I'm almost finished with a couple of subwoofer enclosures that I designed as grid work boxes, sort of like a tightly compressed shoji screen. They are getting a distressed black milk paint finish; here they are just sanded.

The grid panels are made up of half-lapped strips of wood. It's one of those painstaiking processes that either put you in a zen like state or drive you batty and go on forever. This is what they look like as they are during assembly:

When I was an apprentice my mother brought me a magazine photo of some antique wooden cookie drying racks and asked if I could make them. If you bake (or know anyone who does) you are familiar with the common drying racks made from metal wire. They work, but they're not very pretty. The antique ones were made the same as my grids above, although the pattern was small squares rather than narrow slots. I avoided it for a while, but finally surprised my mom with a pair one Christmas. She loved them, and has used them ever since. They took so long to make that I never made another set.

But I made a pile of extra slats for the subwoofer enclosures in case any of them broke or warped during construction. I put them together for a new set of cookie drying racks. These were for my girlfriend. She put them into service immediately.