Form, Function & the CNC

This unique and dynamic woodworking class explores the Japanese art of making secret opening boxes in three stages. Students begin by creating a box infrastructure, then cut plates of wood, which slide in a sequence and stay attached to the framework. Finally, the box is assembled and a finish is applied. After each student completes an initial warm-up puzzle box, they explore a number of other wooden mechanisms and decorative inlays meant to disguise and hide moving parts. Students are encouraged to design and build their own custom puzzle box variation, focusing primarily on hand tool use with the aid of miniature router table set-ups that assist in cutting notches for moving parts and joinery.

This class is open to students who have taken the basic puzzle box workshop and want to go further, dreaming up their own mechanism for a unique box. Students work with precut milled woods and have access to a variety of specific hardware like springs, magnets, and ball bearings to prototype a more thematic puzzle concept. Time is spent testing and making a puzzle mechanism work before moving towards building a box that is locked with a puzzle mechanism.

Learn how to transform planar bends into faceted, sculptural vessels. This week-long workshop explores how to adapt the age-old technique of coopering (think staved wine and whiskey barrels) to cut angled joinery along bent laminated surfaces. Combining traditional and modern approaches, students learn to design profiles using basic Rhino skills to cut on the CNC, combined with a variety of woodworking machinery. We experiment with radial symmetry and create unique curved parts to achieve unique forms in wood.