There's a ton of videos on the web of musicians playing homemade PVC instruments, but I just recently stumbled upon the impressive work of PVC pipe player Kent Jenkins, aka Snubby J. His most recent video features a duet with his faux-twin, playing "Wizards in Winter" by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.
This goes through to a how-to on how to make a skein winder. For the uninitiated, a skein is the default unit of thread, and it's that windy log that yarn comes in as well. With this snappy tool, you can wind your own skeins as well. If you combine that with the newspaper into yarn concept, you can make your own yarn and wind your own skeins when you're done.
I've had a few short chances to see 3d printing in action, namely at the World Maker Faire in New York this year, and I have to say, the technology is very interesting.
Now how's that for alliteration? WOO! Anyway, this has already made the rounds, but if you haven't seen it yet, check this out. When you take a low-slung four wheel bike frame, a crap load of PVC pipe, miles of duct tape and about 1,000 hours, you, too can drive a Porsche without the high insurance payments.
These guys take found item recycling to the max. This isn't exactly the most useful application for recycling, but if the stuff is going to be around for the next couple of thousand years, it might as well look cool.
This forum has a discussion about painting PVC that has some opinions from very accomplished people, including Volpin Props. They go over primers, adhesion promoters, sanding and more, and if you see these people's work, they are the go-to guys for informed ideas on this subject.
My goal here is to eventually show every single thing that people have come up with using PVC pipe so that we can be truly innovative here. What I'm starting to notice is that the cutting edge is in constant motion. We, as human beings, continue to improve on yesterday's ideas. While this page in particular is not extremely remarkable, it continues to show the versatility of this material. Sooner or later though, this coarkboard should have a nice rundown of everything that people are...
Theo Jansen is really cool. If you dig around in the corkboard here, you can find another video about him. He makes amazing kinetic sculptures from PVC pipe, and has a wonderful artistic point of view. I just discovered this old TEDTalks podcast via Taylor Browning's site. Fantastic stuff, check it out:
These guys always make cool things, and when you give them a stack of PVC pipe, it is no exception. There's a rough how-to here that shows concepts without walking you through the actual projects they made. Very cool stuff.
The P.S. 1 Young Architects Program design competition is always an amazing event. Recently, an architectural firm called Bjarke Ingels Group made this showing at the P.S.1.
This is pretty cool here. They're using PVC pipe to make new legs and feet for amputees. Instead of paying thousands of dollars, an amputee can now get a new limb for $25.
I know, I know, I've already posted one of these. Sorry, but this one's cooler than the last, so I had to put it up. This also has a great in-depth tutorial that shows exactly what to do and why you do it. There are photos for every step of the process, so you can actually make this one without too much head scratching.
