Awesome Plywood

Milk crates are a great way to store records and books. But the plastic ones look really cheap. For a more refined look, consider these wooden crates from WAAM. They’re made from high-density birch plywood and offer a playful take on the ones you probably shouldn’t have swiped from the alley behind the grocery store.

Maker Xyla Foxlin always wanted one of those little teardrop campers to take on her adventures. But the steadfast and hard-working Xyla wanted to build her own instead of buying one. It took her and her friends about three weeks to fabricate it from marine plywood, fiberglass, and aluminum, and the finished trailer looks fantastic.

In today’s work-from-home world, having a good desk is a must. You could buy one, or you could do what HomeMadeModern did and build one to your own exacting specifications. We love how Jessie incorporated walls, and sound-deadening felt to make it her own. We’d probably do corkboard for tacking up notes.

Classic arcade machines have a big cabinet necessitated by a CRT monitor and multiple circuit boards. Jody Del Bianco’s Plycade embraces modern tech like a flat screen and a compact PC and sets them into a 28mm-thick plywood cabinet for a small footprint and a light, airy design. A wall-mounted version is also in the works.

John Heisz wanted a place to store some of the tools and other items that didn’t have a home in his shop. So he created a wall-mounted cabinet that provides cubbies, drawers, and a work surface on top. He built it from scrap plywood and wood from previous projects. That gizmo in the upper left is a twin-screw vise John also made.

We’ve seen a lot of cool custom guitar builds over the years, but we’re particularly enchanted by this one. Woodworker Ray Whitby created this beautiful and unique electric guitar from layers of wood and epoxy resin, cut into chevron shapes, assembled and shaped into the guitar’s face, and backlit with LED lighting.

Woodworker Michael Alm previously showed us how he makes beautiful patterns from pieces of plywood. In this video, he shows how the technique can be used to create some truly extraordinary handle scales for axes and knives. We wonder if you could make a baseball bat using this method.

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.

Give your home an explosive new look with one of these handmade hand grenade side tables from Reimagined Wood Shop. Their skeletonized design cuts down on weight while still offering rigidity. They’re cut from 0.72″ thick hardwood veneer plywood and come in 18″ tall and 24″ tall variants. Just don’t pull that pin.

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.

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.

Ben Uyeda of Homemade Modern shows us how to build a modern, geometric chair using nothing more than plywood, a drill, and zipties. Check out the full build guide and templates here. He recommends using 1/2″ ply instead of 1/4″ ply for maximum durability.

Despite providing virtually no real security for your possessions, the UGEARS plywood safe construction kit is still super cool. You’ll spend 6 to 7 hours assembling this intricate 179-piece punch-out model, which has a working combination lock when finished.