About

This is a col­lec­tion of free, very detailed, how-to instruc­tions for mak­ing a vari­ety of do-it-your­self projects. It was inspired by real­iz­ing that, after I went to all the work of fig­ur­ing out the details of build­ing some­thing, I ought to doc­u­ment the process so oth­ers could make use of my expe­ri­ence (and so I’d have good notes in case I want to revis­it one). Many of these projects are my own ideas, and oth­ers are projects designed, or inspired by some­one else. I have tried to give attri­bu­tions in each project to the orig­i­na­tor or inspi­ra­tion, if oth­er than myself.

All the projects have a dif­fi­cul­ty rat­ing, indi­cat­ing their com­plex­i­ty or the gen­er­al skill lev­el required. Browse around to find some­thing that inter­ests you and give it a try! Please add any com­ments you would like about how the project worked for you, how you changed it, or what you would do dif­fer­ent­ly if you did it again.

Category Descriptions

• Fun — games, toys, prac­ti­cal jokes and the like

• Use­ful — tools, fur­ni­ture, space or time sav­ing devices — things you can “use”

• Mod/Hack — increas­ing the use­ful­ness or re-pur­pos­ing something

• Pro­ce­dure — a process which does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly yield a prod­uct, such as a wood­work­ing tech­nique or repair process

Difficulty Ratings

• 1 star — Rel­a­tive­ly few steps, accu­ra­cy not crit­i­cal, spe­cial tools not need­ed, min­i­mal con­se­quences for devi­at­ing from the instructions

• 2 stars — May not turn out so well if instruc­tions not fol­lowed close­ly, or mea­sure­ments aren’t accu­rate enough, sharp or poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous tools may be needed

• 3 stars — Atten­tion to details is need­ed, tol­er­ances may be clos­er and fit and fin­ish are impor­tant, pow­er tools may be need­ed, con­se­quences of mess­ing up or cut­ting cor­ners could result in per­son­al injury or dam­age to expen­sive parts

• 4 stars — Same as 3 stars plus high­er lev­el of craft and atten­tion to details is need­ed, could require cre­ative trou­bleshoot­ing before it will work properly

Project Submissions

If you have a project idea, or would like to doc­u­ment one of your own to sub­mit to this site, please let me know via the con­tact form below. I wel­come par­tic­i­pa­tion by you, the do-it-your­self community.