Craig Thibodeau Builds Furniture You Have to Solve – and Lets the Videos Sell It

Craig Thibodeau is a furniture maker in southern Virginia who builds custom puzzle furniture – veneered cabinets, desks and tables with marquetry, decorative inlay and mechanical movement, made to be solved. A mechanical engineer by trade, he has run CT Fine Furniture since 2000 and wrote The Craft of Veneering for the Taunton Press. Since 2014 he has made dozens of puzzle and mechanical pieces.

Craig Thibodeau designs every piece in CAD before he builds anything: he models in SolidWorks, and most mechanisms are modeled too, to check clearance and interference. Each piece starts with the client – size and shape, then style and complexity. The goal is a puzzle that works flawlessly when it leaves the shop and for years after, which takes painstaking attention to wood movement, friction and repairability. A piece takes 3–12 months.

Craig Thibodeau works only on commission. It usually starts with an email and a back-and-forth on the details, then a quote and a deposit to hold a place in his schedule; the waiting list stays close to 18 months. Smaller box-size pieces start around $15,000, larger ones around $35,000. He ships worldwide – his pieces are in Qatar, London, Singapore, Italy, Switzerland and Canada – and US clients get their pieces blanket-wrapped and hand-delivered.

Craig Thibodeau finds customers through videos of his pieces moving and being solved – he doesn't advertise. The Automaton Table video reached 650,000 views on his channel and millions on others, picked up by Bored Panda, Dude I Want That, Fast Company and Core77. A puzzle box he built for magician Chris Ramsay drew around 16 million views. The videos travel through puzzle forums and Discord servers until they reach someone ready to buy.

Craig is a mechanical engineer by trade, specializing in 3D modeling for product design. For many years, building furniture was a hobby for weekends and evenings – until around 2000, when he had enough commissions to stop doing engineering work and focus entirely on furniture.

He started in an old one-car garage at a rental house and gradually evolved his shop as housing options changed: a custom-built workshop behind a house they owned, then, after a move to an apartment, rented industrial space for many years. That space allowed for larger, more complex pieces and larger commissions. In mid-2022 he moved to southern Virginia, and he now works in a basement workshop in a house they own. "I longingly reflect back on those industrial workshop spaces with their high ceilings and endless sources of power."

Along the way he has written a number of articles on woodworking and a book, The Craft of Veneering, published by the Taunton Press.

"My work always starts with the client," Craig says. Clients often have only a vague idea of the piece they want – size and shape are usually the starting point. "Then we refine style and complexity until we get to a design they find satisfying and I find interesting enough to build."

Everything starts in CAD. He models in SolidWorks and doesn't start building until the model is complete; most of the mechanisms are modeled too, to check for clearance and interference. The primary goal is that each puzzle functions flawlessly when it leaves the shop and keeps working for years – which takes painstaking attention to wood movement, friction and repairability.

These pieces take anywhere from 3 to 12 months to build. "They are unbelievably complex and detailed," he says. "Each piece is new and different and each has its own challenges that need to be overcome. I am constantly surprised by mechanical complexity that I didn't realize existed until this newest piece was started. But the overall goal with each piece is that they be fun to interact with and solve."

A mix of mechanical puzzle pieces from the past few years. Each functions in its own particular way, and some are very story based. All belong to private clients, so there are no pictures of them in interiors. Photos: Craig Thibodeau.

Craig's clients now are nearly all puzzle collectors – specifically, people with collections of mechanical puzzles. His pieces tend to be the largest investment most of them make for a puzzle, given their size and cost compared with traditional hand-held puzzles. All of his work goes to individuals, to be displayed and played with in their homes, and frequently shared with other puzzle fans who visit.

Several clients have come back for a second piece, and occasionally a third. His work is in Qatar, London, Singapore, Italy, Switzerland and Canada, among other places. Overseas clients typically handle the shipping details for their pieces; for US clients, pieces are blanket-wrapped and hand-delivered.

When furniture was still a weekend hobby, commissions came mostly from word of mouth: someone saw a piece and became interested enough to start a conversation. Once Craig went full-time, his strictly furniture work came from exhibiting at the San Diego Design in Wood Show.

"I don't really do any advertising or promotion, everything comes in through word of mouth," Craig says. In the past, that word of mouth came from pieces seen at shows. Now it all comes from the YouTube videos he makes, showing the pieces moving and being solved. Those videos spread through the puzzle community – private and semi-private forums, Discord servers, and regular meetups where people share their collections – until they reach someone with real interest in buying a piece.

His YouTube channel, @CTFineFurniture, has around 29,500 subscribers, even though he posts only one or two videos a year. Instagram, with about 61,000 followers, is the only platform he posts to semi-regularly. As far as he can tell, no work has come directly from Instagram, but the videos and images get shared there and add to his visibility.

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His biggest waste of time, early on, was trying to get into magazines like Architectural Digest and Interior Design. "Too much time was wasted compiling photos and text to send in to a publication that wasn't likely to ever be interested in my work – I don't build what they like to showcase."

"Everyone wants to quit every now and then, creative people are no different," he says. There have been times he considered going back into engineering, but he never did. "If I have a challenging time now I just go back into the shop and keep working until things improve. Sometimes it happens quickly and sometimes it takes a long time, but eventually things improve, and in the meantime I've been getting work done."

In 2014, Craig built the Automaton Table for a regular client of his furniture work. The piece – and a video of it moving – was picked up by the many blogs that cover design and innovative work, including Bored Panda, Dude I Want That, Fast Company and Core77, and the video spread like wildfire: 650,000 views on his own channel and millions on others.

"That was my first viral video, and it has generated nearly all of the commissions that came after it," he says. "It's been seen by all of the clients that collect my work and was the reason most of them ended up commissioning a piece." From then on, his work shifted almost entirely to puzzle and mechanical pieces.

It wasn't the only one. The Spinning Puzzle Box, built for the magician Chris Ramsay, has around 16 million views on its solve video, and was picked up by many of the same blogs. Ramsay has since made several more videos of Craig's pieces, including a visit to the shop to talk about the Roentgen Puzzle Desk.

Craig is currently building a new puzzle desk, slightly smaller than the Roentgen and from a more recent time period. "In general I don't build what I want, I build what clients will pay for," he says. "What I get to do is design new mechanisms for each new piece, so there's very little repetition in the work." He'll keep making puzzle and mechanical work while there are clients interested in paying for it – "if it fades away, I'll find something else to build."

CT Fine Furniture

Over the past couple of years I've been pushing for my puzzle and mechanical work to be more story based, meaning the solution and clues for a piece are based on a specific created storyline. One desk was pirate themed, with a handwritten logbook from the captain and a variety of nautical props used to solve puzzles. Another was time travel based: items that moved throughout the clock traveled along a timeline from past to present and back again. Each comes with historical notes and items either made or found from the correct time period. This makes the pieces more interesting to solve and more enjoyable to experience.

Who: Craig Thibodeau (CT Fine Furniture)
What: Custom veneered furniture with marquetry, decorative inlay and mechanical movement – mostly puzzle and mechanically interactive pieces
Where: Southern Virginia, USA
Started: January 2000
Audience: ~29,500 YouTube subscribers; ~61,000 Instagram followers
Customers: 4–5 commissions a year, mostly mechanical puzzle collectors
Price range: Small boxes from around $15,000; larger pieces from around $35,000
Custom orders: Yes – commission only
Ships: Worldwide
Works with designers: No
Promotion budget: $0
Income: Main income
Status: Active and growing
Channels: Video platforms, text social media, search & AI traffic, offline & word of mouth, communities & forums