If something's worth doing, it's usually worth over-doing. And nowhere is that mantra more apropos than when it comes to mixing up drinks. A cocktail shaker might give you the opportunity to show off your bartending skills, but this hand-cranked shaking contraption just looks altogether more entertaining.

Built as an interactive mechanical sculpture by Benjamin Cowden, the Post-Imperial Shaker is actually based on a design from the turn-of-the-century when the industrial revolution aimed to replace everyone from seamstresses to bartenders. A hand-crank powers a chain-driven system which turns a large flywheel which ends up shaking the hell out of a couple of cocktail shakers. It's wonderfully over-engineered, which is exactly how we like our contraptions and our drinks.

[TwentySeven Gears via Make]