Steampunk How to

We see Steampunk props all the time and wonder where the maker found all their pieces. In fact, for some people it's almost like a game to examine each prop and see if they can name all of the original parts. However, for a newcomer (or a novice at prop-making), it may be rea ...more

Thrift stores! As a Steampunk, they can be your best friend, but it's easy to make a tragic mistake. This hands-on guide will help you navigate the murky waters of successful thrifting in order to find the hidden gems that will make your Steampunk outfit complete! Thrift Stor ...more

What I'm going to do in this tutorial is, as the title implies, teach you how to make nearly anything look like metal. This can especially come in handy in Steampunk, as most of us don't have the ability to machine brass. We do, however, have access to wood, PVC, and spray pai ...more

If you're a Steampunk (or costumer of any variety) and you don't know what Rub 'n Buff is, this tutorial will make your life so much easier. You have no idea. So, what is Rub 'n Buff? Well, it's a product made of wax and very, very fine metal grit. You can rub it on any smoot ...more

Before I really get into this article, it's important to note that you do not need a Steampunk persona (or "steamsona") in order to be a Steampunk, or wear Steampunk clothes. Some people like to pretend to be a different person when dressed up in Steampunk clothing, but that i ...more

The holiday season is creeping up fast, and if you're shopping for a Steampunk, it could be almost impossible to find anything for them unless you know exactly where to look. Luckily for you, some of us have done all of the work you'll need. Whether you're Steampunk shopping f ...more

This two-part series (second part here) will teach you literally everything you need to know in order to make pretty much anything out of leather. There are some advanced techniques that I don't cover in this guide, but these are the basics. With these skills, you'll be able ...more

Steampunking Nerf guns by painting them is a pretty common practice among Steampunks, but unfortunately, the really amazing-looking ones involve literally taking the gun apart, painting it, and then screwing it all back together. Well, I'm glad that some people can do that, b ...more

I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who have no idea what a plague doctor is/was, so I'll start with an explanation. Despite what we now consider to be their relatively fearsome appearance, they were originally just doctors, and they have existed for as long as ...more

In the first part of this two-part guide, I covered cutting, grooving, beveling, making holes, and stamping/tooling. I hope you enjoyed that part, because we're pushing the accelerator to the floor and moving ahead at full speed! Covered in this section will be: Burnishing D ...more

While I am a writer with a degree in Creative Writing, I haven't published any Steampunk fiction. However, as a panelist and track director, I've been on panels with many well-known Steampunk writers and have gleaned insight from the things they've said. I've compiled some of ...more

Many people find Steampunk problematic for a whole host of reasons, not least of which is the glorification of an era of Western history that featured institutionalized slavery, racism, sexism, elitism, and many more -isms. Today, Steampunks frequently get accused of subtly o ...more

Let's say that you've got the look down, and you have your Steampunk props all ready to go. Congratulations! You're a Steampunk! But now what do you do with yourself? You can sit there, patting yourself on the back, but that gets lonely after awhile. Your props will look nic ...more

You may or may not have heard the term "greebles" or "kit-bashing" before, but if not, they may sound like nonsense. Particularly 'greebles', which sounds more like the name of a small, gremlin-like creature. However, I assure you that they are very important in prop-making, a ...more

I've seen some pretty ugly steampunked guitars in my day, but this isn't one of them. This one's about as beautiful as they get. French company Wild Customs made this Gibson LesPaul into a steampunk masterpiece. Check out some of these photos:

Do you listen to a lot of music on your smartphone or MP3 player? Ever wished the built-in speaker was louder? You're in luck, because this simple amplifier can increase your volume by 14 decibels and make your device look totally steampunk while you're at it. What You'll Need ...more

Wow, nearly 2013! This is the time I look back over my body of work in 2012 and assess where I am creatively. With large gaps in the year due to moving into a new studio and two extended hospital stays certainly took a toll on my productivity mid year. I'm really proud of the ...more

With this article, I'll be continuing the series I started with my recent plague doctor article. That is, examining tropes that may at first appear to not fit into Steampunk. Obviously the airship pirate never existed in real life, as we never really experienced the age of ai ...more

