Favorites Archive
Molly ‘Porkshanks’ Friedrich’s Dieselpunk Headphone Mod
Guest artist Molly porkshanks Friedrich shows us how to update a pair of vintage headphones for use with an iPod or MP3 player. Greetings strangers and friends alike! I was emailed by Jake a little while back asking me if I would be interested in taking a turn as
A Victorian RV
Bus Tour: In 1982 I was a sophomore at a small college in the Midwest. It was the beginning of second term and I was again standing in line at the on-campus book store waiting to pay for a too-heavy stack of text books. The line was not moving
Car Carrier Trailer
If you’ve visited here before you know that one of my long term projects is to built a fully road-able steam powered automobile. In addition to requiring a great deal of research, such a project requires tools. I will need machine tools such as a lathe and a milling
Jake’s Hollywood Adventure and Etching an iPod
OK, I was reckless. I went ahead and etched my iPod without doing extensive tests on electrolytic etching of stainless steel. But you see, I had a deadline – a flight to Los Angeles to be on television and I wanted the iPod done for the show. I began
Steampunk Flat-Panel LCD Mod
The Steampunk Keyboard looked terribly anachronistic sitting in front of my Dell 1907FP flat panel monitor and while I hesitated to tear open a $300 monitor that was still under warrantee, art must be served. Inside I found that the whole thing was encased in steel sheet. I
Gas Mask Sawdust Respirator
Update: Sometimes when I'm working in the shop I just need to wear a respirator for a short period. For instance if I just need to walk into the paint area to shoot a second coat on a small part or make a quick cut on the table saw
Telegraph Clacks out RSS Feeds
When I was a boy my father brought home from work a telegraph sounder replica kit. He was the director of the library for a local college and the sounder kit was one of several museum quality reproductions of 19th Century technology the library had acquired. The lovely brass
How to Make a Cheap Lightbox
For many of my recent projects I have found myself in need of a lightbox so I took a couple of hours from working on my latest project to put together this one. I used a piece of glass from the old Xerox machine that I bought for ten dollars
Copper Plating and Etching Altoids Tins
UPDATE: There's some great information on this page and it's comments, but I've recently published a far more comprehensive article here: Etching Tins with Salt Water and Electricity With this project I wanted to try a number of new things: Magazine pages as cheap toner transfer media Copper electroplating Etching
Electrolytic Machining of Brass – Part II:
After the perhaps overly optimistic attempt at electrolytic machining in Part I, I decided to try etching parts from thinner sheets of brass. Sheet with thicknesses of .010 and .015" were chosen and I used the advanced image search feature of Google to search for black and white appropriately steampunk images.