Rhea wants to find a place to store the barbecue tools, that used to be kept in a drawer in the kitchen. We want to store them in the porch, but had few ideas on how, until Rhea saw a cardboard tube. I recently purchased two feet of brass flat stock that came in a cardboard tube. Rhea thought I should repurpose it. That is the plan. The tools include the spatula, grippers, basting brush, fork, and many skewers. These are shown as currently kept in the porch.
The tube needs a base to minimize tipping. An unfinished and not very nice bowl was made in my turning class. It will be repurposed. The bowl was sanded with 40 to 220 grit paper on the outside. It and the cardboard tube are seen in the photo above. The plastic cap was removed from the end of the tube. The tube was rough and needed to be sealed. I decided on epoxy. The epoxy was going bad and the clear liquid was cloudy and lumpy. Full speed ahead in any case. The epoxy's two parts were mixed in a container and using a paint brush painted onto the cardboard cylinder. The mix was very thick and difficult to spread. There was some left so the remainder was spread on the outside of the bowl. The photos below show the two after painting with epoxy. Quite the lumpy mess!
The epoxy dried overnight as seen in the first photo below. It is hard as judged by an inability to press a fingernail into it or mark it. But it feels slightly tacky. A hole saw was located and set to 1 5/8" radius. A hole was cut through the bottom of the bowl as seen in the second photo. The cutter left a pronounced angle inside the hole when it quit cutting. A rasp was used to turn the inside edge from a cone to a cylinder. The tube was pressed into the opened bowl and aligned vertically. Wood glue was dripped into the juncture of bowl and tube as seen in the third photo. It was a tight fit between bowl and tube as none of the glue leaked through.
The tube and bowl were sanded with 120 grit paper. This left a reasonably smooth finish. The sanding also got rid of the tacky feeling, though it still looks tacky.
The tacky looking tube and base were not very stable, so the bowl end was glued to a round (11") sheet of MDF leftover from Ryan's Prius subwoofer project. The tools have to be held in some fashion so an old wooden salad bowl was epoxied to the top at the same time. Hooks and maybe a top opening will be added to the salad bowl. The photo below shows the base and top bowl after gluing.
Hopefully paint will make this thing look somewhat better than ugly. I might utilize the paint used on the Adirondack chair.
The tower was painted this morning. The blue paint from before was used and it does look better than ugly. Hooks were purchased at Menards. Holes were drilled with the hand drill and the hooks installed. Finally, the tower was moved to the screened porch and the tools hung. This is documented in the photos below. Rhea thinks it looks cute and that is definitely better than ugly!