You may or may not care about this, but sometimes it physically upsets me when I see gears stuck together haphazardly, with no concern for whether their teeth interlock. I mean, what do you do with non-interlocking gears? So when I sat down to design a paper chain of gears, I ...more

One of the hardest, most intimidating parts of making your own Steampunk guns from scratch is the wooden stock of the gun. To be fair, it's probably the hardest part. It requires the most artistry, and is the easiest to mess up. So, I'm going to give you a guide to making you ...more

Ever since the mid-2000s, there's been a lot of bandying back and forth on the Internet over what exactly Steampunk is. Some people think it's one thing, others another thing, and some think that it shouldn't be defined at all. To hell with all of that! I polled some Steampun ...more

Imagine a world where the Rococo period never ended, and it had a lovechild with Sid Vicious. Sounds unlikely? Well, it is. Still, historical accuracy wasn't the goal for this motley group of costumers. Much like the earlier group of Nerfpunk, Rococopunk isn't to be taken ser ...more

You may or may not have heard of alt-rock band Panic! at the Disco, but a year and a half ago they released a single called "The Ballad of Mona Lisa", which had an accompanying music video that was Steampunk-themed. In fact, here's the video: Video: . Well, I'm going to give y ...more

Let me start out by saying that Steampunk isn't about being historically accurate, and that everything I'm about to tell you is entirely optional. That said, let's take a look at the history of screws! What many people don't realize is that before we had metal screws, wooden s ...more

The lovely Kato of Steampunk Couture has gone hardcore. For those who prefer to exercise their imaginations a bit more, Voila! Veronique Chevalier in Gearhearts Steampunk Glamour Revue- click here should do... A recent kerfuffle unfolded on facebook's Steampunk Revolution grou ...more

A Steampunk's Guide to Sex was the subject of a recent successful Kickstarter campaign, and I now hold the finished book in my hands. As such, I can say (mostly) unreservedly that you should buy this book. Allow me to tell you why, before I get into the nitty-gritty about the ...more

Since it's October and Halloween is fast approaching, it's time for a series of articles on how to make the coolest Steampunk Halloween decorations for your home! In this installment, we'll look at some jack-o'-lanterns, skulls, and a few other things that are easy to Steampun ...more

For creating my costumes I try to use only authentic materials, such as old leather, steel, brass, copper, wood and glass. Nearly nothing is glued, most parts are reversible connected with screws. I take my parts from flea markets. I like the smell of old leather and wood and ...more

There are many opportunities to make Steampunk clothing. Clothing can be elegant and relate to the aristocrats of the 19th century. But Steampunk also can be rough and dirty, inspired by the adventurer from stories like 2000 miles under the sea or even movies like "Mad Max" or ...more

There are tons of uses for a flashlight. You can turn it into a laser, hack it into a night vision flashlight, or make it super bright. Or if you're a Steampunk Jedi, you turn it into a steampunk lightsaber. Jen from EPBOT started with a vintage flashlight and attached a piece ...more

Say whatever you want, but Steampunk is primarily a maker culture. Consider that Steampunk has existed since the 1960s and yet more or less languished in obscurity until approximately 2005, which is when it made the leap to costuming. That costuming was what provided the leap ...more

Many of us in the Steampunk community have pets that we love and cherish, myself included, and we want those pets to share our joy of Steampunk. In reality, they couldn't care less, but for some reason we still love to dress them up. Their reactions usually range from bemused ...more

As you know, it's impossible to be a Steampunk without a pair of goggles. In fact, there are entire communities dedicated to judging other Steampunks based solely on their goggles. A Steampunk without goggles is like Samson without his hair, or a duck without a beak—totally po ...more

I can imagine you sitting there thinking to yourself, "I've played a lot of games! I bet he won't have any that I don't know about!" Well, that's entirely possible. I'm only drawing from my own personal experience here, so you may, in fact, know of all these games. However, f ...more

