A Plywood Pencil Dispenser - a Tale of Hubris Turned to Humility
Introduction: A Plywood Pencil Dispenser - a Tale of Hubris Turned to Humility
I am not an arrogant person. If anything I continually suffer from imposter syndrome. But, for some reason I went in to this build with unwarranted and unchecked confidence, more on this later.
Let's start at the beginning, while on Instagram I noticed that @Instructables had posted a Plywood Challenge I thought I might see what I could come up with for the challenge. Unfortunately I didn't have any ideas for a plywood project and I didn't have very much plywood on hand. Inspiration hit while my kids were at school, due to the pandemic they are doing online schooling. So I have a lot more interaction with them during the day related to school and school activities. Recently I noticed that my son kept loosing his pencil, we don't live in a mansion but somehow this kid keeps loosing his pencils. On three separate occasions in the last two weeks he has asked me if I have seen his pencil? I tell him, "no" but ask him, "how is it that you lost your pencil?" He shrugs his shoulders and asks me if he can have one of mine. I have a small box of pencils I keep in my shop, which he knows about so of course he knows I have ready supply of sharpened pencils available. After the third time he asked me inspiration struck and I decided I would try to make a pencil dispenser out of plywood. I had a few scraps of 1/2 inch plywood and a long narrow cutoff of 3/4 inch plywood. I also had an 8x10 inch piece of plexiglass that I was going to turn in to a palm router base but never got around to making it. I think this is were the hubris started to creep in; I started to feel pretty good about the materials I had on hand I wouldn't have to go to the store to buy anything and we even had two boxes of pencils from our back to school shopping run. 936
Needless to say I was feeling pretty good about this build, these feelings would not last.
Step 1: Amalgamation of Scraps
The first pic shows the random amalgamation of scrap pieces of plywood and other odds and ends that I used for this project. I took a 3/4 inch piece of plywood that was 1-5/8 inches wide and cut a piece that was 8-3/4 inches long on my bandsaw, this would be the bottom of the dispenser. I then cut two 7-3/8 inch long pieces of 1/2 inch plywood that also measured 1-5/8 inches wide. These would be the left and right sides of the dispenser.
Step 2: Three Become One
I didn't have a big enough piece for the back panel so I cut a strip of 1/2 inch plywood to glue together two other 1/2 pieces of plywood to make one piece that would be large enough to be the back panel. After gluing and clamping the back panel pieces together it measured 9-1/2 inches wide by 7-3/8 inches tall. Once the glue dried I set it aside for later use in the construction.
Step 3: Two Sides to Every Story
I used a 1 inch Forstner bit to make two holes in the two side pieces, these holes would be for the round dowel that would carry and then dispense the pencils. The one inch hole is centered side to side and measures about 1-3/4 inches from the center of the hole to the base of the side piece. You need enough clearance for the pencil to drop out of the bottom of the dispenser.
The last pic shows a quick mock up of some of the construction.
Step 4: Buying Is Easier Than Making
For the pencil carrier/dowel I used a couple of pieces of plywood cutoffs from another project How to Make a Wooden Kettlebell that I glued together to make a blank. These were two corner pieces made up of 1/2 plywood. Instead of using cutoffs you could just buy a 1 inch dowel which I would almost guarantee would work way better than what I made.
Step 5: Square Peg Round Dowel
Once the glue dried I chucked the blank in my lathe and turned it to as close I could get to 1 inch round. I'm a beginner on the lathe so I didn't exactly nail the 1 inch diameter but I got close. Then sanded the dowel up to 400 grit. I would later come to realize that I should have made this piece longer. Buying a 1 inch dowel would be easier and more precise.
Step 6: This Looks Sketchy
This is where things stated to take a turn for the worse. 599