It is the weekend. Some sit inside on the couch watching movies and munching on snacks.
Others sleep in through the late afternoon. Three are digging through old scrap wood in a basement with the hopes of creating something by hand. Juniors Charlie Phillips, Nathan Viehmann and Mack Weaver are these three friends who take a different approach to hanging out.
In late October, Mack and Nathan met at Charlie’s house. This day would be the day the three of them would make their first object. There was a need for a table in Charlie’s living room.
The three boys found some old pine wood in Charlie’s basement and got to work. They used a pencil to draw the shapes they would cut out of the wood to make the table. Once the basic pieces were cut out, they nailed two pieces of triangular-shaped slabs of wood on top of vertical standing boards. For two hours, they constructed the table, and were proud of the final product.
According to Charlie, his mom was especially appreciative of the new table for her living room.
After having fun successfully constructing their first object, Charlie, Nathan and Mack met a second time. The three had seen a video on YouTube called “The Most Useless Machine” and were inspired to make an intelligible box, a cube that can turn itself on and off.
In Charlie’s opinion, the box was their most difficult item to build.
“[My favorite was] the box,” Charlie said. “It took the most time and was the most interesting to build.”
While making this box, Nathan, Mack and Charlie learned a new building technique, which was how to solder [pronounced sod-er]. Solder means to fuse two metal objects together by heating them up to their melting point. The boys also implemented a circuit system in their creation.
The third object they built, a hot dog cannon, is something a lot of people don’t encounter on a day-to-day basis. Not many people can one say that they’ve sent a piece of processed meat through the air.
Mack explains how the hot dog cannon works. “We empty some CO2 into a PVC chamber and it’s high pressure and we open a valve and the CO2 pushes the hot dog out of the barrel,” Mack said.
Since the hot dog cannon was constructed mainly from PVC cement, Nathan, Mack and Charlie experienced undesirable side effects from using this material.
“We got light-headedness, dizziness, and headaches from the fumes in the PVC cement,” Mack said.
People have numerous reactions to the boys’ homemade objects. Charlie’s family praised the table that Mack, Charlie and Nathan made. Some of their friends think they’re wasting their time. Some, however, think what they’re doing is interesting and exciting.
“I think it’s cool, especially their hot dog cannon,” friend Alex Sulhoff said. “It’s not something typical. A lot of people don’t go out and build things for fun.”
Another friend feels a little differently about Mack, Charlie and Nathan’s building hobby.
“It’s kind of weird, but afterwards, fun to look at,” friend Danielle Meyer said.
Though Charlie, Nathan and Mack are making stuff on the weekends now, they may not be in two weeks or six months. They have no set time to meet and build things, and don’t build something unless they have a good idea and want to go with it. But no matter how long it last, this hobby of theirs is rare to find among high school students and puts no restrictions on their creativity, keeping them free of any stipulations. It’s just building stuff Nathan-Charlie-Mack-style.
By Aurora Blanchard
