Kyle Robert Henricksen

We had this old junky side table cabinet thing we were using as a record cabinet and I hated the look and wanted something custom. I also had this old cracked up slab of elm that had been broken to pieces and dried out for a couple years, and I finally saw the pieces fit together.

The base I made with 3/4” ply. The top, drawer face, drawer pull and legs are all Colorado milled Elm from an arborist friend of mine. This was a really fun project that I think came out looking great.

Materials: plywood, resin, elm, drawer slide

I married my wife in August 2024. I’d done alot of woodworking leading up to the wedding as part of our DIY venue, and I knew I wanted to make a ring box for our rings for the ceremony.

The maple lower was some leftover from the murphy bed I had made for our new house a year prior, a small remnant. The padouk was given to me from our good friend Sam. The fabric I put into the ring holes was cut from some remnants from the built in breakfast nook we built in our house as well, so most of these materials were “salvaged”.

I really loved the process of manually cutting these pieces, hand sanding and drilling and finishing each edge and surfage, and then marrying that with some modern technology in the form of laser engraved details. This was a fun labor of love.

Materials: Padouk, maple, fabric, magnets, hinge.

A year prior I had made a wooden ring to propose, as we were designing a custom ring and I couldn’t wait any longer. The wood for the box was also extra from the murphy bed, and the fabric was from the same set. The wood for the ring was a piece of Ekki wood that I had kept from the bridge that was made next to my childhood home…I’d had it for 10 years before using it for this.

Materials: Oak, ekki wood, hinge, fabric, turquoise powder and granules, resin.

I’ve had a bunch of random slabs of wood come though that have usually been too cracked or unusable for most things. In these cases, some resin stabilization has done wonders. All of these have sold to various customers.

The elm and walnut tables were salved Colorado wood from a local alborist friend.

Materials: Elm, walnut, madrone burl, resin, hairpin legs.

I've wanted to make a BMX stem and sprocket for the longest time, just for myself primarily.  As I started designing a stem, I realized I needed bars, and then grips, and some bar end designs I have had in my head...a day or so later I had made most every component on the bike.  

This was a super fun little geometry and design practice.   I will be setting up the CAM for a better version of the sprocket and the stem with all fixturing required, so that I can actually make them soon.  

I made a really crude version of this bottle opener bar end a while back, and would really like to make this a real thing finally also.  

We bought our house in 2023 and the first project we knew we had to undertake was replacing the peeling and aged vinyl countertop and plastic sink. It looked like crap, and make the kitchen feel so old and dirty. I’d been doing a lot of wood work and we both loved the look of buther block countertops so we went that route.

The counter top blanks were just home depot pieces, nothing special. The trick with any real world project is getting precise cuts and joinery to fit real world dimensions, where no angles are actually 90 degrees and nothing lines up exactly right.

I used some maple boards for the backsplash trim and had to do some custom stain mixing to get it to match the finished butcher block look. I think this turned out great, and for the price it can’t be beat.

Materials: hevea butcher block blanks, maple, countertop connectors, butcherblock oil.

I just moved to Denver a few weeks ago, and have been trying to make the best use of some free time I have.  I've also been super antsy to start making again, so I spent a few hours drawing and CAD designing this cabinet, and then spent the next day getting some cheapo plywood and cutting it up.  

This was done on my back porch, and in my room...with a cheap reciprocating saw, a hand saw, a hand planer, a drill, and some sand paper.  I think it came out awesome!

I made this one with 1/2" ply, but going to update the design a bit and make a kit using 3/4".  Look for this as a sort of pre-cut and drilled DIY kit.  

I like this version a little better.  3/4" OD Brass and aluminum, manually turned.  O-ring seals on both end keep it a nice tight package, and that look of brass on aluminum is so nice!

This version was made for a couple good friends, both requested for significant others/friends.  So, a labor of love.  

An example of a small precision assembly.  CNC'ed aluminum parts, designed around readily available o-rings and plastic screws.  

I bought this cheap waterproof speaker and wanted to ride with it on my bike.  For a while just strapped it down on the front rack...but realized I could do a lot better. 

I drew a quick sketch up of an idea just went with it.  

Turned, threaded and milled aluminum knob, aluminum body with countersunk and bottom mount 10-32 socket head cap screws.  This was a couple hours of work maybe, but has been on my bike and carrying the beat for a long time now.  

I did this super quick geometry study in plywood one night, because I had this idea in my head and wanted to see it in person.  Three cubes, a common backbone.  I tried the same concept with triangles, and with hexagons, but didn't like the look as much.  

It was late spring, I had just been laid off temporarily, and so I made some cubes.  

The mounting for these things I really liked, a turned dowel with a single screw through it, two per shelf, made for a really clean floating shelf mounting.  

This is the upgrade to the wood and metal Becoming Elevated kit...a machined brass and aluminum one hitter, carried in a machined aluminum case.  A threaded on aluminum end cap on one side keeps the one hitter in place, while a copper end cap with rubber o-rings provides a tightly sealed pocket to hold your greenery on the other end.  

A good friend of mine had left an old serving board at my house that she used as part of her jewelry display, the wood weathered and beat from years of use.  For reasons, I kept it in my room, it sitting by my desk like a beacon for several weeks.  Finally, on a super cold February night I took it down to the shop and started planing it flat.  Underneath, I found the most beautiful fresh wood, rich reddish brown color with nice grain pattern that wasn't obvious under the oil and dirt and sunbleached top layers.  Using it to make a jewelry box for her birthday seemed like an obvious choice.  

The inside surfaces are lined with birch bark found on the ground on a hike in NH.  Three of the top edges angled, with three 0.33" OD brass inlayed pucks on the fourth edge...for her 33rd birthday.  A bit much?  Maybe.  

Happy birthday Alicia!

These started as a fun Christmas project for a couple friends that partake in the legal use of greenery, and morphed into a really fun machining project idea.  

A classic Marlboro one hitter machined from aluminum and brass, press fit and finished together.  The wooden "case" has a compartment for the cigarette, a second compartment for the lighter, and a third cork covered compartment on the bottom for the vegetation.  

This was a really fun project...kind of my first foray into chiseling and finishing wood in any legitimate way.  

An example of a small custom testing fixture.  A machined aluminum electrode is pressed into a PEEK plate, an o-ring providing a leakproof seal.  A second electrode is sealed against the first via an aluminum backing plate.  

Both electrodes are machined from aluminum rod, the smallest diameter is ~0.100".  A PTFE insulator/spacer is used on the second electrode to prevent electrical contact.  

All parts manually machined.  

This was a custom battery pack assembly.  Clamping fixtures were needed to hold a long (>3') battery pack together that provided a rigid support for the whole pack.  

For such a simple clamping mechanism, these parts actually required several different machining setups.  Blanks were machined from stock, as well as a fixture block to hold them for the secondary process.  Bolt holes were drilled, countersunk, and tapped, then the blocks were flipped to machine the second face.  

The clamping holes and support holes were machined in the same process, with the support holes acting also as the clamping holes for the final OD machining process.  

When my best friend Skye and his fiancee asked me to make him a box for his wedding, and that was about the amount of detail I got...I ran with it.  My father had some white maple from a friends house in Connecticut, and a good friend was making jewelry at the time, and so we collaborated on a design.  She took care of making the metal pieces, I took care of the rest.  

Stained maple. with epoxied front panel showing the initials of the bride and groom and the date of their wedding.  They used this as a lock box, which they still have in their living room, to be opened when times get tough.  It was such a nice project to work on, in part because of the time of year and my lifes circumstances, but primarily to be able to be a part of two great peoples journey together in such a meaningful way.