Someone handcrafted it, it apparently plays.
this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2026
327 points (98.5% liked)
Mildly Interesting
25500 readers
771 users here now
This is for strictly mildly interesting material. If it's too interesting, it doesn't belong. If it's not interesting, it doesn't belong.
This is obviously an objective criteria, so the mods are always right. Or maybe mildly right? Ahh.. what do we know?
Just post some stuff and don't spam.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not sure wood is a softer material than vinyl (depending on species).
My concern would be the difficulty of engraving without the grain interfering with the groove.
On the scale of a record needle, wood is quite soft. Woods strength comes from its structure working together to resist stressors. So a beam of wood would be stronger than a beam of vinyl, but when being scraped along a grooved surface that strength doesn't help.
I wonder if densified wood would be better.
Yeah, if you've ever tried to polish up wood (without any sort of coating), you know it's almost impossible to make it completely smooth, it always has a certain texture to the touch. And here, where you have to pretty much cut it once and can't polish it at all, it's probably going to retain a lot of that texture in the groove. So I guess it is possible that it might """play""", but it would probably be mostly noise with some music coming through at times.
Might work a little better (for a little while) since it's 'cut' via a laser, not friction or gouging - the surface would be relatively smooth in comparison since it's burning the material.
If I were going to do something like this, I would probably make the wood as flat as possible and then put a high-quality coat of epoxy or some other harder material on top of it and carve the music into that material instead of the wood.
I'm not convinced. The edges of laser-cut plywood are not smooth, they still have a rough grainy texture to them, and they're also covered in soot which is probably not conducive to music playback.
I'm really interested in hearing what this sounds like, but I don't expect much.
From the picture it looks like it might be laser-cut? The grain might still be an issue though idk
Judging by the grate it's sitting on it's still sitting in the bed of the laser cutter.
laughs in humidity