Lathe

Maker of cool things W&M walks us through the painstaking process of milling a set of teensy brass chess pieces, and crafting an elegant wooden board on which to play the game. The pieces are so small, the game needs to be played with tweezers.

Woodworker Matt Jordan shares an immensely satisfying woodturning video, in which he transforms a lumpy hunk of apple tree trunk into a beautiful work of functional art – though the final piece wasn’t exactly what he planned to make. The fillers are a mix of blue mica dust and ground coffee.

We always enjoy watching craftspeople turn objects intended for one thing into something entirely different. In this clip from My Mechanics, offers up one off the more impressive transformations we’ve seen, reworking an ordinary stainless steel bolt and a brass rod into a working combination lock.

When we want to crack into the delicious lollipop treat known as Chupa Chups, we just usually tear into the wrapper by hand. But it can be a bit frustrating at times, so Japanese YouTuber なんとか重工 (Somehow Heavy Work) turned to an industrial lathe to handle the task for him.

Woodworker Carl Jacobsen made quite the mess in his shop for this experiment, in which he decided to turn a bowling ball on his lathe, chiseling away the ball’s outer surface and inner core to produce a surprisingly pleasing bowl. Carl says the biggest issue was the smell its core made.

Frank Howarth knows a thing or two about making spheres, so we couldn’t help but be transfixed as we watched him turn an ordinary block of walnut wood into a beautifully-smooth replica of an 8-ball. The round clamp he built for holding it on the CNC table is ingenious.

Builder Peter Brown takes a hunk out of a log of worm-eaten walnut wood and gradually lathes and shapes it into a beautiful work of art. The defects in the wood make working with it much harder, but result in a stunning organic look to the finished piece. Needles to say, it won’t hold cereal milk.