How to Make a Woody Laptop

Nothing beats the texture, look and feel of wood. With a little inspiration, the allure of wood brought me to this, the woody PC.

First, I'm not replacing parts - we're just woodifying them. Therefore, I decided to use veneers.

1. Wood - I'm using rosewood
2. Glue - at first, I wanted to use contact cement. But, at the last moment - I went with wood glue. Contact cement gives you one chance to lay down the veneer perfectly - this is not going to happen.
3. Clamps and/or medical tape (it does not leave back sticky residue and it not super strong)
4. Cutting template (I'm providing for my hp zv5000 so it can be printed, or laser cut)
5. Finishing materials - I'm using boiled linseed oil as I want the wood to age with time.
6. Materials for laptop disassembly - see disassembly instructions

First, you need a drawing of what you want to cut. I'm veneering the black parts of my front bezel with rosewood. So, armed with a caliper and ruler - I created a dxf of my bezel. To make things simple, I neglected to include screw and latch holes as I can remove these later with an X-acto knife.

After your template has been tested - cut your wood. As I had access to a laser cutter, I laser cut away. Before cutting, I attached some transfer paper to protect the surrounding areas of wood from the intense heat from the laser beam.

Use your favorite finishing method - just be sure to allow flex if needed. For me, several coats of linseed oil.

Glue

Get your things together - clamps, glue, damp rags. Apply a thin coat of glue to the back of your wood (a brush helps). Then, apply to the screen bezel. Adjust to make it perfect and clamp down. Use plenty of clamps when you need to glue around a curve. For the zv5000, the top edge is a rather tight curve and required extra "clampage." The solution was tape. I found some medical tape and applied plenty of tight bands to hold the veneer to the curvature of the laptop.

Allow to dry completely before removing clamps and tape.

Latch holes require removal with an X-acto knife - the same for any latch release mechanism. I drilled out screw holes. In retrospect, I should have left the screws out as the snaps around the perimeter of the screen are more than enough.

Relish your achievement. You now have an awesome woody laptop :D