Jason's notes

5 Things - Pen Holder

Assignment: Make multiples of something, 5 or more.

I made 6 pen holders for this week’s assignment. The raw material was a 2 * 6 * 6 inches walnut lumber. It’s a perfect fit for 6 holders, each on in 2 * 2 * 3.

big chunk of walnut

I first cut the wood into 6 smaller chunk with the band saw and sanded a little bit to remove the sharp edge.

lumber be cutted to 6 parts

sanding the 6 chunks

The hole was drilled by a 1 5/8 bit. I used several scrap wood to clamp the lumber and it was also easier to repeat. After that, I sanded the whole chunk with the sanding machine and made every corners and edges round.

clamped wood under a drill press

sanding the wood

From left to right, representing each stage:

  • cut to small chunks
  • drill the hole
  • sand

each step of the wood process

Here is how it looks after the whole process. You can see they are not in the same height and some holes are pretty off the center. That’s the best I can do.

all of the wood being sanded

I did another round of sanding by hand with sand paper, since the machine can not reach inside the lumber. It was also much controllable compared to the power machine. The following image showes that the right one (handed) has a more naturally look at the corner while the left one (machined) has some funny shape.

hand-sanding the wood

all of the wood being hand-sanded

Finally, I applied a layer of wax paste for the finnishing. I’m satisfied with the final result.

applying wax paste to the wood

final result

References