As you may already know, our community projects library, Make: Projects, has a Reuse section, with dozens of projects related to reuse, recycling, “upcycling,” and the like. Here are a few of my favorites.
DIY Soldering Iron StandHey there, my geek friend. Has this ever happened to you? (It’s happened to me.) You’re in a hotel room. You brought your electronics gear, your parts, your soldering iron. But you forgot your soldering stand! Don’t burn the fake finish off of that desk lamp base (it’s happened to me), use a wire coat hanger and fashion this handy stand!
Bottle Cutting
When I was a kid, I got a bottle-cutting kit for Christmas (that I actually asked for!). I went nuts for several months, fashioning all sorts of drinking glasses and glass art with it. In this how-to, Sean Ragan shows you one technique for bottle cutting (which, as he points out, is more like a process of controlled breakage) that has a high degree of success. Let a thousand pieces of retro-hippie glass art bloom!
Cigar Box Guitar
The Cigar Box Guitar has become a MAKE signature project. Here, Mark Frauenfelder, our resident three-string axeman, shows you, step-by-step, how to build a real instrument (that’s quite lovely) out of a cigar box, a chunk of lumber, some BBQ skewers, and some tuning pegs.
Have you checked out our Green Projects Contest yet? Some clever, fun projects and ideas have been submitted. Vote for the ones you like. Put up your own projects, grab your “tag,” and spread it across the interwebs. Get your social network to vote for your projects. Tag Your Green!
