Is a wooden lock as tough as one made out of metal? Nope. Is buying a lock easier than building one? Absolutely. Is a lock you made with your own two hands significantly more badass than anything you can purchase, ready-to-use? Without a shadow of a doubt.

If you're looking for an unusual woodworking project to undertake, Matthias Wandel has you covered. You can buy the plans for his wooden mechanical lock, here. Once you do, you'll also get access to the plans for a laser cut iteration of the project. While it might not provide the level of security that you'd want for keeping your valuables safe, the level of whimsy that this project could bring to a woodworker's life looks like it would be hard to beat. Read the rest

Legacy Woodworking Machinery has a great series of videos on how they program CNC machines to cut a hollow spiral candlestick. Read the rest

Japanese wood joinery (previously) is a highly-refined craft. In this video, YouTuber Third Coast Craftsman creates a free-standing bookshelf inspired by those joinery techniques. Read the rest

An art collector who died earlier this year donated a remarkable collection of escaliers to Cooper-Hewiit Museum. The tiny staircases were fashioned by French compagnons, a secretive trade group of master craftworkers. Read the rest

Woodworker John Malecki created this amazing river table with a massive piece of gnarly claro walnut and a lot of elbow grease. The end result is worth all the effort. Read the rest

Richard J. Ridel's all-wooden, mechanical Turing machine uses the smallest set of data elements capable of computing any calculation: 0, 1 and blank; it was inspired by Ridel's viewing of The Imitation Game. Read the rest

It's pretty cool to watch a 3-millimeter thick sheet of birch transform into a bowl that's laser cut as one long wooden spiral. Read the rest

Bobby Duke makes all kinds of cool woodworking projects in his inimitable video style. This floating cup pencil carving is especially impressive. Read the rest

Woodworker Matthias Wandel has mice in his workshop, and he wanted to see how small a hole mice could crawl through. But after setting up his ingenious little test, a challenger appears: the wily shrew! Read the rest

Woodworker Matt Thompson has been making Adirondack chairs in the shape of Michigan, the lower peninsula at least, for a few years. Recently, he added the state's upper peninsula to the chair's overall design in the form of a beer/soda can cooler and dispenser.

From Michigan-based site Mlive:

The chair is made of cedar, and Thompson estimates he spent somewhere between $400-500 in wood to create it.

"It's not very practical to sell this or mass produce this," Thompson said.

The holding chamber can hold a full six pack of 12-ounce cans. The ice contained will keep the cans chilled for approximately eight hours, Thompson said. There's a full drainage system that prevents the ice from spilling down the chute.

"Cedar is a good insulator," Thompson said.

(reddit) Read the rest

Master luthier Mark Erlewine takes us through the fascinating process of repairing Trigger, the same guitar Willie Nelson has played for nearly 50 years. Read the rest

The good folks at YouCar took a tour of a wood shop that makes dashboard panels for Bentleys, and it's a real pleasure to watch such fine work being produced. Read the rest

Chris Isner was a regular guy until an ayahuasca trip gave him clear instructions on creating a trippy style of bas relief wood sculptures. Read the rest

"WoodSwimmer" is a single from Bedtimes with a remarkable video by Brett Foxwell. In it, Foxwell laboriously sanded and sliced thin pieces of wood from large logs to create hypnotic patterns from the wood grain. Read the rest

Dorian Bracht's supremely satisfying videos of crafting exotic wood joints from Japanese and European traditions are both inspiring and envy-inducing. Read the rest

Kyle Tóth makes a lot of gorgeous pieces on his lathe as experiments, like this small floating bowl. Read the rest

Is there a visual equivalent to the audio tingles people report in ASMR? Because I get a special kinda o' feeling deep down inside whenever I watch videos like woodworker Paul Seller's gorgeous Fibonacci Spiral Shaving. It even sounds like some sort of a fussy sexual proclivity: Fibonacci spiral shaving.

Given the video's comments, where people are talking about how meditative, relaxing, and therapeutic Fibonacci spiral shaving is, I don't think I'm alone. And I second the request to loop it. I could watch this thing all day.

Oh, and by the way, if you're into this sort of eyeball massaging, watching videos of repetitive activity, close-ups of craftwork, strange materials and chemical intereactions, and the like, check out the Oddly Satisfying tag on Instagram. Read the rest