Ron showed these as a way to use small cutoffs in BB's small project ideas forum.
I jumped at the idea since I have soooo many small cutoffs and they looked fun to build.
Anyway, on to it!
Needed to create the cove cut for the compartments. I just used some lengths of 4/4 walnut, about .975" thick and maybe 2-1/2" wide
Box joint blade and some setup made it easy and the fat teeth of the blade made the sanding minimal.
Next was to just start slabbing off 1" wide chunks and keeping them in order.
Dividers (jatoba) were also cut to the same width and about 1/4" extra height as the above cups.
Laid them out to see if any issues.
Not being a fan of end grain gluing, I decided to dowel the cups and spacers. Simple jig set up on the drill press made it easy (1/4" bit)
On to the flaps.
Also taking a lead from Ron, I decided to use laser etched, resin/mica filled symbology. Drilling holes for 1/16" brass rod involved a similar setup where I could drill for the lid and dividers.
The woods I used here was walnut. maple, jatoba, and purple heart. Plenty of scraps and thin enough (3/16") so I could feel good about putting them to use.
The "Daily" 3-cup units got the morning. noon, and night treatment. Weekly units just got a day abbreviation since I wanted big lettering and had limited room.
Tape keeps the resin out of the wood grain when filling.
For the fills, I colored with mica dust. For the black letters I added a few drops of black TransTint dye to the mix.
Worked well on the jatoba, but bled slightly on the maple.
Others came out great
The dowels made the assembly super strong, just had to remember to fit the flap pins as I glued. For the end dividers, I hammered some of the same woods through a 17/64" hole drilled in a steel plate. Slightly oversized so they would be a nice fit after sanding.
Finished with food safe Osmo Polyx wax.
Overall they were a lot more involved then first assumed, but I'm happy with the results,
Wow, Splint! Those are so cool! And very utilitarian! As we age our projects change....whats next a walker with hidden storage? LOL Seriously super job, but then you always hit is out of the park!
My wife keeps three of the weekly ones, one color for each time of day. Fortunately we have occasional health fairs and the hospital passes them out in swag bags. I'll keep working until medicare so I can keep her on the company plan.
Nice work, Splint! Does anything other than gravity hold them closed, or are the dividers tight enough that they won't flop open?
I've tried a few different designs of those, but haven't yet found one I can crank out with hand tools. But maybe this design would work if I use a moulding plane to do the cove. Pondering...
Nice project, as always. Every time I see laser or CNC work I'm reminded that I don't have either one and all of the cool things you can do with them. Christmas is coming......
