Cord Organizer

Over the years I've slapped together assorted shelves and shelving systems, even a large workbench that closes up to provide an imposing birch veneer face to an otherwise unassuming living room. But until recently, the piece of which I was most proud was an oak CD case that I built in my Dad's shop back when I was in my teens or early 20s. Now that we have some decent tools to do real woodworking, it's obvious that we need to kick it up a notch.

This is a little side table for our sofa that's built as a place to put our assorted rechargeable trinkets. The rear of the top lifts off so that we can put a power strip with assorted wall warts inside, and the four holes let us have cords for the cell phone and AA battery charger protrude through the top, so we can just leave our electronics on top.

The lower shelf is for the big batteries and chargers, the digital cameras, rechargeable drill, that sort of thing.

This came from the scrap bin. The legs are some off-square oak that I retrieved from Rob's scrap pile, the top and shelf are some excess birch plywood that I had lying around, trimmed with birch, the sides are some cheap poplar. The nicest wood in here is probably the baltic birch which serves as the bottom to the power strip box, and you can't see it 'cause it's inside the sides.

Since someone asked, here's a view inside, and this starts to show up some of the flaws. One of the biggies for me was that the stock for those legs wasn't square, so the miters don't meet the legs exactly.

There's a lot I learned in this process, a number of flaws, and I'm not totally happy with how the proportions turned out, but I think it's a decent first effort, so I'll keep it.

At least until I find a design that incorporates that spalted maple that Charlene just had to have when we were at a hardware place recently...

Comments over at the Flutterby entry Category:Woodworking