a power black hat can be a real but at the same time it can be a great bonding
experience with those around you with no TV or Wi-Fi talk about anything like how
long it might be until the power comes back on why the power might have gone
out how long till the power returns am I sure I check the meter box which is all
great unless you're at home on your own so I'm going to show you how to get some
sweet tunes cranking so you don't have to sit there listening to yourself
breathing so there I am starting the day nice and early the coffee machine is
warming up I sit down to get some work done and boom power goes out I do the
usual in-depth diagnostic test of flicking all the switches in the house
giving friendly gestures to everything that doesn't work power outage is
confirmed priority one in an emergency like this is to re-establish Wi-Fi I got
this sorted using a car battery and some cables I had on hand with Wi-Fi back up
and running there is priority two which is music to fill the silence the
refrigerator normally covered this is easy you can just use your phone which
is fine for a few hours until the battery goes flat now the first thing
you'll need for this project is a takeaway coffee cup this won't be too
hard because you'll have to order coffee out because the power is down so in
thinking about what some of the best power sources around the house are that
I could use to generate some music apart from a car battery when it came to mind
was the lithium batteries from my cordless drill they're always charged
and on standby and should last a fair while being 18 volts it's an awkward
voltage to power something else up but if just using the battery with the drill
it'll be the perfect basis for our music machine some of the other items you'll
need are some F clamps a plastic ruler a variety of plastic cutlery and some
chopsticks from your takeaway lunch that you'll have to buy and a pen lead one
that's shaped like this should do perfectly now let's get started the
first thing you'll have to do is grab your disposable coffee cup take off the
lid now using a utility knife we want to carefully cut the rock bridge off the
bottom of the coffee cup now you have to be careful here not to cut too close to
the bottom of the cup because this Ridge holds the bottom unit so if you cut too
close it'll all out nice you successfully flat bottomed your coffee
cup you can now give it a little tap just to
make sure it stays in okay maybe tap out a bit of a tune this cup is primed for
cranking out some smooth beats now I'm just taking a quick break to eat all the
icy poles in the freezer because they're all gonna melt another part you're gonna
need is two peanut oil pans try and get the sharpest ones you can find don't
have any bends or any burrs on the end pick the sharpest of the two pins then
get some Emery paper and put it on a hard flat surface now we want to sharpen
the pin further this parts a pretty delicate process you have to rub the pin
across the emery paper in the one direction lifting it clearly each time
otherwise who put a tiny burr on the end of the pin as you go just slowly rotate
the pin and be really consistent with the angle once you reckon it's pretty
sharp you want to get some fine grade steel wool then use this to further
polish the pin so there's no little dodgy bits on the end now using the
other pin that you collected not the one you just sharpened the other one that's
not the sharp one but it's still sharp just less sharp than the one you
sharpened carefully use a pin to punch a hole in the center of the bottom of the
cup now it's broken up okay so you're we're going to have to glue the bottom
of our Cup and the quickest drying glue would be hot glue but we can't use a hot
glue gun because there's no power sorry a handy trick in this situation is to
get a glue stick and a lighter and then you can heat the glue stick and get glue
a blowtorch is quicker though and then simply paste it around the base of your
cup if you do trigger your coffee cup too close to the base you might want to
glue it with PVA to begin with for extra strength that is if you're not in a rush
for some sweet coffee cup tunes because the PVA glue will take overnight to dry
now using that pin again they're not sharp one that's still sharp put a hole
in the center of the bottom of your coffee cup don't push the pin all the
way through otherwise the hole be too wide now once again with our blowtorch
glue wand we want to heat up some more glue and then carefully paste this
around the base of the pin but be careful not to get it on the end of the
needle while the glue is still nice and hot grab the pin with a pair of long
nose pliers and insert it through the hole in the bottom of the cup
once you get it through the hole give the pin a little bit of a twist just to
make sure the glue takes nicely to the bottom of the cup then flip the cup over
and what we have to do is put the needle on a bit of an angle and then just hold
that angle until the glue cools nice you've made yourself an anti tip anti
spill coffee cup just jam it down for no more spills on your coffee table and
you catch weight left vent cycle back to our music conundrum grab a cordless
drill and one of the F clamps we're going to take one of the F clamps and
attach it to the battery so it's a good idea just to double-check that the
battery has some charge in it because you won't be able to change it after if
you need to replace it well you kind of like not you because there's no power
and the whole projects kind of a waste of time yeah when putting the clamp onto
the drill we want to get the Chuck of the drill as vertical as possible but
don't tighten it too much otherwise you break it in or the battery the lithium
ion goods are gonna come out and they're gonna far you right up we need some
tunes for our machine and I have some record vinyl music tapes on hand and
luckily these were picked up from a thrift shop years ago and for a period
they were mounted to the wall just because they look cool and now they've
been taken down and they have lots of double-sided tape stuck to the back and
