u/Pristine-Vacation-59

This was a pair of suspended wooden ceiling structures we built for a restaurant, along with a matching host stand.

I designed the overall geometry in Rhino. I started by creating a shape that flowed over the dining area and zigzagged through the columns without necessarily following the tables or architecture perfectly. Once I was happy with the overall form, I drew the locations of the individual ribs and used those lines to divide the shape into the individual profiles.

The spacing and angles between the ribs aren't consistent. They change as they follow the geometry, which is what gives the finished ceiling its flowing shape.

For the suspended structures I chose 3/4" Paulownia because it's extremely lightweight. With this much wood hanging overhead, reducing the overall weight was an important consideration from the beginning.

The ribs attach to 1" plywood backing panels painted red. Each rib has CNC-cut tenons that fit into corresponding mortises cut into the plywood. Both the ribs and backing panels were cut directly on the CNC, including all of the joinery.

For the finish, the Paulownia ribs received several coats of water-based polyurethane. The plywood backing panels were first sealed with an epoxy-based primer to protect them from any potential condensation from the AC system above. Probably overkill, but with the panels suspended overhead I preferred to play it safe. They were then painted cherry red and finished with a final clear coat.

There are actually two separate ceiling structures. The larger one over the dining area has 119 individually shaped ribs across 21 backing panels, while the smaller one over the bar has another 85 ribs across 7 panels. So between the two ceilings there are 204 Paulownia ribs and 28 backing panels.

The panels are suspended using a series of steel cables.

Lighting was also integrated into the design. LED strips were installed along selected ribs in a deliberately irregular pattern, giving the ceiling a sort of barcode lighting effect. The hanging lights over the tables and bar are also suspended from the plywood structure.

We also built the host stand using the same geometry and ribbed design, but for that I switched from Paulownia to maple. Paulownia was ideal overhead because of its low weight, but it's relatively soft. Since the host stand would be touched and bumped constantly, maple made more sense for durability. The host stand added another 20 individually shaped ribs to the project.

It was a fun one to figure out. Going from one flowing shape in Rhino to hundreds of individual wooden parts that all had to come back together on site was probably my favorite part of the project.

https://imgur.com/aCCLsfs

https://imgur.com/zaC0wYY

I've been sharing some of my woodworking projects over on r/woodworking lately, but I thought I'd share my first venture into ceramics here.

This project started when a client asked me, "Can you do this?" Of course, I said yes.

There was just one small problem: I had never worked with ceramics before and had absolutely no idea how to do it.

So after getting the project, I spent the next few days watching YouTube tutorials and figuring out how slip casting, plaster molds, glazing and firing actually worked. Nothing like jumping straight into the deep end.

The finished sculpture was designed for a beach house and consists of 150 ceramic fish swimming across the wall.

The process actually started in more familiar territory for me. I carved a master fish out of hardwood, then used that master to make 20 plaster molds. I needed quite a few molds because producing this many fish from one or two would have taken forever.

From those molds I slip-cast 160 fish. The installation was always designed for 150, but I made 10 extras because I figured a few weren't going to survive my first attempt at ceramics. That turned out to be a good decision—about four broke along the way.

For the finish, I used a white underglaze followed by a clear glaze. I wanted to keep all the fish white and relatively simple, while the clear glaze gives them some depth and lets them catch the light.

The school itself was designed in Rhino. I went through quite a few iterations before settling on the final composition. Once I was happy with it, I printed the entire layout at full size across multiple sheets of A1 paper and used those as a template to drill all 150 mounting locations.

Each fish is mounted on a white-painted aluminum rod, with the rods varying from about 5 cm to 25 cm (2"–10"). That variation brings some fish much farther off the wall than others, creating the three-dimensional movement and shadows you see in the finished installation.

I used aluminum rather than steel because this is in a beach house and I didn't want to worry about rust from the humid, salty environment.

Since the fish are slip-cast, they're hollow on the back. The rods are secured inside that cavity with two-part epoxy, so the attachment point is hidden once they're installed. Not the most sophisticated solution, but it worked extremely well.

