I built my own sheetmetal bending brake. I used some scrap angle steel pieces which I welded with my arc welder.

According to the backyard foundry experts, the most useful casting metal that's even easier to melt than aluminum is zinc. It melts around 420°C/800°F, so you can even melt it on a hot stove. It casts harder than aluminum for better wear, and zinc/aluminum alloys can approach cast iron in strength and durability. Sounds great! All you have to do is buy some nice clean zinc ingots, and... Whoa nelly, what?! Buy ingots? I'm way too cheap-@$$ frugal for that. We're going to melt our own. Easy as pie, right? Turns out that melting zinc is easy. Cleaning it? Not quite so much.

Let's melt metal in the backyard!

Yeah, that teensy-weensy little pool of molten metal in arc welding was cool, but it was time to move up to the next level. A big glowing pot full of silver liquid awesomeness. Oh, yeah.

I built a stylish energy-efficient desk lamp, entirely from scratch. I have always enjoyed Art Deco and Machine Age industrial styling, and was inspired to use it for the lamp when my son and I were watching Batman, the Animated Series. A desk lamp worthy of Wayne Manor was in order.

Here is my crazy aviator costume from Halloween 2008. I was inspired by a recent steampunk ornithopter picture.

I made the aviator helmet using a leather jacket from the thrift store and the goggles from last year's explorer costume. I made the pattern for the helmet by taping newspaper to my head. Then I cut out pieces from the jacket to match and sewed them together. The copper buckle is household solid electrical wire.

Jessica bought a flat panel TV, and wanted to attach it to the wall with some sort of swing-arm mount. The prices at the store were outrageous. Armed with my moderately-trustworthy arc welder and couple of discarded bed frames, we set out to construct one ourselves.

I received a Baldor metal grinder with 10-inch wheels, on its own pedestal floor stand, discarded from a school metal shop program. Several owners before me did not know what to do with it, mainly because the motor is wired for three-phase industrial power which is not found in U.S. residential homes. My job was to fix it up and get it working.

There were two major tasks to the restoration: cleaning/repainting, and making the three-phase motor work.

I received a Baldor metal grinder with 10-inch wheels, with a motor wired for three-phase industrial power. Three-phase power is not provided in U.S. residential homes, so I needed to power it from normal single-phase power. My solution was to build a balanced static phase converter, requiring only a few relatively inexpensive capacitors. (Much less expensive than the nuclear reactor I was considering.)

The handle broke off my manual lawn aerator. It had been welded in place, and since I have an arc welder, I figured I should weld it back on. This was the first time I attempted to arc weld something with a real purpose to it. There were a few details to work out, such as the fact that I don't know if the welder works right, and I don't know if my welding rods are any good, and what was the other one? Oh yeah, I don't know how to arc weld. Well OK then, time to get started.

When I fixed up an old drill press, I found that the switch plate for the on/off switch was fairly worn. The original paint and lettering was worn away, so that the start/stop wording was almost unreadable. Even though I am clever enough to figure out that the big red button means "stop", it needed a clearly readable switch plate label.

My new grinder needed some task lighting for the grinding wheels. I decided to build a dedicated lamp for each side, controlled by the grinder power switch. This worked in perfectly with my latest obsession, I mean interest, which is LED lighting.

Any trained machinist will tell you that a drill press with a cheap jig is no substitute for a proper lathe. I'm not a trained machinist, so now that I've said that, let's get on to accomplishing something interesting.

In my quest for high-efficiency lighting, I came across a new idea for small household lights.

In our bathroom, there are two sconce lights (one on each side of the mirror) in addition to the main lights over the top of the mirror. The side sconce lights are not really necessary for adequate lighting, but they look nice and add some visual charm to the mirror. Therefore I saw them as good candidates for lower-energy substitutes.

One of my contributions to Project Gutenberg was proofreeading and formatting of the Radio Amateur's Handbook by Frederick Collins, 1922. You can read the entire book here, including all illustrations.

Older books like this are great for learning from. Since everything about radio was new to everyone, the book does not assume that you have a lot of knowledge to start with, and explains everything starting with the basics.

Experienced people tell me that you should always get the best tools you can buy, because there is no substitute for the proper tool for a job. Don't be fooled into buying cheap tools, because you will be disappointed when the tool doesn't provide precision results or it breaks down on you.

I agree that in home improvement, woodworking, metal working, and other pursuits, it is always important to have the proper tool for the job. But what is the proper tool for the job, and how much should you spend on it?