Awesome Carpentry

Woodworker Kurahito is an expert at sculpting unusual forms from lumber. In this clip, he shows how he used a table saw to gradually carve a springy, helical shape out of a dowel rod. With two of them intertwined, it looks like a strand of wooden DNA. Turn on closed captions for an explanation of the process.

Sinks are usually made from porcelain or metal, but builder Laura Kampf wanted something a little different to replace the beat-up old slop sink in her shop, so she created one by laminating scraps of plywood, then coating them with an ample dose of epoxy to make it watertight. Now she needs a proper backsplash.

After crafting a handmade guitar out of a shelf, luthier Tchiks Guitars came up with a new guitar challenge – to see if they could build a guitar body and headstock out of a single slab of cherry wood. Sit back and enjoy the quietly satisfying process of cutting, carving, and sanding to create a beautiful and functional instrument.

Thanks to its layered structure, plywood is a strong and versatile material that costs less than hardwood boards. Carpenters often work to hide exposed plywood edges, but Michael Alm came up with a better solution – he created his own custom plywood with beautiful and intricate edge patterns which you’d never want to hide.

Back in 2008, Bridge City Tool Works posted this video showing off a fun use for their precision Jointmaker Pro table saw. By cutting numerous alternating notches into a stick of lumber, it turns into the wooden equivalent of a wet noodle. Woodworker Stumpy Nubs posted a more recent video showing how the tool works.

Have some old closet doors lying around? Guitar builder Tim Sway shows us how he took the thin wood used to make hollow-core doors and used it to build a totally serviceable acoustic guitar. He laminated together strips from the edges of the door with epoxy to create the guitar’s neck and used the main panels for its body.

Woodworker Jonathan Katz-Moses shows off a really cool piece of furniture he built that seems to defy logic and gravity. Its structure was tricky to engineer and build, but the result is something we’d be thrilled to have in our living room.

After showing us how to make some geometric patterns with plywood, builder Michael Alm is back with another neat woodworking tutorial. In this clip, he walks through several other patterns, each of which is contained in a hexagonal shape. Surprisingly, it’s not nearly as difficult as it looks.

After building a larger-than-life utility knife and a huge screwdriver, Jackman Works is adding another tool to his giant-sized collection. This time he made an Estwing hammer fit for Paul Bunyan, carving the 8-foot-long, 90 pound monster out of reclaimed southern yellow pine. We’re gonna need a bigger workbench.

Inspired by the eponymous piece of furniture in The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, Epic UpCycling set about the task of building his own wardrobe, only this one is made entirely out of recycled timber gathered from old shipping pallets. He even managed to reuse the rusty old nails. Now how to get to Narnia?

Woodworking Art is back to show off another amazing handcrafted vehicle. This time he carved a 1:10-scale model of the classic 1967 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500, complete with a working hood, trunk, doors, wheels, and steering. He’s started selling some of his works over on Etsy, but they’re quite expensive.

Artist Nick Zammeti shows off a wild-looking dining table that he built using a combination of rustic wood planks, resin, and thousands of colored pencils. What makes it especially cool is the river of pencils that flows down its center and off of the table into a waterfall at its end.

We love furniture that folds to get out of the way when not in use. In this video from builder Izzy Swan, he shows off a wall-mounted Sapele wood cabinet that unfolds into a small table. The items stored on its shelves stay flat as the table is extended, and he says it’s sturdy enough to hold a 5-gallon bucket of water.

“Giant Minifig” is an oxymoron. The idea of LEGO’s little people is that they’re small enough for a LEGO-scale world. But Jason of Bourbon Moth Woodworking wanted to give his kid a supersized minifig for Christmas, so he fabricated a 2-foot-tall figure out of wood. LEGO sells a smaller wooden minifig, but it’s not as cool as Jason’s.

Woodworker Frank Howarth likes to celebrate Christmas by making his own ornaments. This year, he took some wood from a maple tree and turned it into a segmented sphere on his lathe. He then used his CNC mill to cut the “X” pattern into it. The 6″ wood ball has a smaller wood ball inside that makes a rattling sound.

Among his many creations, Paul from Jackman Works has made some ridiculously large hand tools. Now, to show off his new X-Carve Pro CNC machine, he built a pair of giant hands. We were hoping he might try and use them to pick up his oversize tools, but they seem pretty awkward to wield given their weight.

You’d think that slicing up resin blocks filled with nails on your table saw and then grinding them down on a lathe might be a bad idea for the well-being of your tools (and your body), but that didn’t stop maker R Humphrey from testing out the idea. The resulting bowl he created has some really cool textures and patterns.

The standard version of Catan comes with a thick paper playing surface and tiles. Kevlar DIY shows off a much more impressive Catan set that he built using black walnut wood, resin, and a variety of objects to create the game’s iconic hexagonal playing pieces.

Inspired by a table design he saw from Slovenian Woodworker, builder John Malecki decided he wanted to build an even cooler looking version that uses a combination of laminated wood boards and crystal-clear acrylic to make it look like its top is floating in the air.

After building himself a beautiful desk out of beautiful Sapele wood, luthier and carpenter tchiksguitars crafted a beautiful electric guitar using pieces of the wood that he took from a shelf in his office. The part where he carves out the curvature of its body is wonderfully satisfying to watch.

Making a basic chair from straight pieces of wood isn’t that hard. But crafting something with a bent wood structure that can hold weight takes a bit more carpentry skill. Lignum shows that he’s up to the challenge, building a modern wooden chair from laminated strips of spruce formed into “U” and “L” shapes.

While his designs aren’t as intricate as the Japanese masters, builder Pask Makes is becoming quite adept at the Japanese craft of Kumiko. This time out, he wanted to hide an ugly water tank with a screen, and made quite the beautiful covering by cutting and assembling hundreds of pieces of plywood into repeating geometric patterns.

Woodworker Lignum has made some pretty cool furniture over the years, and this build is among his most intriguing. He created this table by laminating together blocks of wood then scorching it with a torch to give it the look that a fire burnt its insides out. We imagine it smells like a campfire too.