Looking back, agreeing to make 150 ceramic fish before knowing how to make a single ceramic fish was probably a little ridiculous, but I learned a lot very quickly.

Sometimes "Of course I can do that" is followed by a lot of YouTube tutorials.

https://imgur.com/a/digb0sh

I made two large illuminated artworks for this project, one depicting a man and the other a woman.

Each image is made from 20 individual 32" × 32" panels arranged in a 4 × 5 grid, giving each finished artwork an overall size of approximately 10' 8" × 13' 4".

Each complete image contains 8,446 individual holes, for a total of 16,892 holes across the two pieces.

The interesting part of the process was figuring out how to translate the images into something the CNC could actually machine.

I built a custom program in Rhino Grasshopper for this. I started with the image converted to black and white, then overlaid a grid of points across the image. At each point, the program reads the grayscale value of the image and converts it to a number between 0 and 1, black being 0 and white being 1. That value is then mapped to the diameter of the hole at that location.

The result is an image made entirely from different hole sizes rather than different colors or materials. The holes range from approximately 8 mm to 24 mm in diameter.

All 8,446 holes in each image were then machined on the CNC.

Each panel was built from 3/4" plywood with 3 mm walnut veneer laminated to the face. I specifically chose plywood for its structural stability because of the number of holes being machined. It gave us the stability we needed and helped minimize the risk of cracking or splitting during the process.

Behind each panel we installed a white acrylic diffuser to distribute the light evenly and prevent the LEDs from being directly visible through the holes. When the lighting is turned on, all those individual holes come together to create the image.

The 20 panels making up each image were installed onto a steel tube frame built on site. Each panel was then screwed into the frame from behind, keeping the face completely clean with no visible fasteners.

The final finish is several coats of water-based polyurethane, which brings out the walnut veneer while giving the pieces a durable finish.

From a distance, the pieces look relatively simple. Up close, you start to see the amount of precision hiding in those 16,892 holes.

The CNC was obviously a big part of making this possible, but the interesting part for me was developing the process that turned a photograph into thousands of individual hole sizes.

Another project from the shop that I thought I'd share.

This was a custom bar built using a series of individual maple wood slats. The interesting part is that the slats are individually shaped to create the wave-like pattern across the front of the bar. Rather than changing the spacing to create the curves, each slat has its own shape to follow the design.

The slat doors were built using dado joints and a steel cable as a tension element. They were quite heavy, but I wanted to keep them relatively thin, so the cable provided additional support without having to make the slats much thicker.

Here you can see a video of the doors opening. As you can see, the finished doors are perfectly balanced and operate smoothly.

https://imgur.com/a/mpjOpvx

The cabinet itself was also made from maple and has integrated lighting inside. When the doors are closed, the light shines through the spaces between the slats, creating a see-through effect that becomes part of the design.

I also built the wine holders and hanging cup holders myself. To add more storage space without blocking the lighting, I used 10 mm glass shelves, which allow the light to pass through and keep the whole design feeling open.

The white marble backdrop creates a great contrast against the warm tone of the wood. I stained the maple to achieve that walnut color, and I really like how the wood, marble, glass, and integrated lighting all work together.

For the finish, I used a water-based polyurethane, which gave the wood a protective finish while keeping the warm tone of the stain.

Getting all those individual pieces to flow together consistently was definitely the challenging part. There are a lot of pieces here, and each one had to be shaped carefully so the overall pattern stayed continuous.

The installation was an adventure of its own. The finished bar had to be lifted up from a balcony using a rooftop crane from over 15 stories up just to get it into the building.

Definitely one of those projects that took a lot more planning, layout, and logistics than you might expect from the finished piece.

What do you guys think?

I made this commissioned sculpture for a client. It was designed specifically for the space, with the idea of creating a wave and bringing some movement and flow into the room.

The interesting part is that none of the parts have actual 3d curves, its all lat and straight.

