This piece was roughly inspired by James Krenov's elevated cabinet designs. I wanted a side unit in the living room that would fit just beneath a window (giving us another surface to put plants on!) I'd been saving some of my favorite walnut boards for this, and abandoned waterfall edges to put the most beautiful grain and color on the top.
With this project, my goal was to achieve even and extremely narrow gaps on the cabinets and door faces. The faces are plywood and maple veneer (with some great chatoyance!) to ensure they don't expand or contract, and I'm really happy with how it turned out.
One mistake I made was trying to sand the maple veneer - even though I went up to 800 grit, some of the chatoyance was lost. Reading about it a bit, I should have used a hand plane instead to avoid wearing down and then having to burnish the grain all over again.
I wanted to bring some softer forms and lighter vibes to the living room this winter.
I'd been reading about Finn Juhl's influence on Danish design, and decided to make a slightly smaller version of his 1951 Cocktail Table.
To make things a bit more interesting, and to prevent the cats from knocking things off the table, I decided to add two floating railings covering the majority of the top.
The railing turned out to be a wild project in and of itself. After the eyedrop-shaped table top was finished, I used
a ratchet strap to bend a fence around the entire form, and then bent-laminated a railing against the fence.
One corner of the railing was a sharp curve that had to be made separately. I sliced thick stock into two mirrored pieces, joined them with a large spline and cut the tight curve in on a bandsaw.
To join this central piece to the bent laminated (and more gently curved) arms, I stacked them with a bit of glue (shown at right), cut through the stack to get perfectly matching faces, and then drilled a dowel into each
side and glued it all together.
For once, I actually had the foresight to cut notches for clamps into the work piece so the whole thing could be glued up nicely.
I think this small detail is my most technical work so far, and I'm really happy with how clean the result was. I floated the railing
with small brass dowels and finished the project with a clear water-based poly to avoid yellowing the maple. It was my first time using
General Finishes High Performance Poly and I had to re-sand it several times to get a finish I was satisfied with. It seems nobody follows
the directions on the can, including General Finishes themselves. Learned my lesson!
In late 2021 I visited my grandparents in Denver and fell in love with a set of dining room chairs they bought from Denmark in the 50s. (They assured me I could have theirs in a decade, but that wouldn't be any fun...)
I reversed the measurements from a set of photos and built a prototype out of MDF, cutting and duct-taping the design together to see if the measurements felt right. (They did not, and I threw away some plywood!)
I quickly realized this particular design was going to be a challenge. The back legs are pitched inward at a slight angle, splay outward as they go up, and join a series of cross braces that are also curved to create a comfortable chair back.
Building a single chair was going to take a lot of jigs, templates, and trial-and-error, so I decided this would be my winter project and that I would make eight. Little did I know it would take nearly 7 months!
After I had the basic measurements, I decided to build the core "H" of one chair back. Calculating the preceise length of each piece seemed like it'd require computer modeling (and I'm trying to keep this from becoming a computer hobby!)
I built plywood templates for bending and spent almost two months trying to soak and steam bend walnut legs and cross-bars. I had some success, but spring-back varied considerably and some pieces cracked as they dried (especially the cross braces with a tighter curve). I was able to mitigate the cracking by pressing into a concave shape rather than on to a convex shape, and by using straps to distribute pressure evenly, but in the end I decided bent lamination was easier.
I spent another month cutting and pressing thin walnut strips. I think there were two major lessons learned from this exercise:
1) Cutting strips of the same thickness is ideal, even if it means less yield from each board, since it saves setup time and removes variability in thickness from the final pieces.
2) I tapered the laminated curves for the legs using a flush trim router bit and a template, but I should have left one layer off the lamination and applied it after shaping the piece to hide the grain changes caused by the router revealing each layer of the lamination.
With 40 cross bars bent laminated, I used templates and the tabletop router to cut subtle curve into their faces. I didn't feel comfortable rounding them over with a router because the two dimensional curves made it difficult to align the guide bearing, so I sanded all the cross bars on a spindle sander.
