I'm Never Using AI to Design Woodworking Plans Again

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A massive thank you to Down Under Woodworks for the collaboration on this one! Check him out here:    / downunderwoodworks  

I’m never letting AI design my woodworking plans again.

This isn't a simple "How-to" guide. This is a story of survival—for me, for my tools, and for a piece of Australian timber that has been through hell and back. It all started with a mistake: trusting Google Gemini to design a high-end end grain cutting board. As a beginner, I thought I could skip the $50 Etsy plans and let the "perfect" logic of AI guide me. I walked into my shed with those digital blueprints and a slab of Australian Red Gum that had literally survived a shed fire caused by a cheap e-bike charger explosion. I paired it with spalted hardwood salvaged from a mate’s bandsaw mill after a cyclone. On paper, it was a poetic restoration of "distressed" timber. In reality, it was a three-week descent into shop madness. Working in record Brisbane heat with budget Ozito tools, I quickly realized that AI doesn't understand the real world. It gave me a "Basket Weave" design that required thousand-dollar jointers and sub-millimeter precision—things my underpowered circular saw and half-horsepower bandsaw simply couldn't deliver.

The project hit rock bottom at 8 PM on a Tuesday. After fighting warped boards and massive gaps caused by the AI’s impossible math, I watched a finished, glued unit fall onto the concrete floor and snap in half. I sat there in the dark, exhausted, ready to bin the whole thing. But the Red Gum had survived a fire and two years in the rain; I figured I owed it one last shot. I pivoted mid-build to a brick pattern, snapped my bandsaw blade in half, performed "surgery" with an angle grinder to remove the wreckage, and eventually risked my life putting the end grain through a budget thicknesser using sacrificial runners to prevent an explosion.

By the time I reached the final glue-up—frantically fighting a massive warp just ten minutes before I had to leave for work—I realized that woodworking isn't about the plans; it’s about the recovery. From using insulation foam as a "crash pad" to catching pieces as they flew off the saw, this build was a masterclass in adaptation. The final board is a 35cm x 42cm beast of resilient Australian hardwood, free of the microplastics of its store-bought cousins and rich with the scars of its journey. It taught me that while AI exists in a perfect digital vacuum, true craft happens in the gaps, the mistakes, and the 8 PM disasters.

0:00 - The Disaster
0:48 - Why I Used AI Plans
4:34 - The Wood Stories (Fire & Cyclone)
11:45 - Camera Problem (Gollum Back)
18:06 - Everything Going Well...
22:28 - First Glue-Up
26:27 - AI PLANS FAILED
28:37 - Design Pivot (Basket Weave → Brick)
29:44 - Bandsaw Blade Snaps
31:18 - Piece Falls and Breaks
35:12 - Final Glue-Up (Most Stressful)
36:01 - Down Under Woodworks Saves Me
37:31 - End Grain Through Planer
40:41 - Sanding & Finishing
41:44 - Water Warp Disaster
42:40 - The Oil Reveal