Coffee, Coffee, Coffee ... I don't drink a lot of it, but I love to have a couple of cups every day that I can really savor. In recent years specialized coffee machines have brought the convenience of coffee varieties and single cup servings to home market, and I must admit, I was one of the first buyers of them.
One of the problems with coffee pods, especially if you like to have a few different varieties around, or if you purchase them in bulk ... they can take up a lot of space on the counter, especially if you store them in the little boxes they come in.
I have tried many different ways of storing these coffee pods, I have used the little boxes they come in and tried to stack them, but they always fall down when you try to use them ... I tried making little wooden boxes, and they looked great, but they still didn't stack well. Then there are a variety of self feeding holders where you pull a pod out of the bottom the the others stacked on top cascade downward. These work fine but if you want a particular flavor you still have to go digging for it.
Then one day I spotted a little rack that stands vertically, held around 35 - 40 coffee pods and displayed each one so you could choose a flavor. I could make one of those !!! and so I did.
I must admit that I worked on a few different designs and even tried making the holes at an angle so the pods would sit in them and not fall out ... but in the end I discovered that the simplest design was the most effective ... so here's how I made it ...
Of course, being a woodworker we can't just make a plain holder, I had to make it at least a wee bit fancy by adding some purple-heart wood to the edges. I found that the thickness of the wood mattered and that 3/8" worked the best. I made mine by edge trimming a couple of boards on my table saw, then running it through my planer, but hand planing the backs would work fine, or you could just leave them they will be hidden by the coffee pods anyway.
Next I cut and glued the purple-heart to the edges. I don't have enough clamps for this so opted to use blue painters tape, and it worked perfectly. I use this trick quite often. Simply temporarily put some pressure on the pieces being glued, the fasten it down with tape ... it works great every time.
The width of the board does not matter much but my final size before trimming was 2-3/4" by 13" tall.
Next I had to drill holes for the pods. Again I experimented with a variety of sizes of holes and angles and found that 1-5/8 was the best. Unfortunately I could not find a nice forstner bit to cut these with so had do this cutting with a hole-saw bit. Not the best but it did the job. It would also be possible to make these holes on a router table with a pattern bit, especially if you are going to make a few of these, but I opted for the hole-saw method.
After some sanding, the next thing to do is cut sides so that when you join them they will make a full 360 degree - 6 sided figure. For this I got to use a little jig I was given as gift many, many years ago that I seldom use. It is quick to use the jig but doing this by hand would work fine too, and here is the math for it. 360 degrees divided by 6 sides equals 60 degrees, but you need to cut both sides, so that means you need to set the angle of your saw at 30 degrees. This should make the blade at 30 degrees from the table top on that portion where the wood will be pushed through the saw.
DO NOT MAKE YOUR FINAL ANGLE CUTS until you are positive of these angles. I even cut some test strips to make sure it was correct.
Next the sides all need to be glued together, as you can see in the video I went back to using the painters tape and it worked great ... as usual.
In a few hours your holder will be ready to finish up. There are many options of how to do this, including using a small ball bearing turntable under the holder to allow it to turn more easily. I found mine turns just fine with three little felt pads on the bottom.
This is great little project ... easy to do for a weekend and will get tons of use ... but do not show it to anyone ... they will all want one.
Copyright - Colin Knecht
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