Build-it-yourself projects growing in popularity

New magazines and Web sites devoted to tinkerers are springing up.

NEW YORK (AP) — What do you do when you’ve bolted a computer onto a remote-controlled car, hooked it up with Internet access, a wireless router and a camera but you don’t have anyone to show it off to?

Just ask Mike Davis. He brought his mobile Internet access point to a meeting with other readers of Make magazine, a how-to publication for people who just love to tinker with stuff.

The 28-year-old systems engineer from Brooklyn found people who built homemade LCD displays, a clock that makes you solve a math problem before setting the alarm and a class in mastering pipe mechanics — something with many uses beyond just making a potato cannon.

Make magazine, not yet 3 years old, is leading a new wave of interest in build-it-yourself projects. Even as technology comes to us in packages that are ever harder to take apart and tinker with, Make harkens back to a time when it was OK to build your own radio, get under the hood of your car and open up electronic devices like record players just to see how they worked. Its Web site sells hooded sweat shirts emblazoned with the credo: “If You Can’t Open It, You Don’t Own It.”

People seem to be catching on. In the summer of 2005, not long after Make’s first issue came out, an MIT-educated engineer named Eric Wilhelm launched a site called Instructables.com with how-to instructions for all kinds of projects, while a meet-up group called Dorkbot has been springing up in cities around the country to showcase artistic, musical and just plain quizzical inventions with one thing in common — using electricity.

Make is about to gain an even bigger national audience. A Make-themed TV show is set to air on public TV stations around the country early next year, and on May 3-4 the magazine is hosting its third “Maker Faire,” a contraptions bonanza that drew 40,000 people last year, double the amount of its first year.

Richard Hudson, executive producer of science programming at TPT/Twin Cities Public Television, the PBS station in Minneapolis which is making the show, says he hopes that the new “Make:TV” show will do for the build-it-yourself project what Julia Child did for cooking and “This Old House” did for home improvement. The show is being sponsored by Geek Squad, the technology services business owned by Best Buy Co.

“The real magic of the magazine is giving you permission and the instructions to take control of technology, to do what you want with it,” Hudson said. “In the world of making, you get to turn technology to your will, and that’s a breakthrough.”

The magazine, part of a Sebastopol, Calif.-based technical publishing company called O’Reilly Media Inc., traces its origins to 2003. Dale Dougherty, a longtime editor of technical manuals, suggested “a Martha Stewart for geeks” to CEO Tim O’Reilly. Its paid circulation is 100,000, and back issues sell briskly on its Web site, www.makezine.com. Dougherty says the whole Make franchise is close to being profitable.

Make isn’t about products per se, but recipes for making stuff. Some projects are practical, like a battery charger for an MP3 player, affectionately called a “Minty Boost” after the tin of Altoids mints that is adapted to hold a pair of AA batteries (not included). Other projects are more involved, like using a length of wood and a cigar box to build an electric guitar.

Make has built cred among the geek elite, thanks partly to editor-in-chief Mark Frauenfelder, co-founder the uber-hip Web site BoingBoing. A compendium of wacky finds from the worlds of technology and pop culture, a recent photo posted there featured a “Giant sculpture of woman made from peaches.”

Google Inc., another bastion of tech-coolness, has been a sponsor of Maker Faire and sent representatives there to promote a 3-D modeling and design program called SketchUp, which turns out to be very popular among readers of Make.

“We felt like we were among friends,” said John Bacus, product manager for SketchUp.

Make also goes on field trips to explore what other like-minded contraption creators are doing. Dougherty and contributing editor Bill Gurstelle, a former engineer for AT&T Inc., have visited the Punkin Chunkin World Championships in Delaware, a contest for makers of huge devices designed to hurl pumpkins great distances.

Gurstelle is no slouch in that department. He’s authored a number of books including “Backyard Ballistics” and “Whoosh Boom Splat: The Garage Warrior’s Guide to Building Projectile Shooters.”

Gurstelle, who describes what he does as “PG-13 science projects,” compares Make to what Popular Science magazine was 25 years ago, full of projects made for people “who like to take control of the gadgets and gizmos around them.”

Wilhelm started an early version of Instructables.com while still a starving grad student because he was seeking advice about how to make equipment to support his kite surfing hobby on the cheap. The site is now nearly profitable and is seeing online traffic grow about 10 percent a month, hitting 2.5 million unique visitors in January, said Wilhelm.