THE CAVENDER DIARY

Years ago, Pottery Barn sold something useful.

A 2 foot tall table-top easel that was perfect for every room of our house. But they offer them no more. I have been looking on eBay and Craig’s List for years, and haven’t found anything even close.

So I took matters into my own tentacles and just made one. What the Hell? I have Man-tools (a chop saw and a brad nailer)…and I’m clever.

I started with a small pile of poplar and cut all my components.

A spine, a base with 2 feet, and a shelf with a lip….pretty simple.

All of my wood is 3/4 inch thick except for the Lip, it’s only 1/4 inch thick. The Spine and Base pieces are about 1 1/2 inches wide and the 2 feet are 2 inches wide. OOOh yeah, the shelf is 3 1/2 wide.

I used Gorilla Wood Glue to attach the small 3″ spine piece to the bottom of my 26 1/2″ spine and clamped them untill they were dry.

About an hour.

I assume that I could have skiped the brads and glued all my pieces together, but the clamping and waiting will take forever. It’s faster to shoot a few brads.

I then assembled my base and feet.

Stacked the base pieces and nailed/glued the feet long ways underneath….shooting a couple 2 inch brads through all 3….and leaving a 1 1/4″ gap between the 5″ base pieces.

Trimmed the bottom of my newly glued together spine with a chop saw at a slight 5 degree angle. Just enough to make my shelf pitch back.

Then I slipped the complete spine into the open space in my base….and shot a brad through the bottom to hold it in place.

Nailed and glued the front lip onto my shelf piece.

The shelf sits centered right on top of the 3 inch spine piece.

……and another brad to hold it in place.

Lastly, I glued and clamped the final piece of my spine on top of the shelf.

While the glue dried, I filled all my brad holes with natural wood filler.

Once the spine was dried, about an hour, I used the chop saw to trim the top to a 5 degree angle…to match the pitch at the bottom.

I gave a light sanding to all my edges, nothing too precise….it doesn’t have to be perfect.

The whole thing got a coat of flat black latex paint. No surprises there……but I think I could have stained the poplar pretty easily. Or even just a coat of shiny polyurethane.

These were so easy that I wiped out 3 at once. (Made it real easy to photograph the different steps…you thought I was only making one, didn’t you?)

Gave myself a BIG OL’ pat on the back for these.

They were so much easier that I expected………and pretty cheap; maybe 25 bucks for 3.

Already plan to make a few smaller, shorter ones.

I’ll keep y’all posted on the dimensions when I do.