload Stopped Talking at Eight Hundred Metres
Stratospheric Balloon TelemetryA stranger named Dwight called to say there was a styrofoam box in his slough. He was remarkably calm about it.
Feb 15 10:01 AM #43 3 min The Moon Learned to Glow Through Two Millimetres of PLA
Lithophane Lunar Phase CalendarsNASA publishes the moon's exact wobble hourly as JSON. I'm turning a year of it into glowing plastic.
Feb 14 6:14 PM #42 4 min Five Pins, Zero Opens, and One Bent Hook
LockpickingThe pick bent on the third pin. The lock remains locked. Day 1 goes to the padlock.
Feb 11 7:21 PM #40 4 min Teaching a Junk-Drawer Nib to Remember Blue
Fountain Pen RestorationThe nib hasn't written since 1962. I'm fixing that with shellac, a brass shim, and excessive optimism.
Feb 10 6:44 PM #39 3 min The Cross-Country That Learned to Keep the Beat
Flightpath Zoetrope DrumsVictorian parlour trick meets GPS log meets strobe light. Somewhere in the blur, September is learning to drum.
Jan 31 10:00 AM #59 6 min The Air Had Geometry All Along
Monthly RetrospectiveRadio signals became lanterns. Flight paths became thread. A star disc stayed silent. January taught me the air has shapes worth holding.
Jan 31 8:05 PM #30 3 min The Bearings That Learned to Hold My Coffee
QSO Radial VOR Dial CoastersThirty hobbies in, and I keep asking the same question: where did that signal come from? Now my coffee mug rests on the answer.
Jan 30 6:47 PM #29 3 min The Disc That Knew a Star but Forgot How to Sing
Stellar Spectrum Music Box DiscsThe disc contains Sirius. The pins are 0.3 mm too short. The music box plays exactly nothing.
Jan 28 8:40 PM #27 4 min The Bishop Finally Admitted It Had a Back Lobe
Antenna Pattern Chess SetThe rook has a back lobe. When I pick up the bishop, I can feel the null. That sounds absurd. It is. I don't care.
Jan 26 8:46 PM #25 3 min Teaching the Wind to Sign My Name in Dits and Dahs
Callsign Morse Windchime MobileThe code is not in the tubes. The code is in the gaps. You will space your first set of chimes evenly because it looks elegant. The result will sound like noise.
Jan 21 7:42 PM #19 3 min The Knight That Learned to Bend Starlight
Knight Aperture Star SpikesA plastic knight can't capture your bishop, but it can stamp its signature across Vega.
Jan 19 8:40 PM #16 2 min The Chord I Could Finally Hold
Chord Spectrogram Relief TilesTwo out of three chord guesses right—by touch alone. My fingers apparently know things my ears don't.
Jan 15 7:18 PM #14 2 min Printing the Sky My Radio Forgot to Keep
APRS Skytrace SculpturesThe tracker gossips to digipeaters I've never met, and somewhere a map in Japan shows a foam aircraft drawing loops over frozen Alberta.
Jan 14 8:56 PM #13 2 min The Antenna Finally Admitted It Had a Shape
Antenna Lobe LanternsThe antenna rotates like it's auditioning for a lighthouse job. Eventually, it becomes one.
Jan 12 7:12 PM #11 4 min The Ribbon That Refused to Touch Its Own Terrain
VFR Track Relief PrintingMy flight path floated a storey above its own mountain. GPS and terrain data have different opinions about ground.
Jan 6 5:45 PM #5 3 min Holding the Spectrum Up to the Window
RF Waterfall LithophanesThe spectrogram scrolled down my screen at 2 AM, and I thought: what if I could hold that hour of invisible radio up to a window?
Jan 1 4:33 AM #2 2 min A Quarter Watt from the Edge of Space
Stratospheric Balloon TelemetryIt's 2:47 AM and I just ordered missile-grade GPS to track a latex balloon carrying a thermometer.