40 Useful Items You Can Make With A CNC Woodworking Machine
Woodworking and craftsmanship used to be done entirely by hand, from intricate wood carvings with fine detail to carving uniquely shaped cutting boards and even furniture. Today, thanks to the power of computers, CNC (or "computer numerical control") machines can be used to craft gorgeous wooden artwork and furniture if you have the space.
Think of CNC machines as 3D printers in reverse. They carve away pieces of wood to create a shape or design using drill or carving bits similar to router table bits. CNC machines remove much of the manual nature of woodworking but have excellent utility for on-the-go wood craftsmen. And, many CNC machines are small enough to fit on your basement benchtop. Their only real restriction is space!
Let's go over 40 of the most useful items you can make with a CNC woodworking machine, whether you're looking to sell your woodworking crafts or just make wooden furniture or small items for at-home use.
Personalized Coasters
Do you want your coasters to reflect an aspect of your family history, or personality? With a CNC woodworking machine, you can carve your own custom designs into wood coasters. Fill these with epoxy to create a gorgeous blue effect if you're going for a nautical theme, or use black or white epoxy putty to create bold designs.
Customized Wooden Signs
Personalize your home with custom wooden welcome signs! You can also create unique wall art. Your CNC bed size will limit what size of sign you can make, so make sure your bed will allow you to carve the size you desire. These are great for every room in the house and can be painted to match the walls or simply finished with a lacquer to give them a sheen.
Customized Key Chains
A CNC machine allows you to produce customized keychains with your name on them, or an intricate design that displays your personality. You can also create keychain accoutrements with destinations on them or other cool designs.
Wooden Puzzles
A CNC machine's carving bits can get down into some pretty fine detail—within 1/8th of an inch—allowing you to craft fantastic wooden puzzles with animal designs or smaller shape puzzles for the kids. There's no need to spend a fortune on play-puzzles for your children when you can make them yourself.
National Flag Designs
If you have a penchant for your national flag, you can carve it out of a block of wood, paint it, and set it up on your table as an ornament, or hang it from the wall as a very different kind of wall art. CNC machines also allow you to incorporate wavy design features, to make it appear as though it's fluttering in the wind.
Custom Phone Cases
Sure, Otterboxes might be all the rage, but you'd have to drop a custom wood phone case from an awfully great height in order to break it. Because you're crafting this yourself, you can set the depth you need for your phone and accompanying glass protector, as well as carving out all the ports you need for your charging cable, headphones, or SIM cards. You can even craft designs or names on the back to give your phone case a personal touch.
Personalized House Numbers
Maybe you really like a certain font and would like to add to the Plain Jane house numbers that are required by your local authorities. Well, with a CNC machine, you can craft your house numbers to the exact size and typeface you like! You can also add an initial or a full surname wood piece, so everyone knows you live there.
Cutting Boards
Custom cutting boards can be made with a CNC. They can either have an intricate design on them or feature a nearby destination. You can also make them for different families and carve the family name into them.
Cribbage Boards
If you love a game of cribbage, you can craft your own customized crib boards with different accenting designs and shapes! Ever see a whale tail crib game? What about a snake-lookalike crib boards? With a CNC, your crib boards don't have to be basic rectangles.
Plant Markers
Get rid of those old plastic plant markers that seem to flex and break with a hard stare. Replace them with some carved plant markers made from pine. These can be carved with a pointy end with names of the plants on them, or an intricate design of what the plant looks like, if you want to get really creative. Pro tip: Slightly burn the markers with a blowtorch to 'seal' the wood and make it last longer. This is an ancient Japanese technique known as "sho sugi ban".
Dolores M. Harvey, Shutterstock
Engraved Photo Frames
If you have a family wedding coming up, or want to commemorate a birth of your first child, or memorialize a beloved pet, you can engrave a standard wood picture frame with a name, date, or both.
Galina Bondarenko, Shutterstock
Personalized Wooden Spoons Or Kitchen Utensils
If the kitchen sometimes becomes a hostile environment if you touch the chef's wooden spoon, create a cool name tag or other more assertive design on a prized kitchen possession.
Camping Cutlery
If you're always misplacing your camping cutlery, or perhaps don't have any and are looking for some, make yourself a few pieces on your CNC machine. The fine carving capabilities allow you to carve out spoons, sporks, or even serrated knives.
Bookmarks With Hooks
It's frustrating isn't it, when your bookmark falls out and your book closes as you lean down to pick it up? With your CNC, you can craft a bookmark with a tiny little hook that allows it to hang on the spine of the book, staying in place and keeping the page you're on.
Jewelry Boxes
If your significant other has been complaining that their jewelry is a disorganized mess, why not surprise them with a personalized jewelry box? You can create different depths by carving out a hollow middle, then build some dividers with meranti or other cheap thin wood boards. Emblazon the top of the box with a name or other neat design and solve your significant other's disorganized jewelry woes.
Custom Shape Wooden Shingles
If you've been wanting to re-shingle a small section of your wooden siding, or change the design completely, one cool idea is to create custom wooden shingles that fit your vision exactly. This is relatively simple to do with a CNC machine and appropriately thin pieces of existing wooden shingles (if they're in good enough shape). It's a great way to reduce waste and give you the look you want.
Custom Urns
The size of urn you can craft on a CNC machine is limited by the overall height of your drill housing and depth that your drill will go to. But, you can still create some small, intricate shapes for a beloved pet.
