Introduce Yourself : Prop designer/builder. I make big, post-apocalyptic functional machines. by Jeff Del Papa

Need a strange machine, that has to actually operate? A catapult perhaps? I may be able to help, drop me a line.I build weird and functional objects, usually from scavenged materials. My style is best described as Mad Max post-apocalyptic. I first got onto the little screen by founding The NERDS, the first US team to appear on "Junkyard Wars" (Scrapheap Challenge outside the US). I build, usually with a camera or an audience, under impossible timelines, and with heavy lumps of steel, and dead cars. I have cut cars (and trucks) in half, converting one to run on steam, another into a fire fighting boat, and a cement truck into a paddle boat. I built one of the largest operable ballistae in the modern era a machine that can throw a 10 lb weight over 1,000 feet, and another catapult that threw an upright piano. I am based in Boston, but normally build on location. Me and/or my stuff has appeared on "Scrapheap Challenge", "Man, Moment, Machine", "Lock and Load", a video for the band "Dirty on Purpose", and in every "Punkin Chunkin" thanksgiving special. I won the first "Raising the Bar" building event for the distiller George Dickel, and was "Maker in Residence" at Parts and Crafts, a Boston Area kids Maker space. When not building strange machines, I run team building events, either a building challenge ala Junkyard, or one that has people building catapults taller than they are, and hurling for distance.