Next, it was time to cut the cross bars to length.
I used the table saw at an angle matching the inward tilt of the back legs and mounted the pieces to a jig that added two other angles - the outward splay of the chair back and a slight forward pitch.
This jig took a ton of trial and error to get right, and I cut the first piece of each set of rungs repeatedly to find the length
that fit between the two legs at that height and rested at the midpoint of their depth.
I used small dowels to fix each cross bar in place in the chair backs. Even with this simple joint design, gluing up the chair backs turned out to be too complex for a single pass and I had to glue-up one side of the assembly at a time. To square up the clamps and apply even pressue, I cut a ton of small spacers that reversed the inward tilt of the chair legs.
It took two months to cut and shape the cross braces and glue up the chair backs.
Thankfully, once that was done the remainder of the chairs was easy in comparison!
All and all there were 52 separate tool steps in this project and I really enjoyed
the mental gynmastics of trying to get everything in the right order.
There was one major hiccup in the front assembly - the front legs splayed slightly outwards to give the chair a clean rectangular footprint. I totally forgot about this until after I'd cut 90° mortises in the front legs, and I needed to put a complex pitched mortise in the already-angled back legs. I built a funky jig for the square mortiser and it worked - but required a lot of thought.
I was working on this for so long, some nice photos got taken at the wood shop!
I failed to estimate how long sanding, staining, and upholstering would take, and it took another two months or so to get all eight chairs across the finish line. (I also didn't realize 2" upholstery foam would run me $250!)
Next time I do a project this large, I'll sand some parts before bent laminating so it's easier to machine sand them and learn how to use a stain sprayer to cut down on finishing time. I also wish I'd more rigourously templated and sanded the top arc of the chair back, because I sanded them by hand and they vary slightly (and the top profile is particularly noticeable!)
All and all I'm happy with how these chairs turned out, and they're actually fairly comfortable (which is pure luck -- I spent very little time thinking about the curve depth and pitch and got kind of lucky, I think!)
The dining table to match the chairs was a pretty quick build because I promised Jaehee I'd have the set done in time to host friends, and I didn't want the table to distract from the chairs.
I built two ends and two leaves, and kept the slices just narrow enough to fit through the planer. I mounted them to a sliding mechanism from Rockler and built an apron and bracket mounted legs with a simple taper.
I finished the table in danish oil to match the chairs, but applied General Finishes Arm-R-Seal after it dried. It was my first time using Arm-R-Seal and I overapplied it at first, but after several coats I'm confident this table can take just about anything.
I have no idea what this is called, but I saw it on Instagram and wanted one! I used this project to clear leftover wood from the shop, and it turned out to be one of my favorite pieces. The legs float slightly off the main frame thanks to small walnut dowels and have a nice taper, which was fun to create using a template and a flush trim router bit.
If I were to do this project again, I'd set the front legs back slightly on the frame and pitch them slightly less. After staring at this for a few months, I feel like this version is visually unbalanced and the front legs shouldn't stick out as much.
I'd also love to try using brass rods instead of wooden dowels to make things a bit more interesting! Will try to make another one of these soon.
I expected this side unit to be a fairly quick build - I cut six foot legs out of 8/4 walnut and then sliced it in
half to make both sides. Unfortunately, I didn't account for the angled grain across the 8/4 surface and when I
sliced the pieces in half they bent so badly it stopped the table saw.
I had to slice the legs into four segments and laminate them to keep them straight, and had to add new segments to
get back to the desired depth. I was out of walnut, so I decided to inlay some white oak that was lying around the
shop which I think had a nice effect.
The inlay did make the top joint stronger - I left the center slice out of the top curve, and then inserted it as
a giant biscuit, giving the joint two dimensional strength.
The front doors are plywood panels framed in walnut and covered with linen (technically they are natural linen
dish towels from Amazon). My grandparents had sent me a random handkerchief from Japan, and I used that fabric as
an accent
across the center of the doors.
