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.

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.