Several shelf boxes of various widths are held together by brightly-colored plus-sign-shaped connectors.

3D Printed Shelf Connector

November 8, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 15 Comments

Sometimes, you really need a custom shelf. Whether you have a weird-shaped space, weird-shaped stuff, or just want something different, making your own shelving can make your place more like home. The Plus Shelf by [shurly] aims to make building your own shelves a little easier with a 3D printed bracket.

These connectors aren’t just sitting flush against the wood of the shelf. Each end of the + sign actually sits in a 3/8″ drilled recess, giving a more secure fit. The pieces were printed on an Objet and then dyed in various bright shades to really make the shelving pop. The cubbies were assembled with biscuits after cutting down a sheet of plywood to the appropriate sizes. The 45˚ angles around the edges of the cubbies make the whole shelf system that much nicer.

The final shelf has a little wobble, but that’s probably because dying the shelf connectors made them “bendy.” Because of the instability with the friction fit, the shelf connectors were super glued into the shelf boxes. [shurly] hopes that a metal version of the connectors might be able to eliminate these problems in the future.

This shelving system not your cup of tea? Maybe you’d prefer this Vintage Adjustable Shelving Method or this MP3 Player Shelf.

Chevron Desk Takes Advantage Of Plywood For Patterning

November 8, 2022 by Lewin Day 23 Comments

Buying a desk is all well and good, but [WoodCraftly] found that the options they found online were too pricey for what was being offered. Buying the table frame from scratch was much cheaper, and just required crafting a top to match. That provided the opportunity to create this beautiful herringbone-finish desk created with some simple woodworking techniques.

Plenty of clamps were needed for the glue-up.

The build starts with a motorized corner desk frame that can be bought from amazon for just $550. To create the chevron-finish top, [WoodCraftly] grabbed some plywood sheets, and cut them into a series of 1-inch strips. These were then flipped 90-degrees onto their side, and glued together to create a panel that showed off the individual layers of the plywood. This panel was then cut into 3-inch wide strips at a 45-degree angle, and these strips were then placed back to back and once again glued up to create the attractive herringbone design.

From there, it was a simple matter of gluing up panels into the L-shape required for the desk, adding mounting holes, and rounding off the corners for a nice finish. The desk was also given a thick coat of epoxy on the bottom which soaked into the wood and helped give the desk some strength, and a top coat that was sanded back to a natural-look finish.

Overall, the final desk is just the product of some smart cutting and gluing steps combined to create a fun pattern in the end. It’s always fun to build your own furniture because you can express your own style in your creations. Video after the break.

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A blue cabinet. Inside, along the front and back are wooden sawteeth holding a cleat. On the cleat sits the shelf itself.

Adjusting Shelves Like It’s 1899

November 4, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 39 Comments

In most modern homes, any adjustable shelves or cabinets have metal shelf pins set inside conveniently spaced holes. Before the accoutrements of modern life, like easily replicated metal parts, you may have found a sawtooth shelf doing the same job with just wood.

The system comprises three parts: a series of “sawteeth” running up and down the front and back edge of a cabinet, a cleat to sit between the teeth, and a shelf with notched corners that can then be set down on the cleats on either side.

While not as convenient as running a drill through a shelf pin jig, this method has a certain charm and sturdiness that isn’t present in more modern methods of making adjustable shelves. We can see this being particularly useful for restoration projects of homes from the 19th Century or earlier where you want some of those aforementioned accoutrements without things looking too anachronistic.

If you want some shelving that’s decidedly more 21st Century, check out this MP3 Player Shelf or this Smart Shelf with Serious Functionality.

A segmented lamp made of circular slices of plywood. They are arranged as shutters around a long, skinny LED bulb in the center that gives off an incadescent-looking glow. A cord trails off to the left against the grey background.

Plywood Lamp Has Customizable Light Output

November 1, 2022 by Navarre Bartz 2 Comments

There’s something about light fixtures that attracts makers like moths to a flame. [danthemakerman] wanted something with a more configurable light output and built this Sculptural and Customizable Plywood Lamp.

In his detailed build log, [danthemakerman] describes how he wanted something “sort of like an analog dimmable light.” By using a stack of split plywood donuts hinged on a brass rod, he can vary the output and shape of the lamp. These shutters allow the lamp to go from bright to nightlight without using any electrical dimming components.

