Welcome

SPARE PARTS ARE ESSENTIAL

By Mark Frauenfelder

CLUTTER IS A DEMOTIVATING ENERGY

sapper. Every couple of months, when my desk

gets stacked high with papers, gadgets, and

periodicals, and my office floor has accumulated piles

of books and packages, I conduct an area sweep

collecting the things I don’t have an obvious need for.

Mostly I throw them in the trash or donate them.

But I don’t get rid of everything. Some of the

things I come across seem to plead for a second

chance at being useful: “Save me! One day you’ll

be glad you did.” These go into a plastic bin I keep

in my storage shed.

What kind of things do I put in my spare parts

bin? Anything that seems like it might come in

handy one day: toys with electric motors, little

speakers, switches, Altoids tins, those plastic bub-

bles used in vending machines to hold little trinkets,

broken flashlights, and extra parts from previous

projects. The box is a cluttered mess, but it’s a

contained clutter, and it’s actually inspirational.

When I poke around in it I dream of possibilities.

These components have come in handy on

several occasions. When I made the Vibrobot (see

MAKE, Volume 10, page 119) I had all the materials

I needed on hand. If the project had required a trip

to the hardware or electronics store, I might have

never completed it.

Same for the Boing Box (this volume, page 116),

a sound effects prop from the 1951 book Radio

and Television Sound Effects by Robert B. Turnbull.

Because I already had everything I needed, from

a wooden cigar box to a spool of galvanized wire,

I was able to whip it together in under an hour,

and was happily plucking boinging sounds for the

remainder of the afternoon.

In both instances I had to modify the project

Photograph by Mark Frauenfelder

because the stuff in the parts bin didn’t quite match

the idea I had in my mind, or the plans as printed,

but I believe the things I made were better, not

worse, because of it.

It’s been only a matter of months since I started

appreciating the benefits of keeping a bin of spare

parts, but master makers have long known how

essential it is to the creative process. When I visit

their workshops, I’ve noticed their stockpiles of

stuff with no immediately apparent purpose: parts, scraps, and retired gadgets just waiting for the day when their owner comes up with the idea that calls them into service.

As you look through the projects in this issue of MAKE, think about how you might be able to build them using the stuff you already have lying around. After all, that’s how MAKE’s authors create a lot of their projects. They use the materials they have at hand.

By improvising, you’ll not only avoid a trip to the hardware store, you’ll end up making something more personal and possibly better than if you had followed the instructions to the letter.

Take a photo of your parts bin, and/or your final creation, and post a link to it on our comments board at makezine.com/12/welcome. And feel free to add your photos to the MAKE Flickr pool.

Mark Frauenfelder is editor-in-chief of MAKE.

Make: 11