A couple of months ago The Lady asked me to move the kid's playhouse to a different part of the yard.  Not having access to a fork lift, I fig'red that I could mount a 2" hitch ball on the Yaris' tow bar and make a "fork truck" with my flatbed trailer.  It worked beautifully!

Interestingly, the playhouse is built from the last 8' of the 28' travel trailer I cannibalized to make the flatbed.

TxInkman writes:

I dabble in the restoration of old wood maschinist's chests. Gareth over at the Make blog wrote a very nice article about of a couple of my boxes and Toolmonger has featured a few of them. One you might particularly appreciate for it's moderate Steampunkyness, the Gear Box, which Gareth described as Capt. Nemo's shore locker can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/26012426@N08/page10/ on my Flickr site.

Wow! somehow I managed to miss this absolutely gorgeous toolbox!  I've been wanting a toolbox like this for a long time and I have a little pile of "special" wood just waiting for some free time for me to build myself one.  Be sure I'll be stealing some ideas from TXInkman!

Flickr is both wonderful for the amazing images it brings you and frustrating for the all too common lack of story to go with those pictures!

I want to know the whole tale behind the creation of this snowboard!  Be sure to click through to see it in action with its port and starboard windsocks inflated, these appear to be collecting combustion and/or cooling air for the boiler? furnace? reactor? at the rear!

Also, purple hair FTW!

Much more here!

UPDATE: Ah! and here is the story!

Somehow I have managed to be so busy that I have completely missed the first 3 issues of the Gatehouse Gazette! Well no more!

Let “The Romance of Science” enchant you with the fourth and winter issue of the Gatehouse Gazette.

Discover that winter is the perfect season for steampunk fashion in the columns of Miss Hilde Heyvaert and learn that it is the perfect time for gin again from Mr Craig B. Daniel. Read an interview with steampunk artist Miss Molly “Porkshanks” Friedrich and enjoy an exclusive preview of the upcoming steampunk MMORPG Remnants of Skystone by Col. Adrianna Hazard!

And from the Masthead:

The Gatehouse Gazette is a magazine published online, aimed at steampunk and dieselpunk enthusiasts and dedicated to collect reviews and interviews and essays and articles within the scope of these both genres and, in case of the former, movement, to which we, at The Gatehouse, gladly adhere.

Most of the things that I make, with the possible exception of the Wimshurst Machine I recently completed for an article in Make: Magazine, best fit under the category of "prop" rather than "instrument."  That is clearly not the case for this telescope as it is surely as capable an instrument of science as it is a true beauty!

Ross writes:

I've always found your website an inspiration.  Here is one of the products of that inspiration: a large steampunk-style reflecting telescope in mahogany, brass, and copper.  The telescope won awards in craftsmanship and in mechanical design at last summer's Stellafane conference in Vermont, the world mecca for amateur astronomy.

I have more pictures (at full scale) at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8315630@N04/

The Stellafane site has a few more pictures, about half-way down the page:
http://stellafane.org/convention/2008/2008scopes.html

Best,
Ross Sackett, Ph.D.

 One more gorgeous shot under the cut and the rest at Ross' Flicker! Thanks Ross!

Entombed in an ancient Geocities site, Ira Sherman's mechanized sculpture (Google-cache) is unsettling in a very seductive way. It's as if medieval doctors were transported to some futuristic-sounding year (what is that year, now that we live in 2009?), given free reign to unwilling subjects and a metal shop. The machines are terrifying, to be sure, but there are also delicately executed, elegant, and, you know, shiny. If you're going to have your jaws forceably shut, your head shrouded in a maze of machinery and megolomaniacal pavlovian desires- you might as well look good.

" A self contained 500 psi air supply, coupled to a pneumatic sensor switch under the chin, can be adjusted to a persons' jaw, sending bursts of air to the large pneumatic cylinders which effectively muzzle the wearer if they open their mouth. While this feature alone is an effective deterrent to excessive jaw movement, the PT has a built in head locking device which, when placed on the head, will immediately lock down on the head with pneumatic levers which squeeze between the eyes and behind the neck."

Dear lord.

To save you the trouble of trying to find it throught dying site,  here's the same artist, (Google-cache) this time with a series of chastity belts, with miniture bear traps situated just so.

(Oh dear! we've Slashdotted the poor Geocities site! I didn't know had had the mojo! - Jake)

I've been chillaxing for awhile now in Boston. It's very unusual that I stay in a place for more than 3 nights, and I've been here 3 weeks. The reason for my extended stay is Stonybrook Fine Arts, a bad-ass DIY space, classroom, metal shop. This is exactly the sort of place that I love- a place for anyone to come and learn skills, to get hands on, and get a little greasy. While I've spent my time sculpting and casting bronze memorials to my crashed car, they also offer classes in welding, mold making, jewelry, figure sculpting, and more. Basically, you can come here, learn how to use your hands and wield power tools, and, goshdarnit, make shit.

To top it off, they allow hourly rental of the shop for people who can't necessarily house a full metal and casting shop. Which is all of you.If you're in the Boston area, or know DIY-ers that are, I can't recommend the shop highly enough.

Blanket Magazine has a short piece of Steampunk on the web this month, but that is mainly just the excuse I used to post.  Blanket magazine is:

. . . is a free PDF online magazine that is aimed at uncovering art + design + photography from the talented people who create it.

The name blanket came from the simple idea that we wanted to ‘cover’ all the areas of art, design and photography and bring them together in one magazine.

I've only skimmed the rest of the content so far but the images and graphics are absolutely gorgeous!  Download the PDF by clicking on the image above.  (Found via Mechanis)

Here's a dead simple cell phone charging station I installed next to our main entrance.  It's just a pair of hangers of the sort you'd use in the garage to store a shovel or a rake.  If your wall isn't made of barn-board like ours, you can screw the hangers into a block of wood and use regular drywall anchors to attach it.

[Bigger pics behind the cut]

TechnOccult inteviews wunderkammer artist AlexCF:

I guess it all started with this little box, called “The Vampire Legacy Case” about a 14th century aristocratic vampire, the last rites and possessions of this vampiric lord. I had the idea of creating an alternative past, creating characters and species with which to fabricate my own world in which all these things existed. So I started making, and the rest is history!