Awesome Woodturning

We’ve seen lots of beautiful and unusual items turned on a lathe, but we’ve not seen a woodworker use the method to create a model of a jet airplane engine until now. Gao Wood Lab used walnut, magnolia grandiflora, and red cedar wood to create this wonderful miniature engine, complete with a spinning turbine fan.

Woodworker Olivier Gomis used a plastic water bottle as the inspiration for this satisfying build. After laminating together scraps of maple and walnut, he turned the wood block on a lathe to replicate the shape of the bottle. Then, he hollowed out its center and used the plastic bottle as a waterproof liner.

Carpenter Frank Howarth has made several wooden spheres in the past. This time he painstakingly assembled a globe with a funky mosaic pattern made from scrap wood pieces. It’s not as successful as his traditional globe design, but the build process was still quite interesting to watch.

Artist Olivier Gomis shows off a neat woodworking technique that allows him to make round vases with squared-off edges on a lathe. By placing multiple wood blocks on a custom-made jig, he’s able to carve the unusual shape while also getting four pieces done simultaneously.

Woodworker Frank Howarth keeps getting requests to create a globe of the Earth. He started with 3D modeling software to project the map onto triangle shapes, then cut each of them and assembled them into a faceted sphere before turning the whole works on a lathe. It took lots of trial and error, but the finished piece is amazing.

Squid Game has inspired Halloween costumes, musical performances, and an SNL sketch. Now it has a woodworking video. Hailing from Korea himself, Woodboy created this set of see-through objects that look like the symbols seen throughout the show. His method of creating them on a lathe makes them even more interesting.

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.

Woodworker Carl Jacobson shows us the process of building a miniature replica of Fred’s prehistoric car from The Flintstones. He built the foot-powered “Flintmobile” from maple burl and walnut, with beautifully turned wood roller wheels. The leather chamois canopy offers protection from heat, rain, and pterodactyl poop.

Artist Woodboy shows off a clever technique in which he makes a portrait of Abraham Lincoln by creating a pair of turned walnut blocks which come together to form an inverted portrait of the 19th-century President. The method allows him to create four portrait halves from each turned block.

Scrap Wood City shows us just how beautiful a hunk of wood can be, as he gradually whittles down a hunk of burled briar root. Working with a somewhat wonky lathe, he gradually turns the wood into a dramatic spherical sculpture that still lets some of its natural textures show through.

A fan of woodworker Mr. Zhou sent him a block of colorful material and requested that he use it to carve a chess piece. The process of turning the piece on the lathe is quite satisfying, especially watching the shavings as they go flying. The block appears to be wood that’s been infused with pigments, but we’re not sure.

Artist Olivier Gomis shows how he took hundreds of colored pencils and turned them into a cool looking wood vase. Rather than encasing them in epoxy resin, he sanded and glued together layers of pencils, twisted them into a tower, then turned that structure on a lathe.

Artist Mr. Zhou presents a wonderfully satisfying crafting video. The clip features ample doses of woodturning, pouring colorful epoxy resin, and then shaving the whole thing down to reveal its finished form – an accent light that illuminates with the colors of the rainbow. Sadly, it lost one layer along the way.

Woodworker Matt Jordan takes us through the process of transforming a small log of apple wood into a beautiful coffee mug. We love the organic look of the burled wood, and the pewter-accented handle. He coated it with multiple layers of pure tung oil, which is both waterproof and food-safe – though each coat takes 4 weeks to cure.

Woodworker Andy Phillip shows off a cool art piece he created using a number of sharpened colored pencils arranged inside block of resin he polished into a sphere. It’s a wonderfully satisfying video, and we’re particularly impressed that he didn’t accidentally shave down any of the pencil tips on his lathe.

Wood Workshop shows off an interesting technique for making a vase with a unique design. The trick is to stack perpendicular layers of dowels, bathe them in resin to hold them together, then turn and carve them as a single unit on a lathe. You’d never know that pattern was there while it’s spinning.

There are a million different Bluetooth speakers out there, so in a quest to create something a little different, woodworker Matt Jordan decided to build one out of a hunk of wood from an apple tree. Watch as he turns the log on his lathe, adding coffee grounds and colorful powder along the way to give the finished piece a dramatic look.

Normally, basketballs are made from rubber. But DIYer Cammie’s Garage works in wood, so he decided to see if he could make one by turning layers of maple into a sphere instead. It didn’t take the stain perfectly, but it’s still pretty cool. He previously made a sweet wooden football.

Artist and woodturner Andy Phillip takes us through the complicated and time-consuming process of gradually refining a hunk of birch tree trunk into a beautiful 7″ globe, complete with the continents, and iridescent blue oceans made from epoxy resin. This isn’t the first time Andy’s made something cool and spherical.