If I were to do this project again, I'd laminate the legs from the outset rather than trying to find solid walnut
segments with straight grain. I'd also find a bit of a better method to adhere the plywood door panels to their
walnut frames - they're glued in place and supported by small wood brackets, which doesn't look professional from
the inside.
I wanted to make my girlfriend a desk to match the one I made last year. As we started looking through Pinterest
and Instagram, it turned out she was a fan of heavy, simple forms with a bit of an art-deco vibe. I decided it'd
be fun to create a desk with strong (somewhat brutalist) legs that followed the kind of large curve I'd seen in
some
art deco pieces. To make things look more refined, I'd connect the legs and drawer internally so they'd appear to
float 1/16' off the top.
This ended up being extremely challenging to build. Each curved leg is made of five angled segments, and I had to
shape the inside of the curve with an angle grinder and sand everything by hand. Floating the legs and top
required building a hidden octagonal frame that each of the legs could be bolted into. This took almost two
months to complete and a lot of careful adjustment to create equal spacing between the drawer, frame, and legs.
I saw a woven rocking chair on Instagram and decided to make one for my living room. I used 8/4 cherry for most of
the parts and sliced it in half to make
identical sides, which streamlined the process quite a bit. The bottom tracks took a ton of sanding
because flat spots in the bottom curve were immediately noticeable. I'd use a template and flush trim router
bit instead of freehanding on the bandsaw if I did this again.
The weaving took roughly 25 hours (2 entire seasons of The Expanse on Amazon Prime!), but I'm pretty happy with
how
it turned out. I may need to make another one, because I had to buy 1000ft spools of cotton jute and I still have
almost all of it.
In May I was looking for a desk to make working at home more bearable and stumbled across this $8,000 piece by contemporary Japanese
designer Noriyuki Ebina. I fell in love with the design. It seemed like quite a challenge given the sweeping
angles of the legs and curves on the drawer face,
but unlike other furniture I'd been admiring the angles were limited to a single plane. In this design there
aren't any surfaces that curve in three dimensions that might require advanced tools like a CNC (like the chair I
struggled with.) I decided to replicate it as closely as possible and see how far I could get.
It took 8 weekends at The Forge to create a version of the desk, largely because I had to cut the curves by
hand on the bandsaw and then cut the drawer face to match. I used a tabletop router to round over the surfaces
with a 3/4" router and I'm pretty happy with the result.
The whole desk is walnut and is finished with danish oil sanded to 120, 220, 800 grit (so it is just slightly
reflective). In the future, I think I'll invest in 2x the wood so that I can color-match the boards and have a
wider set of choices. My biggest regret with this piece is that the left leg and crossbeam on the front face
stained to very different tones.
After struggling to build my first chair in October, I decided to practice mortise and tennon joinery by building
a small bench (with 16 mortise and tennon joints). This turned out to be very time consuming because I didn't know
that square mortising bits exist for drill presses and chiseled each mortise square by hand.
I let the project sit for a while before deciding to finish it by cutting down a bunch of scraps to the same width
and gluing them up to create an intricate top surface. This worked, but I quickly discovered that the piece was
not entirely the same depth along it's length and had to adjust the size of the square connecting pieces to
accomodate the inconsistencies.
In retrospect I think this turned out beautifully but would have been easier if I had not used scraps for the top
surface. At roughly 9" deep, it is also not quite big enough to be useful as a shoe rack which is
unfortunate - it serves no practical purpose in my apartment.
My apartment in Nashville has a long kitchen counter and I found these stunning Neva bar-height stools on Pinterest. I decided to
try to replicate them, but struggled to determine how to build the legs, which swoop up and across (while
maintaining a slight backward tilt) to create the seat back.
I created two back legs with as much of a built-in curve as I could, and then cut many vertical slices with angled
faces to create a curved back. After gluing the slices together, I used an angle grinder to smooth the inner and
outer surfaces.
In retrospect, this design was flawed in several ways. I didn't use dominos to strengthen the joints, and I should
have used overlapping horizontal "bricks" of wood to strengthen the design. The glue-up angles and number of
slices also dictated the chair's final width, and my first attempt created a curve that was too narrow to sit in—I
had to cut the back in half on the table saw and insert an additional segment to make it wider.
