Awesome Wood

While the weight of a suitcase made from wood makes it a bit impractical, we still love the look of this beautiful piece of luggage that Ollari’s created from bent pieces of 8mm thick plywood. It always amazes us the kind of things you can do with just wood, glue, and some skill.

Creep out your friends and family with this amazing hand-carved wooden bust of the Predator. In addition to this foot-tall beast, Etsy shop Love My Custom Wood makes all kinds of nifty carved wood sculptures inspired by science fiction and pop culture.

Pask Makes likes to build objects out of scrap wood. He recently attempted to make his own LEGO-style building blocks, and came to find it’s much more difficult than you might think due to the precision required to make them stack. Watch his earlier attempt here.

Jackman Works shows us how he transforms old cargo pallets into sweet drink coasters by sanding, stacking, cutting, and laminating strips of their varied wooden slats into grid patterns. Show your appreciation for his craftsmanship, and buy a set of the coasters here.

For his latest build, Jackman Works created a jumbo-sized, hand-carved wood replica of a utility knife. It’s fully-functional, and just the right size for opening Paul Bunyon’s Amazon packages. He got the inspiration for the giant knife blade from fellow builder Jimmy DiResta.

Up for a fun and challenging project with a satisfying result? Look no further than this wooden model of a London-style double decker bus. Once you assemble all 216 laser-cut parts, you’ll have a working vehicle that can actually move up to 12 feet on rubber band power.

Woodworker Frank Howarth has a thing for spheres, so it only makes sense that he would craft a wooden replica of the iconic, pixel-patterned adidas Telstar 18 football used in the 2018 World Cup. We don’t recommend kicking or heading this ball, though.

Maker of things Izzy Swan shows off a building technique that makes it look like layers of wood have been woven together into a form that should be impossible to pull off. We won’t give away the trick, but it takes a whole lot of work to pull off the illusion.

Artist Heath Knuckles creates stunning organic works of art by taking pieces of uniquely textured wood, cutting them into layers, and filling the in-between bits with colored resin. He then works them on the lathe into a perfect spherical shape. More here.

Brikawood building blocks allow for the construction of wood homes without the use of power tools, screws, or nails. Other than the base structure and roof, the walls of a Brikawood house simply slide together using notched wooden blocks and a mallet.

Flat-pack wooden model maker UGEARS presents 11 awesome new creations, each of which features gear and rubber band mechanisms. The new models include a wind-up horse, windmill, stagecoach, flying aircraft contraption, big rig, steam train, and more.

A superbly challenging wood and acrylic puzzle box for storing away small keepsakes. It features a complicated locking mechanism which requires each of its parts to be moved in an exact sequence to access its contents. Solution at 1:46.

Italian design studio BorromeodeSilva presents an absolutely stunning one-of-a-kind canoe. Its hull is made from carbon fiber with shimmery copper thread woven in, and ample quantities of beautiful teak wood, inlaid into a herringbone pattern.

Another sweet laser-cut wooden model from UGears. While the VM-02 isn’t based on any actual bike, the detailed chopper will still be a cool addition to the desktop of any motorcycle fanatic. Coming to Kickstarter soon.

We love the minimalist look of the pieces in this chess set from Ceramic Sense. Each pawn, rook, bishop, knight, king and queen is made by hand, and the oak chess board features a cool tribal texture on the black squares. Pieces available without the board for $150.

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.

NEWwooDESIGN creates these unique tables by engraving detailed maps of cities into oak wood. Each table has three layers representing streets, buildings, and water, and is coated with a resin that glows in the dark. Choose from several European cities, as well as NYC.

Love My Custom Wood handcarves these impressively intricate models of Han and Chewie’s iconic ride using a big hunk of white cedar wood. The large version measures 32.5″ x 21.5″, but there’s a smaller version if you don’t have the space or galactic credits to spare.

Build your own desktop robot factory with this amazing wooden model from UGears. The 598-piece kit comes in flat-pack form, and features a variety of moving parts as well as robots that roll off the assembly line.

A video chronicle of the extensive build process that goes into hand-making a custom Goodall Guitar. You’ll need to invest nearly 50 minutes of your time to watch the entire video, but for anyone who appreciates fine craftsmanship, it’ll be worth the effort.

Woodworker Kyle Toth walks us through the process of crafting a massive 32″ diameter bowl by slicing, gluing, layering, and turning concentric rings of mahogany and curly maple wood. If you’ve got a cool $2100 to spend, you can buy the finished piece here.

UK-based interior decor shop BespOak handmakes beautiful and unusual wall-mounted bookshelves designed to look like the branch structure of trees. Each one is inspired by the shape of a specific type of tree. Also available as standalone branches without trunks.

Jackman Works‘ manly new take on the iconic leg lamp from A Christmas Story. Gone is the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window, replaced by a masculine carved wood limb, its foot wrapped with a rugged Carolina Boot. Complete build log on Instructables.