labolle
13th June 2006, 11:24 PM
A friend of mine gave me some off-cuts he was going to throw away from some teak boards had made something out of. The off cuts were about 30 cm wide across the grain, by about 15cm with the grain. I held on to them for a few months thinking about what to do with them. All I could think of was a box for candles that I had seen in a book once. Then eventually I decided to make a cup dispenser from them.
I decided to get away from dovetails for a change and go with a straight miter along the edges. I did that and was happy with the result, but then I kept thinking that if I hung it on the wall, then the miters were bound to fail from the weight of it or the force of people pulling on it to get cups out. So I used a suggestion that I came across, somewhere in this forum, I think, of using chopsticks as pins to reinforce the miters.
I set my table saw at a 45 degree miter with the blade fully extended and cut a deep V notch in a piece of scrap 4-by-4 I had around. I then used that as a cradle to support the box on edge as I drilled holes on a diagonal through the corners that were the same diameter as my chopsticks (6mm) with a drill press. Then with generous amounts of glue and a some persuasion from a mallet I stuck the chopsticks through the holes, cut them off with my backsaw, let the glue set, then sanded them flush on my belt sander, finished with a palm sander going on up to 400 grit, sprayed several coats of lacquer, sanded at 600 grit every third coat, and here it is.
Oh yea, to dispense the cups one at a time I used a trick I saw a little mom-and-pop store up in mountains one time. I took a 1 liter cola bottle cut off the bottom, then cut the neck off at a point where it is just slightly smaller than the rim of the cups, put a few slits around the edges, hung it upside down and, viola, cups one at a time. Before I assembled the four sides of the box, I attached the bottle cup-dispenser to one of them with staples.
Scrap wood can be fun.
249232492424925
I decided to get away from dovetails for a change and go with a straight miter along the edges. I did that and was happy with the result, but then I kept thinking that if I hung it on the wall, then the miters were bound to fail from the weight of it or the force of people pulling on it to get cups out. So I used a suggestion that I came across, somewhere in this forum, I think, of using chopsticks as pins to reinforce the miters.
I set my table saw at a 45 degree miter with the blade fully extended and cut a deep V notch in a piece of scrap 4-by-4 I had around. I then used that as a cradle to support the box on edge as I drilled holes on a diagonal through the corners that were the same diameter as my chopsticks (6mm) with a drill press. Then with generous amounts of glue and a some persuasion from a mallet I stuck the chopsticks through the holes, cut them off with my backsaw, let the glue set, then sanded them flush on my belt sander, finished with a palm sander going on up to 400 grit, sprayed several coats of lacquer, sanded at 600 grit every third coat, and here it is.
Oh yea, to dispense the cups one at a time I used a trick I saw a little mom-and-pop store up in mountains one time. I took a 1 liter cola bottle cut off the bottom, then cut the neck off at a point where it is just slightly smaller than the rim of the cups, put a few slits around the edges, hung it upside down and, viola, cups one at a time. Before I assembled the four sides of the box, I attached the bottle cup-dispenser to one of them with staples.
Scrap wood can be fun.
249232492424925