Anodize Aluminum at Home with Everyday Materials
Anodizing is a process that builds up a very thin but strong protective layer on the surface of a non-ferrous metal. It is achieved using chemical/electrical oxidization, and is most commonly done on aluminum , but occasionally also seen on titanium, silver and other metals….
Guitarist and Musician Project: Make Your Own Digital Delay Pedal
This is a low-cost, easy to follow project that appeals to all of us who have wanted to sound like a guitar god at some point. Delay pedals are a staple effect of so many musicians these days. Take U2’s The Edge; his sound is…
Recipe Video: Cooking Koshari – Delicious Egyptian Vegetarian Dish
Koshari is a traditional dish from Egypt, one that tastes so good I can’t stop eating until nothing is left. The dish has many parts, all of which are pretty simple but combine together for complete deliciousness: Rice/lentil (referred to as koshari), spicy tomato sauce, macaroni, garbanzo beans and fried…
The DIY Temporary Wood-Fired Pizza Oven Build: Tips, Notes and Photos
As noted in my temporary pizza oven writeup (and reiterated in my “Pizza Obsessives” interview by Slice – check it out!), making an effective pizza oven can be as simple as stacking blocks. Use a quickly made jig to build an easy brick arch…
Template for the Temporary Brick Pizza Oven Arch, How to Determine the Radius of an Arch, and Removing the Jig
The temporary brick pizza oven I helped build got a lot of attention and a number of questions about the jig used to place the bricks into the arch. Here are the details and a rough blueprint: -Legs: 2×4, approximately 12″ long (extending 9.25″…
Make a Perforated Pizza Peel for Improved Pizza Making
After getting to use Pizzahacker’s perforated pizza peel, I decided to make a DIY version for myself. The idea behind a perforated peel is that it reduces the amount of flour that gets underneath the dough when placing it in the oven (too much…
CNC Milled Aluminum Tape Dispenser
I’ve been gathering materials and information to build a CNC machine for a while, but keep putting it off because I haven’t thought of any exact application I need one for just yet (aside from milling a Hellraiser-style cube). Then I saw this: a…
Wood Fired Pizza On the PizzaForge BBQ Oven with PizzaHacker
Jeff Krupman (aka PizzaHacker) is doing some very cool things in the pizza world. His oven, dubbed the PizzaForge (formerly called the FrankenWeber) is a true wood-fired pizza cooker that is ingeniously built onto a ubiquitous Weber 22.5″ grill. Even better than having designed…
The Hexapod Robot “Best Of Dance” 2010 Video
Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences has a hardware-software design program with a fantastic competition: Hexapod robot dance-off. I don’t know much about it as of right now but I am going to do some serious research because this looks like a great program….
Quick and Easy Way To Clean Your Pizza Stone: Power Sander
Pizza stones tend to get dirty quickly – spill some sauce or cheese onto the 600ºF surface and it almost immediately turns into a burnt black mess. I usually clean my stone passively, scraping any excessive residue with a dough scraper and letting the…
Hi, I'm Mike. I’m the executive editor of Make: magazine, and host of Discovery channel’s Punkin' Chunkin' and Catch It Keep It, TV shows where I build and explain crazy machines that crush stuff, blow things up, shoot fire, all in the name of science.
I've previously worked at Wired and ReadyMade magazines, writing about how to utilize new technology in our everyday lives.
This site is where I keep a list of instructions for fun projects I've done, am working on, or draw inspiration from. I encourage everyone to get involved — get up and do something!