How to Draw Steampunk. I go over a little bit on steampunk information. The various sources to get knowledge on steampunk looks. On my drawing sites, there are other drawing videos, art videos, art tutorials, and more how to draw fantasy posts. Easy things to Draw. For my main ...more

"Jef with one F" from the Houston Press compiled a list of the 10 best steampunk songs, but it's really a collection of the best steampunk music videos. There are some amazing videos in the collection, such as this one, "Brass Goggles" by Steam-Powered Giraffe. It's not the be ...more

As I said in this earlier post, there's no easy way to explain or define the Steampunk aesthetic. There are a large number of Steampunk tropes or "cues", as I call them, that bring to mind the feeling of Steampunk. These cues combine to push past the "not-Steampunk" threshold ...more

I collect straight razors from the Victorian era and then add some steampunk style. Step 1: Remove the Old Scales Traditional 'scales' (the pieces on each side of the razor) are made from celluloid (invented in 1848) or animal horn. Remove the old scales by clipping off the p ...more

As practically the entire Steampunk world knows by now, IBM has predicted that Steampunk will be the big new trend from 2013 to 2015. They based this prediction on their computers, which sift through broad swathes of the internet in order to see patterns that may help commerci ...more

The Recycleart Facebook group frequently posts awesome pictures of steampunk-friendly sculptures. Not all of them look steampunk, but enough do that it's worth checking out. Here are a few examples:

This claw glove by Curiomira, called "Von Richt's Mechanical Glove" is really, really impressive. In addition to the amazing craftsmanship, it also has cool moving parts that make it look mesmerizing in action. Marvel at these pictures, and don't miss the video at the bottom ...more

There's something about the world of steampunk that fascinates me. WonderHowTo has plenty of steampunk projects, like the hardware chess set, binocular goggles, and even a lesson on fashion. But nothing screams steampunk more than nevets_mcd's hard drive case. This case proj ...more

I chose to make this a Steampunk iPad case, but you can change the details and make it look as modern as you'd like. As I said earlier, Steampunks probably shouldn't buy iPhones or iPads, but if you're going to get one, you may as well make it look cool, right? The iPad pictur ...more

If you want to make clothes for your cat, you're on your own. As I recently said in this article, cats will just totally flip out if you make them wear things. Your dog may also flip out, but I've found them to be more tolerant, personally. Anyway, here are the pictures of th ...more

We frequently associate plastics with the modern era, starting at around the 1950s with the prevalence of bakelite. However, for all of you "you can't use plastic in Steampunk" purists out there, I have bad news for you: Victorians used plastic! Granted, bakelite is the firs ...more

Jake von Slatt of The Steampunk Workshop kept breaking the rear glass panel on his iPhone. So, he ended up making his own gorgeous replacement out of brass to replace the standard Apple logo ones who kept getting. The only problem was that it made his signal strength super wea ...more

Not sure if this is specifically counts as steampunk, but it's awesome nonetheless:

Steampunk is a tremendously interesting phenomenon because of its reliance on science fiction, and fiction in general. Steampunk can arguably be broken down into two categories: the fiction, and the aesthetic. Sometimes these categories cross over, but they're often more disti ...more

Today, on our first episode of Steampunk Research and Development, we'll be interviewing Thomas Willeford, owner and operator of Brute Force Leather. Thomas is a man of many talents, and has worked in a vast array of fields. His Steampunk work can be seen in his book, Steampun ...more

There was recently a case that came to national attention where a gentleman was arrested at an airport for having a watch that looked like a bomb, among other things. As it came out, the watch was, in fact, not a bomb, and the man was just an artist who was probably trying to ...more

This may seem like an odd subject, because what do Steampunks and iPhones even have to do with each other? Actually, more than you might think! With the recent release of iOS 6 and the iPhone 5, I thought it was time to show how they relate to Steampunk. Photo by Robert S. Do ...more

Adventure Time is one of the best TV shows for kids that's currently on the air. It's so good that it has real appeal for adults, too. Just do a Google image search for "Adventure Time costume" and you'll see what I mean. But what if Adventure Time was a steampunk show? Well, ...more