Thomas Thwaites: The Toaster Project

The Toaster Project

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, I'm just going to come out with it: I've fallen in love with Thomas Thwaites's The Toaster Project. The project is his ongoing quest to built a toaster from scratch... and by scratch I mean actually gathering iron ore and smelting it, collecting oil and processing it into plastic, etc.


It's an absolutely brilliant and humorous way to explore our dependence on cheap, easily available goods. The extremes that Thwaites has gone through (and will go through) brings to light the industry behind the small luxuries that we take for granted.

I used to make home brew beer and it occasionally occurred to me that there was a slippery DYI slope... I started out using canned malt extract and moved on to using and milling purchased grain. It occurred to me that the next step was raising my own grain & hops, which was enough for me to give the enterprise up.

Thwaites, however, has gone down that rabbit hole. It will be very interesting to see what he surfaces with.

collecting the ore at a mine

attempting to smelt iron using hair dryers

attempting to smelt iron using a leaf blower

successfully smelting iron using a microwave & china

[via wmmna]