STEAMY STEPS

California artist and animator I-Wei Huang, known as Crab Fu, has built a legion of remote-controlled steaming creatures out of scale-model tanks and boats, electronics kits, and ”a bunch of junk parts I’ve collected.” The Steam Walker, one of his favorite creations, uses a Wilesco D14 miniature steam engine and a system of sprockets and chains to move its feet.

STEAMY STEPS

California artist and animator I-Wei Huang, known as Crab Fu, has built a legion of remote-controlled steaming creatures out of scale-model tanks and boats, electronics kits, and ”a bunch of junk parts I’ve collected.” The Steam Walker, one of his favorite creations, uses a Wilesco D14 miniature steam engine and a system of sprockets and chains to move its feet.

WHIMSICAL WARDROBE

Leather hats, aviator goggles, and ray-gun props are among the steampunk accessories created by Molly ”Porkshanks” Friedrich of Seattle. She’s one of a growing number of artists and fabricators handcrafting steampunk jewelry, costumes, and other artifacts, which can be found on eBay, Etsy, deviantART, and specialized online shops like Got Steam? and Buy Steampunk.

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

CREATOR AND CREATURE

Richard ”Datamancer” Nagy calls his latest creation the Archbishop. It’s a Gothic-themed wooden frame with stained glass and brass embellishments that houses a high-powered PC and an LCD. It comes with a brass keyboard, a drawing tablet disguised as an antique book, and a curious back story: in July, a 5.8-Richter-scale earthquake almost knocked the Archbishop to the ground, but Nagy jumped over a worktable and saved it.

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

BOILING BRANCHES

The Steampunk Tree House is a nearly 10-meter-high interactive sculpture with a massive steel trunk and branches that shoot out steam. It was conceived by Sean Orlando, a cofounder of Kinetic Steam Works, a San Francisco Bay Area arts group, and built by more than 60 designers and fabricators. After showing the tree house at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert and at other events, its creators are now looking for a permanent home for the sculpture.

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

RETRO RIDE

Sean Slattery (aka Jake von Slatt, proprietor of the Steampunk Workshop plans to convert his faux Mercedes into an anachronistic steam-powered Victorian vehicle. He bought the car—its fiberglass body imitating that of a 1929 Mercedes Gazelle SSK, its chassis taken from a 1972 Volkswagen Beetle—on eBay for US $1500. He plans to paint the machine black with gold filigree, mount brass headlights and a slanted grille, and install a compact boiler to drive the vehicle with steam.

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

ACROSS THE ATLANTIC

Early this year, a strange apparatus named the Telectroscopeconnected New York City and London using a video link—or rather, if you ask Paul St George, the imaginative artist who created it, a transatlantic tunnel and a complex system of lens and mirrors conceived by his ”great-grandfather, an eccentric Victorian engineer.”

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

MOBILE MANSION

A self-propelled three-story Victorian house on wheels, the Neverwas Haul was conceived by Shannon O’Hare (a k a Major Catastrophe) and built by San Francisco Bay Area artists and fabricators. The mobile mansion currently uses a diesel engine, but the group hopes to replace it with a steam engine someday.

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

ECCENTRIC ENGINEER

Jacob ”Jake of All Trades” Hildebrandt, a student at Michigan Technological University, in Houghton, discovered steampunk on Wikipedia one night in 2006, and soon after his ”love for this anachronistic hobby/genre/aesthetic/lifestyle was cemented.” One of his favorite creations, the VictorioNixie Tube, is a strange-looking Victorian-style display. Hildebrandt designed and built the device in his dorm room and documented the process on his blog.

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

FIERY EFFECTS

California artist Tom Sepe showed off his Whirlygig Emoto, a ”steam electric hybrid motorcycle,” at this year’s Maker Faire in San Mateo, Calif. To build the machine, he took the frame of a 1967 Tote-Gote and replaced the engine with a 15-horsepower electric motor. Above the rear wheel, he mounted a compact boiler, which doesn’t drive the bike but produces impressive ”steam effects.”

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors

WARPED WEAPONS

Steampunk enthusiasts love ray-gun props. Among the most sophisticated fake weapons are the ”advanced wave oscillators” designed by Greg Broadmore at New Zealand special effects company Weta Workshop, best known for its work on the Lord of the Rings film trilogy. Broadmore’s current offerings include the limited-edition Unnatural Selector, built from ”metal, glass, and rare Venusian Worm Oak” and selling for $4500 to $7900, depending on the edition number.

For more on Steampunk, see The Steampunk Contraptors