The plywood was rough cut on a bandsaw before being turned on a lathe. The light cover sections were then hollowed out with a Forstner bit and split in half. The tricky bit is the overlap of the cut on the hinge side of the shutters. Cutting the piece exactly in half would’ve required a lot more hardware to make this lamp work than what was achieved by patient woodworking.

If you’d like to see more ways to make light fixtures with plywood, check out this Hexagonal Lamp, these Upcycled Plywood and Glass Lamps, or this Laser-cut Sphere Lampshade that Packs Flat.

Building An Old Guitar From A New One

September 27, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 3 Comments

Anyone who’s ever played guitar to at least the skill level required to form a terrible garage band knows the names of the most legendary guitars. The driving sound of the Gibson Les Paul played by Jimmy Page, the upside-down and smooth Fender Stratocaster from Jimi Hendrix, or the twangy Rickenbacker made famous by George Harrison are all lusted-after models. The guitar that [Frank] really wanted was a Danelectro DC59 and since they’ve been steadily creeping up in price, he decided to build his own.

The body of the clone guitar is hollow and made from effectively scrap wood, in this case plywood. As the original guitars were in fact famous for using the least expensive materials possible, this makes it a great choice for a clone. [Frank] made the guitar using almost exclusively hand tools and glued everything together, but did use a few donor parts from a modern Stratocaster-type guitar. With most of the rough shape of the guitar finished, it was time to add the parts that make the guitar sound the way that a real Danelectro should: the lipstick-style pickups. He purchased these completely separately as they are the most important part to get right to emulate the tone and feel of the original.

With everything finally soldered and assembled, [Frank] got right to work recording a sample audio track which is included at the end of the video. It certainly sounds like the original to our untrained ears, and for around $100 it’s not a bad value either. If you’d like to see a guitar built from the ground up without using another as a clone, take a look at this build which brings a completely original guitar into existence, entirely from scratch.

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A Beautiful DIY Guided Saw

August 30, 2022 by Dave Rowntree 19 Comments

[JSK-koubou] has quite the talent for creative woodwork, particularly building interesting tools or improving existing ones. This recent project (multiple build videos below: part 1, part 2, and part 3) is a very flexible type of guided pull saw, whereby a fine-toothed saw blade is fixed in the bed, and the workpiece is pulled over it it. By fixing it at a shallow angle, and enabling the blade to be raised up through the bed, the workpiece can be progressively cut by simply pulling it over the blade, then winding it up a little until the final cut length is achieved.

From a construction perspective, the tool is all-metal, built from a collection of the off-the-shelf parts, and thick, hand-cut aluminium alloy plate, nary a CNC tool in sight. The only unusual component is the saw blade itself, which might be a bit tricky to track down if you were so inclined to reproduce the build. It appears (well if you believe the auto-translation by Google Lens, anyway) to be a spare blade for a commercial guide saw available in Japan at least.

We found it particularly pleasing to see the use of a home-built anodizing setup to give it a bit of a jazzy color scheme for some of the plates, just because. Like with many of the build videos from this YouTuber, it is well worth watching all of them, if only just to gather a few ideas for one’s own workspace, if you can stop yourself getting distracted looking at all the other neat tools he uses on the way.

DIY tool builds are not uncommon in these parts, here’s a neat DIY combo table-based project, and here’s a homebrew auto-lowering metal bandsaw which could be a real timesaver.

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Here’s The World’s Smallest Wood Plane…Probably

August 10, 2022 by Tom Nardi 17 Comments

Admittedly, we aren’t really in a position to confirm whether or not the miniature wood plane put together by [Daniel d’Entremont] is actually the smallest in the world, but we’re willing to take his word for it. At the very least, we certainly haven’t seen a smaller one.

In the video below, [Daniel] crafts the diminutive tool from a small block of wood by first slicing off a square using a band saw and then switching over to a small hand saw to cut out the individual pieces. These are glued together to make the body of the plane, and the shank of a small drill bit is used to hold down the wedge and blade. All told it’s about 1/2 of an inch long, and is fully functional…or at least, as functional as a 1/2 inch wood plane can be.

Interested in more miniature tools? Believe it or not, we’ve got you covered.

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