Awesome Carpentry

Carpenter Chris Salomone finds working with laminated bent wood to be one of his more intimidating pursuits, but from the looks of these shelves for his kicks, we think he’s mastered the technique. He first routed and assembled a bending template, then layered, glued, and clamped in sheets of wood veneer until they set into shape.

Artist and builder Uri Tuchman is working on an automaton which will presumably be using some tiny tools. As part of the project, he created this miniature hammer and chisel set, which look just like the real deal after they went through a shrink ray.

Here’s a useful tool we didn’t even know existed. This gadget uses dozens of plastic blades which slide to match the contour of an object, then hold in place so you can trace the shape onto another surface. Great for fitting the edges of flooring around conduit and posts, or for working around moldings.

Builder Ollari’s takes a rusty old hammer head he found at a flea market and makes it look good as new after polishing away the rust and creating a new wooden handle from a hunk of ash. We’d be proud to hang the resulting sledgehammer over our workbench.

Jackman Works loves to make things by recycling old wooden shipping pallets. In this video, he takes a bunch of the beat up old wood, slices it into sheets, laminates them, and trims them into some sweet looking, street-style skateboards. It’s interesting to see how he shapes the wood with the vacuum bag.

OSO DIY created this stunning coffee table using baltic birch plywood for its construction. But rather than attempt to hide the layers of the wood, he built it to show off its endgrain in a beautiful herringbone pattern. We really love the way the grain looks on the edges and the legs.

Carpenter Theo Cook shows off just how tightly and precisely two pieces of wood can be joined together, using an ancient Japanese technique called a “sunrise dovetail” joint, which avoids the need for nails or other fasteners.

We’re not sure we’d ever give a robotic arm a circular saw or power drill to gut us with, but it’s still pretty cool to see how these mechanical marvels can be trained to perform tasks normally reserved for skilled humans.

We all know how the edge of a piece of paper can do some serious damage to your skin, but can its sharp properties do any damage to wood? Carpenter John Heisz decided to make a paper blade for his table saw to see if he could cut things with it, and the results were shocking.

After showing the craftsmanship that goes into handmade tools, John Neeman Tools built an entire home from hand-felled trees, locally sourced stones, and mostly using hand tools. The frame and roof were made with wood joints and pegs, with no nails, screws or hardware.

Can a video of a man hammering nails be compelling? It is when the late carpenter and teacher Larry Haun’s doing it. Watch him sink metal into wood like a freakin’ magician in this excerpt from his instructional video Framing Walls. Skip to 5:15.

Make’s Darbin Orvar shows how to craft a baseball bat from three pieces of walnut and rough-sawn maple wood that she cuts, trims, smooths, laminates, then hand-tools and finishes on her lathe. It’s a tremendous amount of work, but an impressive result.

Called a paradigm shift in woodworking for being safe as a hand saw yet accurate as a power-tool, The Jointmaker Pro features Japanese saw blades and a hand-crank with pitch adjustor.