Small Lazy Susan
Excellent to use as a salt and pepper shaker holder, or a small snack tray, you can use your CNC machine to carve a small lazy Susan tray out of scrap wood. Just make sure the wood you're carving is deep enough to make the 'spindle' part of the Lazy Susan function as it should. You may need to use three different wood pieces for this project.
Chess Pieces
CNC machines allow you to incorporate fine details, such as those found on the Queen, King, or Knight pieces on a chessboard. By using your CNC, you can carve your own customized chess pieces or replace a lost piece.
Wooden Dice
If you're forever losing dice to board games, you can use your CNC machine to carve out a bunch of die pieces, using the drill bit to carve out the tiny indents, which can then be painted black or another funky color.
Kansir, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Custom Religious Items
If you have religious friends or are religious yourself, use your CNC machine to craft a custom wooden cross or other religious emblem. You can also use it to craft an detailed Celtic cross to pay homage to your ancestry.
Wooden Shelving
If you're not satisfied with what you've found at IKEA and want something a little more unique, you can use your CNC to craft some wooden shelves. Complicated shapes can be achieved, including triangular shelves with one shelf in the middle or a hexagon or even an octagon. Customized wooden shelving is suddenly a possibility.
Crafty Bookends
If you don't have enough books (or don't want to keep them on a shelf), you can make some crafty bookends with your CNC machine that look like mountains, or the spines of other books, or another intricate design.
Door Knockers
Create a custom wooden door knocker for your front or back door to give it a unique pop. Consider the color of your door when finishing the wood, but ensure you apply a layer of clear coat lacquer to protect it from the elements.
Towfiqu ahamed barbhuiya, Shutterstock
Wood-Mounted Bottle Openers
Whether you like wine or beer in a bottle, having a wood-mounted bottle opener is a stylish option for your kitchen wall or cabinets. You can even carve a family name into the opener or a design resembling your favorite beer or wine company's logo.
Charging Docks
Having a place to actually stand your phone up, or lay it down, rather than just leaving it laying on the counter, desk, or bedside table is a stylish way to charge up. Be sure to carve out the right port sizes for the wires of your respective phone chargers. You can customize them to suit your family and give each person their own custom dock.
Decorative Storage Boxes
Crafting a decorative storage box for arts and crafts makes a fantastic Christmas gift for another artist in your family. Maybe emblazon the box with a name and give it design accents that befit the artwork that the person creates. For example, a painter's storage box may paintbrushes carved into it.
Desk Organizers
The beauty of customized desk organizers is that they can be made to perfectly suit your needs. Whether you need deeper compartments for things like sticky note blanks, or thin, streamlined compartments for things like pens and pencils, they're endlessly customizable.
Featured photography, Shutterstock
Changeable Letter Signs
Think large-format Scrabble. Crafting changeable letter signs that stick on and peel off is a great decorative element in a home. These can also be used creatively in a workplace or garage.
Dollhouses And Accessories
Another very profitable option for those with a CNC machine is to make dollhouses and dollhouse accessories. The ability of CNC bits to give stunning detail really allows you to customize dollhouses to suit specific needs of potential customers.
Wooden Train Sets
Remember those wooden train sets you may have had as a kid? Block-style things that were clunky but functional? If those have been lost over the years, you'll likely be able to remake them using a CNC machine. Though this isn't a quick process, as the train will need to be made in several parts, they're a great memento of childhoods gone by.
Christmas Tree Ornaments
You can get pretty creative with your Christmas tree ornaments thanks to your CNC machine. Whether you're looking to craft a Santa-style decoration or just a Christmas tree, carving them out of wood is more environmentally-friendly and allows them to be painted. Get your family in the Christmas spirit by making the post-creation decoration a family affair.
Door Handles
Give your kitchen cabinets a new look with custom door handles. Rather than buying from IKEA or other stores, craft your own unique handles that suit your overall kitchen aesthetic.
Toilet Roll Holder
If you want to give your bathroom some style, fashion a toilet roll holder on your CNC machine. You can create one that's a little more stylish than your average roll holder, or has some funky design feature to it.
Custom Stamps
If you know a local business in your area that uses product-based marketing, why not ask them if you could make them a custom stamp? Crafting these on your CNC requires a bit of technical jiggery as you'll need to set them as a reverse image with a raised design, but custom stamps are perfect for a business' personal touch.
Nutcracker
A rotating spindle-style nutcracker can be customized to suit your home or anyone else's who'll use it. While rather niche, these designs are perfect for those who love freshly cracked peanuts.
Rolling Pins
Everyone who bakes anything will understand the value of a good rolling pin. You can carve both a rolling pin that you'll use when baking and one with an intricate design that can be a purely decorative kitchen piece.
Wall Tiles
For those with an accent wall or feature wall in their home, a set of wall tiles can be carved using a CNC to represent a specific shape or symbol that you might be drawn to (yin and yang, for example). They can also be used as a sound barrier in your at-home office.
Minimalist Wallets
If you don't like the feeling of a bulky wallet in your pocket, craft a minimalist one out of wood. Nobody carries cash nowadays, but you can screw in a money clip to the back if need be. You can also organize the interior of your minimalist wallet with thin wood pieces by boring out on either side of it to keep your cards separate.
CNC machinery lets your creative juices flow and allows you to carve your imagination into bits of wood. Even if you buy large pieces of lumber, you can reuse so much of the wood you would otherwise waste by turning it into CNC-carved artwork or functional objects.
Let us know if you've undertaken any CNC woodworking projects below and what your favorite thing to make is!
