Awesome Wood

Keep your office tidy and organized with these modular wood trays from Oakywood. Each OakyBlock has magnets built-in for snap-together configuration. They come in small and large sizes, pen/pencil trays, phone dock, wireless charger, and sticky notes holder models in both oak and walnut. Also sold in multi-tray bundles.

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.

Jigsaw puzzles can be loads of fun, but they also take up lots of table space. Simone Giertz came up with a solution by designing and building a an overly-complex dining table. Its tambour wood roll-top conceals a jigsaw puzzle compartment that rises like an elevator. That painter’s tape and glue clamp is a neat hack.

This compact chess set from Letteroom is perfect for travel, measuring in at just over 4″ across. It’s constructed from rosewood with a brass inlay around its playing surface. A built-in drawer holds its game pieces and has a foam insert to keep them from rolling around.

Clamps are usually made from metal for a good reason. After all, they need to be able to withstand a decent amount of stress as they’re tightened. While it might not be the most practical of workbench tools, we do love the craft and engineering of this plywood vise grip clamp built by carpenter John Heisz.

A dovetail joint that locks on four sides seems physically impossible. But craftspeople have figured out a way to build these perplexing objects with some tricky diagonal cuts. Fix This Build That used his X-Carve CNC machine to create a cutting board with the technique, and the resulting piece looks really awesome.

Rather than go with an off-the-shelf synthesizer, Edward Black Rose built his own from scrap wood. Its wooden keys make strings vibrate between a laser and a photocell, then send that signal to a software synthesizer. It’s not ideal for creating polyphonic sounds, but it’s a clever design nonetheless.

After winning more eBay auctions than he expected to, modder Peter Knetter had some extra Nintendo Switch handhelds lying around. So he took one of them and gave it a complete makeover – covering its plastic case and buttons with wood ones. It’s definitely thicker and heavier than the original, but it’s certainly unique.

Robotime’s flat-pack wood kit gives you everything you need to assemble your own working rubber band shotgun. It features a simulated pump-action mechanism and can fire multiple bands in sequence. Includes wooden soldier targets and plenty of rubber bands.

Give new life to any smooth surface with BLIK’s photorealistic woodgrain skin. This self-adhesive print can go onto desks, tables, bookshelves and more, giving them a natural look. They come in four sizes: 48″ x 24″, 60″ x 30″, 72″ x 36″, and 80″ x 30″. More Surface Skin designs here.

Velcro and other similar fasteners are made using an interlocking pattern of tiny hooks and loops. Builder Kurahito wanted to see if the same technique could be applied to wood, allowing for two pieces to stick together without glue or other hardware. The results are mixed, but we can see the potential for this to work.

Loha Custom Design makes these elegant keycaps from solid walnut wood. They fit all Cherry MX and other MX switch keyboards and are available in 60% (61-key) and 80% (87-key) sets. You can also buy individual keys and custom logo keys if you can’t afford the full set. They also make a matching wrist rest.

Toronto Blue Jays player turned artist Blake McFarland of BM Sculptures shows how he made an awesome sculpture of a bear by assembling various hardwood sticks and coated them clear epoxy resin. He used a chainsaw to cut the rough shapes and then smoothed out the design using a variety of handheld grinders and sanding tools.

Artist Olivier Gomis paid tribute to The Lord of the Rings by creating a larger-than-life replica of The One Ring. He started by assembling wedges of wood into circles and smoothed them on a lathe. He then carved its engravings and added curly maple veneers so its lettering only appears when its hidden LED lights are switched on.

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.