Upcoming Projects

I've always got projects going on, but often loose interest between the "figure-it-out-in-my-head" and the "actually-doing-it" stages. Perhaps if I list the stuff I really want to do here, it'll give me enough motivation to actually finish.


1 Make a Gatling Gun or other hand cranked machine gun chambered for .22 long rifle. I've looked at the Gardner Gun which would be quite a bit easier to make, but it's not as impressive as 5 barrels spinning around spewing smoke, lead, and fire. If I could figure out how belt fed guns work, I might make one of them. Apparently these are legal to make and shoot as long as they are hand cranked. Definitely need to confirm that though. ;-)

2 Make a really good animation and write some music for it. I've got a plot and storyboard all written up, now I just need to get better at using the software. I plan to use
Pencil and Renoise to make it. If it turns out good, I'll make a movie theatre map for BZFlag using my animation script.

3 Write some more stories for my writings section. I've got a couple good ones, like catching a guinea hen that was wreaking havoc on the neighbors yard with my bare hands.

4 Build a crossbow that is powered by a small leaf spring from a trailer or small car. It would be awesome to use it on this upcoming deer season and actually bag a deer.

5 Build an enclosure for a camera and set of LED's to take pictures of the bottom of the river I live on. I plan to make it out of PVC pipe and a web camera. I know where there's a shipwreck and I'd really like to see if I could image it. I need to figure out whether to tether the camera to a laptop on my boat so I can see what's going on in real time, or make the camera self contained and hope for the best.

6 Make an antler mount plaque for a small 4 point deer I bagged last year.

7 Design and build a vastly simplified Antikythera Mechanism. I plan to use wooden gears and have a four year scale. One dial will display the date, and a different dial will show what phase the moon is in. I'd like for it to predict eclipses, but I don't understand the original well enough to make that happen.

8 Build a remote control sailboat from scratch. I'd love to anchor my canoe out by a marshy island by my house and sail a little boat around for an afternoon if the wind isn't quite good enough for my real sailboat. I plan to make the hull out of fiberglass and design everything myself. My main problem will be the electronics as I have no idea how that will work.