At the end of the day, I think this piece had two critical mistakes. I installed the supporting cross beams at the
bottom of the chair without cutting the legs to height—the chair is actually ~6" too tall for my counter,
and cutting it shorter would leave the footrest bar nearly touching the floor! I also use an odd tounge and groove
joinery style in which "notches" in the crossbeams fit into grooves cut perpendicular into the vertical legs. This
was easy to do on the table saw but the walnut "teeth" turned out to be brittle and would likely break over time
(mortise and tennon or half lap joints would have been better). I plan to revisit this project and apply all the
lessons learned to a second iteration soon!
One of my first major woodworking projects, my coffee table was a copy of a design I found on Pinterest. The top
is red oak with waterfall edges and the supporting beams are walnut. This project took longer than I expected
because the angles were too odd for me to calculate the height of the inner compartment and I had to build the
legs and measure the drop distance to the arms to size the top correctly.
This project was fun because it also taught me that the precise angles don't matter, only the relationships
between them. I cut a few reference triangles and based the entire design off those rather than trying to measure
the angle needed for each cut. The result was easier to reason about and fit together!
Motivation
In 2018, living in San Francisco and realizing that everyone was an engineer with a rock climbing hobby left me
feeling pretty basic. To add some creativity to my life beyond my cool socks, I decided to build custom side walls
for a pair of ray-bans. Using a pair of calipers I precisely measured my existing pair and built them in
Fusion360.
I ran an algorithm provided by a Fusion360 plugin to generate unique vornoii mesh patterns and selected two to
boolean subtract from the solid side walls, creating cut-out regions that resemble patterns generated organically
in nature.
This was my first project using Fusion360's "live history" feature—being able to reason about the design as
a series of operations and being able to revise steps and re-run the subsequent operations allowed me to iterate
on the vornoii pattern until I found one that looked structurally sound and printable (no large gaps, no places
where a single bubble divides the frame).
Revisions
It turned out to be fairly challenging to 3D print these parts because the side walls need to be thick enough to
stay on your face while flexing a bit for comfort. The ends also needed to curve in more than I expected for them
to fit comfortably behind the ear and stay on while looking down. Finally, I needed to build mount points that the
original Rayban screws would screw into, which required fabricating holes a bit too small and allowing the screws
to tear into the plastic just a bit.
After several revisions from Shapeways I was able to wear the glasses and called it a day, but they still fall off
a bit more easily than the original Ray-bans.
Motivation
When I started looking for wedding bands, I had a hard time finding one that reflected how I felt. I believed that
my marriage would always be a work-in-progress—a journey more than a destination. I wanted to create a
wedding band that would look better as the years wore on, something that might grow weathered by travel and
adventure alongside my hands. Something that might take on years of scuffs and dents as a mark of strength and not
a mark of age.
The Shapeways finishing process smoothed the surface significantly, and the final product was a bit more rounded
than I expected—but the two dozen flat faces still reflect the softness and organic feeling that I wanted.
Tools & Process
I designed this band in Autodesk Maya and had it cast in plastic by Shapeways. After a few iterations (and making
sure that it fit), I ordered one in 14k gold. The Shapeways gold fabriation process involved making a wax 3D
print, creating a ceramic mold from the wax, heating it and removing the wax, and then pouring in gold—and
ended up costing $780.
Final Product
Motivation
I fell in love with biking when I moved to San Francisco, and I regularly commuted to work through the Mission and
Noe Valley. SF is pretty far north and got dark early in the winter (seriously, at like 4:30pm) and I struggled to
find affordable bike lights that could compete with city lights.
I bought red and white LED strips from Adafruit and mounted them to the bike frame and bolted a 15V power supply
beneath the bike seat. It had to be charged every few days, but made the bike easy to spot and helped me feel safe
commuting at night. The best part is it only cost ~$40, much cheaper than the expensive kits for sale on Valencia.
