A retired carpenter in eastern China hand-made a wooden football using a mortise and tenon joint in honour of the 2022 World Cup.

Wang Dewen, 65, better known as “Grandpa Amu” among netizens, is from the city of Liaocheng, Shandong Province.

He often shows off his incredible craftsmanship by posting videos of himself creating unique wooden pieces on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

Recently, “Grandpa Amu” honoured this year’s World Cup by hand-making a wooden football.

Amazingly, he made it without even using glue or nails to piece it together.

“Grandpa Amu” told local media that he prefers using a mortise and tenon joint because it is traditional Chinese culture, and wants to promote it.

The video shows him using 32 wooden blocks pieced together by a mortise and tenon joint to make the unique football.

He uses simple wood, which he soon transforms into polished concave-convex structures that fit perfectly together.

“Grandpa Amu” said: “Using this principle to make a football, you must first polish and complete 12 pentagonal and 20 hexagonal wooden parts, and finally put them together, a total of 32 parts, and then ensure that they are connected tightly.”

He said that it is not an easy task to splice these 32 wooden components into a round football, “especially when connecting two parts with different shapes.”

“Dimensions and proportions require precise calculations,” he added.

The mortise and tenon structure is a commonly used structure in constructing ancient Chinese wooden buildings. Materials such as bamboo, wood, and stone are carefully carved-up to create the desired shape.

In the video, the skilled carpenter can be seen working his magic on the wooden elements and effortlessly placing them together in a perfect round form.

The different-coloured pieces give off a striking resemblance to an actual football.

So much so, that the old master’s four-year-old grandson suddenly comes to pick up the ball and tries to play with it.

“Grandpa Amu” said that it took about seven or eight days for this delicate “mortise and tenon football” from the initial conception, material selection to final completion.

The grandson can still play with it, and although the football is small, it is full of our ancient Chinese culture and wisdom, the old man wittily added.