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I've stumbled on this beautiful piece of design. And I'm wondering how they constructed the wooden part of the box. I have some questions:

  1. Which type of wood they use, because the nerves are really parallel and straight?
  2. I see from the diagram that the corner pieces are made separately, and glued later. How do they cut them?

I'm assuming it's all CNC'ed. But it would be nice if somebody can tell, how they would make something like this, with just hand material tools (if possible).

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    Sure this is wood at all? It looks like the backside of the box is carved from a massive block of wood, but this is almost certainly not the case. That's the kind of thing a wood amateur would do in his shack (because cost doesn't matter), but it's not what you do for mass production. Most likely, this is plastic with a 3D wood texture...
    – Damon
    Oct 20 '16 at 19:38
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    Looking at a youtube video which has much higher quality and shows part of the production process, it seems this is indeed laminated layers of veneer with rounded rectangles cut out and glued together. Which is just... crazy, cost- and work-wise.... but actually makes me want to own one of these.
    – Damon
    Oct 20 '16 at 19:47
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    If you'd like some input on making a box with rounded corners rather than this box specifically modify the Question or ask a fresh one. Fundamentally it's not hard to make anything with rounded corners since you can just make it square and then round the corners off :-) This can easily be done entirely with hand tools although obviously a power router would help in certain situations.
    – Graphus
    Oct 21 '16 at 6:56
  • @Graphus has a point. I've seen some very nice work done that LOOKS curved, when in reality it had a very tight grain, and the corners where cut at a 45 to the grain. Otherwise, it's time to break out the steam box!
    – BrownRedHawk
    Oct 21 '16 at 18:36
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    @BrownRedHawk I was thinking more along the lines of this sort of thing, finger joints or dovetails can be used at the corners and then they're rounded off.
    – Graphus
    Oct 21 '16 at 19:55
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Any wood would serve, but selecting straight tight grain wood, like maple, would serve better. As mentioned before, the technique is create a joint and shape it afterwards to perfect outside curves. The inside curve can be done via a drill press and a correct forstner bit.

It is possible to cut curved joints together if the curves match and it is easy to template symmetrical curved pieces by simply folding a piece of paper diagonally and cutting the folded paper and then unfold to see the corner.

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The diagram makes it pretty clear that the case is not wood. That structure, including standoffs and screw holes, is inappropriate for wood, and is most likely injection-molded plastic.

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