How to absolutely kill an hour

A while back, I got one of those rubber band-operated helicopter toys from a street vendor. It was for my daughter. (No, really.)

Naturally, the rubber band broke after repeated use, so I was trying to figure out how to fix the thing and started Googling. My search for “rubber band helicopter” took me to a website that seems to “get” something crucial about us men: we like to fix things.

Not only that, we like to jerry-rig things. If a toy breaks, we’re there with the Super Glue, or the replacement part whittled out of plastic. It’s not that we’re too cheap to buy a new one; it’s the ineffable satisfaction that comes from making something work again.

Plus, we’re too cheap to buy a new one.

Anyway, the Google search led me to makezine.com, a Web version of Make magazine, which I’ve never seen but if I understand correctly, is like Popular Mechanics with fewer practical applications.

Makezine.com is where you will learn how to build pretty much anything. Need a sub-woofer boombox but can’t be bothered heading to Anson’s or Abenson’s? Want to make it solar-powered while you’re at it? Makezine shows you how to fashion one from old speakers, solar panels, balsa wood and an MP3 player. Got a hankering to make actual copies of your old vinyl records? Not MP3s or tape copies, but actual platters you can put on a turntable? Makezine gives you step-by-step instructions on how to pour your old silicone mold, impress the vinyl grooves, and bore a hole through the center of the resulting slab.

Most of the “projects” are sent in by readers, accompanied by amateur photos, but they give pretty detailed info on, for instance, “How to rig your iPhone to speed dial” (a function the iPhone doesn’t currently possess). Or you can learn to build “marble-shooting air rifles” from scratch. Or how to devise “molecule balloons,” which are like balloon animals, but using much tinier balloons so you can whip together accurate representations of, say, Benzene molecules — sure to make you a huge hit at nerd kid parties.

And — whaddya know? — I found out how to make rubber-band helicopters. These weren’t just “weekend hobbyist” rubber-band helicopters, either: some of them involve blade spans of up to four feet. Some can even carry people. (Somewhere in the instructions, it must explain where you can buy a rubber band large enough to propel the things upward.)

But the oddest entry explained how to build a helicopter using only “a business card, paper clips and an office rubber band.” This was obviously sent in by someone with a clear disdain for the correct use of office supplies. The design itself seemed pretty nifty, though I’m not sure what kind of office would allow you to construct D.I.Y. rubber-band helicopters in your downtime. Perhaps I should send over a résumé.

All this jerry-rigged model-making reminded me of my grade school days. Back then, particularly in third grade, when our teacher would insist on wearing sunglasses immediately after lunch break, sit behind the desk in a funk and allow us “free time” until the final bell rang, we became very skilled at rigging private arsenals from classroom supplies. Of course, spitballs (propelled by plastic drinking straws lifted from the cafeteria) were de rigueur: the classroom ceiling and sometimes the blackboard would be caked with wads of chewed-up and spat-out drinking straw wrappers by 2 p.m. every day. Wooden rulers were useful for firing rubber bands at people across the room (sometimes we just karate-chopped the ruler on the edge of a desk, catapulting it across the room like a rotating saber). The most elaborate device involved a simple ballpoint pen, which we learned to disassemble, using the spring as a firing mechanism and the ink cartridge as a projectile. The “clicker” worked as a firing pin, if you put the thing together right.

Yes, all this (and more) young men will learn to do to pass the time from 12 noon until 2:30 p.m.

The people who submit stuff to makezine.com understand this kind of ingenuity. They understand that it’s the key to killing boredom. And they also understand that, sometimes, the only thing to spur someone to accomplish something unique is someone else telling them, “Why would you waste your time doing that?”

Hey, people spend hours on end spiffing up their Facebook profiles or looking at online fashion catalogues. What’s wrong with (mostly) guys spending their time creating “Origami Money Shirts”? That’s where you carefully fold a dollar or some other currency into a miniature button-down shirt. Looks cool, but it’s completely useless. Maybe good for 30 seconds of office water-cooler conversation, tops.

And why shouldn’t someone disassemble old Rubik’s cubes and turn them into pixel art? And if you had nothing but time to kill, wouldn’t you want to design a D.I.Y. Multi-Player Chessboard that allows six people to play at once, form teams and develop strategies? And have it posted on a special website just for you?

Sure you would.

Makezine.com also catalogues cutting-edge developments in technology, much like Popular Mechanics. There’s one invention called EtchASound that gives users “the unique experience of drawing with their own voices.” Based on Etch-A-Sketch technology, it actually allows you to see your words take shape in a computerized 3D drawing, which is viewable in real space using anaglyph (3D) glasses.

The site even shows you how to make 3D glasses. (It’s pretty simple, really: red and blue cellophane and some cardboard, and you’re good to go.)

I don’t know why I’m so happy to have stumbled upon this site. It’s not like I want to build any of this crap. Even my attempts at fixing the plastic helicopter were a flop: the thing flew off a roof the first try and is now irreparably busted. I’ll have to shell out again if I want another helicopter for my daughter. But somehow, it’s nice to know that if I really, really, really wanted to, I could make one myself.