THE AGE OF INVENTION: From the ‘weedeater bike' to the duct tape boat, local teen was born an engineer (with PHOTOS and VIDEO)

An engineer by nature, 16-year-old Spencer Steelman of Miramar Beach has been an inventor for most of his life.

“I’m completely self-taught, but I think I inherited my creativity from my grandpa,” Spencer said.

As a small child, he spent his free time rigging up zip lines so that he could fly around the house. And in third grade, he built a pulley system in his room so he could turn his light out from bed. At any given moment, he is engineering devices in his head that will solve common problems or “do something cool.”

“When he was a little kid, I sometimes wanted to yell, stop stringing stuff up,” Spencer’s mom Sharon said. “But I knew there was a learning process going on there, so I let him go with it.”

And allowing him to learn has paid off in multiple ways. In addition to having a creative child who can build almost anything, Sharon and her husband, Rick, have an in-house repair man. They said he has fixed everything from DVD players to computers for them.

When he isn’t fixing something around the house or taking something apart, Spencer is building. He built a catapult to launch tennis balls and other items, like the miniature potato gun he made. And in the last few months, he’s built a boat and what the family calls a “weedeater bike.”

For more photos of the teen inventor with his work, click here.

When he gets an idea, his first step in making it a reality is to sketch it. After that, he gets online to see if anyone has tried it before and to research which materials would work best. After that, it’s just a matter of putting it together.

“I’ve got hundreds of ideas,” Spencer said. “I don’t look at things like normal people do. I make improvements to everything.”

One such improvement led to his motorbike. He wanted a faster bike, so he used a weed eater motor to power up his mode of transportation. After about a month of work, his weed-eater bike got up to a speed of about 20 miles per hour.

But after enjoying a couple of months with his homemade motorbike, a bumpy road led to its destruction. When a spindle broke off and got caught in the spokes, Spencer went flying into a bush.

“We decided maybe we should retire the weedeater bike. When he came home he had holes in his helmet,” Sharon said.

While the crash scared his mom, he wasn’t hurt. He’s looking forward to rebuilding the bike once he can find an old-model bicycle that has large enough handle bars to accommodate the motor.

“It will probably take me a little less than a month to rebuild since I have experience,” Spencer said. “That’s the fun of the project, putting it together.”

While he enjoys long-term projects, Spencer puts some things together in an afternoon. One such endeavor was his boat. In just a couple of hours, he built the sturdiest canoe on the water with nothing but PVC pipe, a tarp and his favorite material, duct tape.

“Duct tape is my universal tool,” Spencer said. “Is there anything it can’t do?”

After a few minutes with Spencer, the answer appears to be no. He not only uses the material in all of his inventions, but also as a fashion statement. He was sporting a duct tape belt and a duct tape wallet when he tested his boat for the Log.

Spencer said kids at school generally think his duct tape creations are cool. And he’s even had requests for duct tape wallets from a couple of the guys. He’s in the midst of his junior year at the Northwest Florida State Collegiate High School, where he is on the sailing team.

When he graduates, he wants to major in aeronautical engineering at either the University of Florida or Auburn University. His interest in aeronautics started early, as his dad founded Atlanta Jet in 1990 and had him on a plane for the first time at 14 days old.

“We give him all the moral support and encouragement we can,” Rick said. “But he’s a kid who just does things on his own.”

One of the projects he has on the back burner for now is a small aircraft. And he also has an idea for a way to build airplane wheels that will save tires. But his long-term goals are bigger than most people can imagine.

“I want to solve common problems,” Spencer said. “I want to invent something revolutionary.”