I refined the design to use smaller pegs and a more robust rounded center tab in a holiday gift, but the prototype pieces illustrate the concept pretty well. The whole thing was cut out of birch ply.
If you attempt something like this beware that hardwoods will break very easily across their grain. Orient and scale your tabs accordingly… but I think your best results will be with plywood.
If the material you’re doing has some flex, you can do tabs that compress into place and then lock, but those have to be designed carefully if you’re ever going to unlock them.
While playing around with locking tabs, (I used to call them “snaps”, but this is a better name) I also noticed that they work best with plywood. Makes sense, because the plys have alternating grain directions.
I actually see a lot of potential with the first design, because the wedge shaped tabs can hold the pieces together tightly with less consideration about kerf. It would also be easier to take apart.
I’m thinking about molds for epoxy resin. As much as I enjoy making things with the Glowforge, woodturning is my first love (creatively speaking). I have been thinking of using the Glowforge to make custom molds for some of my more ambitious turning ideas.
I used the glowforge to make simple epoxy mold for pen turning, acrylic positive layers sanded smooth, negative cast in silicone, then the silicone mold used to make resin blanks.
This was needlessly complicated when you can buy a simple rectangular mold on amazon for almost nothing. As an economic argument, it’s just dumb to buy a several thousand dollar laser cutter and the pressure pot and even the silicone to end up the same place you can spend 17$ to get to.
It also uses dowels as wedges. The holes through the mortise and the tenon are slightly offset, so that driving the dowel in presses the pieces more firmly together. The whole thing can be taken apart.
Well, there are only 50 of them! Can’t be too hard, no?
My problem is I can’t just do it the easy way. I’d need color staining. And an attractive arragement. Maybe some different veneers. Or how about inlay with the aluminum tape trick? And some metallic dust for bling.
Make tiles out of each one, and assemble them on your wall?