plaster but we can work around that so just having a bit of a flick through
what we have on hand we have a touch of nostalgia it's good to get you nostalgia
touched Chopin Chopin and his greatest hits copper sylvia that's always fun
techo cough ski got old Tetch owes ludwig van beethoven that's gonna be
great too and also those ones now you will need a bolt to go through the middle
of your record I didn't have something that fitted exactly but they're slightly
smaller six millimeter bolt has a countersink tapered head which we
perfect to help itself a line when it goes through the hole in the middle of
the record then just give it a little spin and see if it all looks nice and
aligned now it's all bolted up we can take that and we can put it directly
into the Chuck of the drill and tighten it up check the speed settings on your
drill I'm gonna kick this party off in number one which is low speed and we
also want to check the direction of the record I do
know which way they turned at the time because I had no internet but have a
guess if you said clockwise to your screen you are correct
they spin clockwise make sure it spins clockwise now check to see that
everything looks like it's staying reasonably flat if not just stop it and
maybe kind of bend it into shape and then you can grab your coffee cup and
give it one last check that the needle is nice and sharp this is the sound of
my fingerprint playing music we still need to make an arm to hold our coffee
cup but at this point we can actually give it a little test just to make sure
the cup works just hold the cup nice and straight and make sure the slight angle
on the needle points away from the way it's turning and then very slowly pull
on the trigger of the drill
it doesn't seem to sound too bad so far so we can get making the rest of our or
record player now something I've noticed straight away
is it's pretty hard to hold the trigger on the drill to keep the drill going at
a consistent speed so we need to set up some things that will hold the trigger
for us but will also be variable so we can adjust the playback speed I've found
an old antenna clamp in the shed that should do perfectly I've put a wing nut
on there this should make it nice and easy to tighten up to set our speed and
to then loosen to turn it off with my sophisticated speed controller in
operation we can give the coffee cup another test now you may be wondering or
have concerns that the needle is going to cause damage to the record but you
can relax just because it's good to relax now I'm pretty happy with how that
sounding and the record is writing nice and flat yes somehow I expected a record
in a drill to write smoother than that okay time to build the arm for the
record player using your blowtorch glue stick
heat up some glue and apply some to the end of the ruler grab your coffee cup
and jam it in your puddle of hot glue but make sure the angle of the nail is
pointing away from the length of the ruler also using the hot glue I've put
some on the plastic spoon and I'm using this as an angle brace just to stop the
cup shaking about when it's planed some mad tunes pointy we can now use the pen
lead and glue that on to the ruler as well this is gonna be the balance and
pivot point try to find the right place to glue this is a little bit of
guesswork however the ruler is handy here because
it has measurements marked on it which is a good reference as you make changes
I'm going to start out with 170 millimeter mark just cuz we can now grab
your chopsticks separate them and you can see why these work out quite well
because I've got this nice tapered end which fits nicely into the pen lid this
will hold the arm the record player I'm not sure call it let's call it post
record arm post yeah yeah record arm post anyway grab your record
arm post and your spare f-clamp and we're gonna clamp that onto the side
of the other clamp now this is also a bit of guesswork but their clamps are
good because you can adjust it and change it until you find the right spot
of course there's probably information online about the dimensions of record
players how long the arm is and where this post should be but it's all kind of
guesswork because my phone is flat so I'm guessing the basic idea is the
position of the arm post pivot and the length of the arm has to allow the
needle in the coffee cup to travel along the straightest arc possible from the
outside edge of the records in the middle if it's in the wrong position
it'll be pulling on the cup sideways too much and it will make the needle jump
across the grooves on the vinyl which will sound else normally a counterweight
or two would help here but because the record is so warped I reckon it's gonna
skip over the grooves anyway so let's fire it up and see how it goes
okay it's not sounding too bad but the arm is pulling too much from the outside
in and the inside out so I'm thinking the arm is a little too short it's time
to crack out the old hot glue again and reposition the pen lid
not bad I think everything's positioned quite well now and of course with every
win we have we find new problems so now you can see our armed posts can fly
right back and forth a little too easily so we'll have to brace that up and while
we're gluing a chopstick on there we might as well glue some more cutlery to
the cup just to make sure everything is nice and strong because you don't want
friends looking at it thinking that is a subpar better drilled coffee cup a
record player you've got there with that complete you're now ready to kick back
and let some fine coffee cup tunes make your power outage woes drift away
I hope you guys enjoyed this project if it is something you're gonna have a go
out and having trouble try different cup sizes and different cup brands with the
cup sizes I found the small cups seem to make a higher fidelity sound and the
bigger cups will out up but they will kind of distort the vocals you can try
different pins sewing stuff is good don't use fish hooks that ended that in
badly I'm Craig Turner my youtube channel is Turner 81 I subscribe if
you're in the neighborhood see you next time
looks alright from this end.