There are 90 individual pieces, split evenly between an inner and outer curtain. They are made from 2" x 1", 16 gauge mild steel rectangular tubing. I installed them with the 1" side facing forward so they would have a thinner profile when viewed head on. The tubes vary quite a bit in length, with the longest being just under 4 meters.

Each tube has welded end caps and a closed steel hook welded to the top. I also put roughly a pound of nails inside each tube to make the bottom heavier. The tubes then hang freely from their individual hooks.

The wave shape comes entirely from the suspension system. I designed the whole thing in Rhino, including the plasma cut patterns. The support system uses 1/4" steel plate that was plasma cut into a 2D curved profile. The plate was designed in three sections because the installation space was pretty tight.

Individual steel hooks are welded to the plate at specific locations to create the hanging points for each tube. The curved plates are then welded to the underside of a 2" x 2" square tube steel structure, which is bolted to the wall.

The support structure sits high enough that you can barely see it from normal eye level. You really have to bend down to see it, which gives the tubes the appearance of floating in the air.

The tubes were powder coated in two shades of gray. The inner curtain is darker and the outer curtain is lighter. The copper/bronze color you see on the ends isn't a different finish. It is just the floor lighting hitting the powder coated end caps from below.

It was a pretty fun project to figure out because the tubes themselves are completely straight. The final shape comes from the location of each hook and the different lengths of the tubes.

Curious what you guys think, especially of the way the suspension system was designed.

I was told over at r/woodworking that you guys might like this. It’s a display piece I built for a bar so they could show off their best bottles.

And yes, if you’re wondering, I also built a more traditional cabinet where most of the bottles and glassware are stored. This one is really just for show and was designed to be the centerpiece of the bar. Here you can see Zacapa solera 23, Zacapa XO, Coloso, Colonial, Rum Botran 15, and at the end a tequila and whiskey bottles.

Finished this custom bar and liquor display recently.

The main feature is built from individual sections of reclaimed rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) wood. I wanted the wood itself to create the shape and visual movement, so the entire piece is made from a series of individually shaped sections rather than one solid carved panel.

The sections are mounted to a 3/4" plywood back plate, which was painted in a charcoal-gray polyurethane finish. The whole design was broken into sections mainly to make transportation and installation manageable. Once on site, everything was assembled and hung using a series of French cleats.

The lighting is also integrated directly into the design rather than added as an afterthought. The LED lighting is concealed within the wood sections, using the shape and depth of the piece to create the glow between the curves and highlight the bottles.

The bottle shelves are recessed into the design and use 10 mm glass, which keeps the shelves visually light while still giving them plenty of strength.

One of the trickier parts was getting all the individual wood sections to flow together while maintaining the same overall shape and spacing. There are a lot of pieces in this thing, so keeping everything organized during fabrication and installation was definitely part of the challenge.

Pretty happy with how it turned out, especially once the light was turned on and started bringing out all the curves and grain.

What do you guys think? Would love to hear what you would have done differently.

Hi everyone I was looking through some my projects and thought I'd share one of my favorites.

The base is made from white mahogany and features a sculptural crossed-leg design. It was one of the more challenging pieces I've built, requiring lots of compound angles, precise joinery, and many hours of shaping and sanding to get the lines to flow while keeping the structure rock solid.

The top is a quartz slab, chosen for its durability and low maintenance while allowing the wood base to remain the focal point of the design.

I also built the booth seating and the wall paneling to match, creating a cohesive dining space.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the base design or answer any questions about the construction process.

This was a custom office setup made primarily from Guanacaste (Enterolobium cyclocarpum), a wood native to Central America.

The centerpiece is the wooden world map, made from individual pieces that were cut and positioned to create the continents, giving the map a nice three-dimensional effect.

The desk itself has a solid Guanacaste top with a sculptural slatted front, along with integrated storage. I also built the matching shelving and cabinetry around the desk to tie everything together.

Guanacaste has some really beautiful grain and character, and I thought it worked especially well for this project.

This is one of those projects that looks fairly simple from a distance, but there were a lot of individual pieces and details to get right.

What do you guys think? Have any of you worked with Guanacaste or other tropical hard woods before?