Designing Display Stands

2008-08-18

The wife, who makes handmade jewelry, came to me the other day complaining about the prices for jewelry display stands for her booth.  I was astounded to learn that display stand manufacturers were asking for $200.00 for a set of display stands made from styrofoam and cardboard.  Styrofoam and cardboard for cryin' out loud!

I wasn't about to sit idly by and see good money thrown into disposable product, so I asked the wife what sort of specifications she had for display stands and immediately set to work designing a set of stands for her.  After doing some test modeling using our young son's Lego blocks (they're not just for playtime...whoda thunk it?), we came up with the following design.

I've picked up a half dozen 2' x 4' sheets of ¼" MDF boards and will start work on the project this weekend.  I figure an evening to cut up the boards, an evening to test fit, and an evening to do final assembly.

Shelf Project Completed.

2008-07-19

After applying a couple of coats of polyurethane and letting it set for a couple of days, the shelf is now complete and ready for installation.  The shelf went in very easily and looks pretty good.

At the wife's request, I mounted a 14" mini fluorescent light on the underside of the shelf.  The installation was pretty easy, and the fit was practically perfect.  Then I secured the electrical cord to the wall using ¼" nylon cable clamps.

And here's the shelf with the light turned on.  This should provide more than ample illumination for the wife's craftwork projects.  Now it's time to fire up the barbeque and cook up some dinner for the family!

Putting the shelf together...

2008-07-14

Now that all of the wood sections to the shelves are stained, I did a test fit with all the dowels in place.  Everything went together well, as shown below, so I went ahead and glued everything together.  Next I'll be putting on a couple of layers of polyurethane.  After that, I'll install the shelf in the wife's craftwork area.

Adding a Shelf to the Craftwork Area...

2008-07-13

After completing the craft area for the wife, I added a fluorescent light under the wall-mounted cabinet.  She liked it so much, she asked me to make a mini-shelf to accommodate both her thread spools and another under-cabinet fluorescent light.  So I drew up a quick design.  Nothing too fancy; just enough to do the job she needed.

For this project, I chose to use up the remaining scrap wood from when I made the oak windowsill.

It didn't take too long for me to cut the wood on the table saw. Then I ran the outer board edges over a 3/8" rounded router bit and sanded it down with my power sander.

Then I got out the Golden Oak stain and stained the top side of the prepped wood. I'll resume this project tomorrow afternoon and then put on a few coats of polyurethane to keep the wood looking nice. I should be done with this in a couple of days.