technē and poiēsis

I knew I wanted the interior of the caravan to be finished in plywood- it's easy to work with, relatively cheap, adds shear strength to the wood structure, and looks nice (at least in my opinion). But with plywood, there is always the question of how to treat the edges, which have a very different aesthetic than the surface. A lot of tutorials online say to glue a strip of veneer onto the edge so that it "looks like real wood". But my philosophy has always been that materials should look like themselves and not try to be something else. So I did some tests with my router. I had learned from my shelf project that a simple bevel on the edge of a panel gives it a finished look. Bevelling the edge will also help smooth off any splinters that might be left over from the saw cut. I tried one with a 45° bevel and one with a rounded corner, which I felt might be softer to the touch. I prefer the angled bevel though- it looks cleaner. Angled vs rounded edge The correspo...

The vertical framing studs need to hold up the double beam as well as hold it together. So in each stud I'm cutting out 'shoulders' that allow the beam to rest. The 'head' of the stud will be between the two beams, screwed into place. My Japanese saw works well for cross-cuts (against the grain), but it is very tiring to make rip cuts (with the grain). So I think I'm going to build a jig for the circular saw. Cutting the 'shoulders' with a Japanese saw Finishing the surface with a rasp

For insulation and structural purposes, I wanted the wood structure to be 10cm thick in the walls and 12cm thick in the roof. But that means where the wall attaches to the roof, there is a corner with a surface of 10x12cm. Having a beam with a cross-section of 10x12cm would be overkill, and it would add extra weight that I don’t need. Plus, I have sections of the beam that need to be curved, and it would be very hard to curve a piece of wood that big. Therefore, I’ve decided to build a double beam made of two sections of 2.7x12cm, and put 5cm of insulation between the two sections, for a total thickness of 10cm. The curved parts I had cut out of 3-ply spruce by a CNC router. My first task for the caravan is to assemble these beams. I’m using my router to make an overlapping joint of 5cm between the curved and straight pieces.

My friends commissioned me to build storage under the open staircase in their apartment. I wanted to keep the open feeling of the staircase, so not completely build it up. And I also wanted to respect their quirky, eclectic decor and taste for natural materials. I chose a system of boxes + planks. This also made the construction process easier, as I was able to assemble the boxes separately at my apartment. For a combination of workability+price, I decided to use 3-ply spruce to construct the boxes. As the name implies, there are 3 layers of wood glued perpendicular to each other. To make clean joints, I really wanted to make the three layers wrap around the corners. So I devised a system of routering that stepped the corners according to the thickness of the plys. Of course, this kind of joinery would not have been feasible without a router. This was the first project where I used my new handheld router. I really liked the clean edges it gave. It was useful for everything f...