Johnjonesfour

My rocketship playhouse was featured on Make's Substack!

In this video I walk through my full f-stop printing workflow-from the very first ½-stop test strip, to refining exposure in ⅛-stop steps, and finally shaping the image with dodging and burning in stops instead of seconds. I also demonstrate a project I'v

What happens when your son watches Apollo 13 on repeat and asks for a rocket ship? You start sketching… then open Fusion… and suddenly you're building a two-story rocket ship playhouse. This project was inspired by an old Make magazine video, but I levele

I completely rebuilt the back wall of my workbench - and the result is a fully custom pegboard system packed with storage for electronics, tools, and all my photography + videography gear. In this video, I walk through the entire build on John Builds Thin

Take imaginative play to the next level ! In this project, I built my 4-year-old a homemade Apollo-inspired rocket control panel using laser-cut acrylic, UV printing, and an Arduino. Complete with flashing lights, toggle switches, and authentic Apollo sou

Welcome to my film photography sanctuary - a custom-built darkroom with a DIY ESP32-powered development timer at its heart. In this video, I'll give you a full tour of the space I spent years dreaming about and months building. You'll learn how I designed

Transforming a dusty spare room into a full-blown home movie theater? Challenge accepted. In this DIY home theater build, I take you behind the scenes of turning our unused basement room into a cozy, cinematic escape - complete with a custom starfield cei

My office has plenty of great toys, but it was missing something important: a stylish clock. Since I had just finished assembling a lightweight, 3D-printed CNC machine based on a Dremel, I started brainstorming ways to put it to use. That's when I came ac

If you're going to build a Time Machine into a car (or truck), why not do it with some style? That was exactly the question I had as a Back to the Future fan myself. This question even vexed my toddler. He'd ask me: Why can't my truck go 88 mph in a resid

Abridged Transcript: # I absolutely love film photography. From the moment I was first given a hand-me-down Nikon SLR in the early 2000s until today, the process of loading a fresh role of film into a camera excites me. Much like most working professional