This week I made some small concrete planters, using old plastic containers as molds.
This was my first time working with concrete, but I do have some mold making and casting experience from school, albeit rusty. If you’re a newbie like me, these two free Instructables Classes will be extremely handy:
The chain on my motorcycle was super loose, and should probably be replaced. I ordered a new one, but then found out that I should also replace the sprockets at the same time, so today I’m just adjusting the chain tension on my 1975 Honda CB200.
I almost didn’t make this tutorial, since I basically just followed the excellent instructions from a video I found on Old Bike Garage’s channel. But hey, I can offer you my experience of performing this routine maintenance for the first time, and a riding montage at the end of the video. And if nothing else, hopefully this’ll stir up some Google juice for the excellent video that taught me.
Amy, Jeff, and Bill are joined by Becky Stern (of Instructables, Adafruit, and Make: Magazine fame) to discuss content creation and what it’s like to be a woman online.
I painted this tank a while back and just hadn’t gotten around to editing it because the tank still awaits some custom art, a topcoat, and final mounting on my boyfriend’s hardtail xs650. But hey, when that happens maybe I’ll do a part two! No need to keep this DIY hostage until then, so here it is. This Instructable chronicles the tank’s journey from bare metal through two coats of automotive primer and two coats of Hot Rod Flatz matte automotive paint. It was my first time using the Preval sprayers and I thought they worked well for our circumstances (having no compressor-powered spray gun or prior experience with automotive paint).
It feels like just yesterday I was writing my first tutorial on Instructables, but it was actually over a decade ago. Since then, I’ve been making and publishing tutorials almost every month, and more recently, every week. During that time, I’ve accumulated some tips for you. Some of these tips can be found in my 2014 MAKE article about making better build videos, but these tips will be good for any type of documentation you’re making.
This guide assumes you are familiar with the basics of photography. If you need a refresher, check out Audrey’s excellent (and free) Instructables Photography Class.
I am asked frequently what equipment I use to capture and edit my DIY projects, tutorials, and videos. Here’s a comprehensive list of my current arsenal for 2017. I maintain the opinion that you can always take great photos and videos with whatever camera you have (so long as you’ve got good lighting), which has lead to some scrappy choices over the years. My goal has always been to keep my equipment within my own personal operating abilities to keep productions as lean as possible, but to be honest these days I don’t want for much. These are the carefully selected tools I’ve come to incorporate into my professional photography/videography practice. All of the practical tips in my 2014 MAKE article about making great build videos still apply, even if the equipment is different.
Panasonic GH4 – Love this camera, more than any camera I’ve ever owned! This mirrorless micro four thirds interchangeable lens camera was designed to be a video powerhouse, and has literally never let me down. The screen flips all the way around, the battery life is incredible, the programmable buttons let you customize the controls to the things you use most often, and because I still edit video in 1080 but shoot in 4K, I can crop in on my shots in the edit to improve composition and clarity. For streaming, which I do significantly less of than I used to, the GH4 outputs clean HDMI video with the option of no menu overlays (try and name another prosumer level camera that does this). The newer GH5 doesn’t crop the sensor in video mode, but for me that’s the only feature that would make a difference in my day-to-day (the improved OIS wouldn’t give much benefit to my tripod-tabletop shots). At some point I did think about getting the Sony A7Sii (performs much better in low light), but upon trying out a friend’s, it became evident that the lack of screen flexibility was a dealbreaker in my workflow, which routinely puts the camera facing straight down.
I made embroidered patches to memorialize my cat, Beatrice. You could use this technique to create an embroidered patch from any image, really. I’m going to walk you through the things that I did, but there’s a bunch of different tools you could use instead for each step to arrive at a similar result (like tracing directly from the computer screen like in my similar 2008 ‘ible).
