Paper Towel Holder

I've mentioned on other occasions that I have a summer weekend party I travel to. My friends who hold this party put a lot of effort into hosting over 20 people for a long weekend. As such I like to give back when and where I can.

We took a brief hiatus during the first year of Covid; however, after the vaccines had been released they started holding the party again but with new health screening rules. One of the small changes they've made to help everyone stay healthy is that they've replaced the cloth hand towels in their bathrooms with paper disposable ones.

I was doing a flurry of woodworking this spring and was already pretty busy; however, I thought I could squeeze in one more thing. I thought it would be nice if they had a custom wall-hung box to put these into. Looking through my scrap I found the perfect piece of 5/4 cherry that was an offcut from making the panels for my filing cabinet.

The scrap - and the panels - were going to be to wide for my band saw so I started by ripping them on my table saw and finished the cut with a Ryoba saw. The resulting panels were flat enough that I didn't need to run them through the jointer to flatten them. I was able to just run then through my planer to get them flat enough and thin enough to make a box out of them.

Now...  I wanted to make a continuous grain box as I thought it would look better. Unfortunately that perfect piece of cherry was just a little too short. About 1/4". It would have been nice and good practice but no one other than me is ever going to notice so it'll be fine.

After getting the boards thicknessed I used my new miter sled to cut my miters.

With the miters cut I glued it into an open ended box. I mostly used blue painters tape to clamp the corners but since the wood wasn't perfectly flat - it was pretty flat, just not perfect - I needed to use a couple of F-clamps to pull it into shape.

I let the glue dry at least overnight then setting my table saw to about the same angle as the Kleenex(tm) box I cut the bottom off. After removing the bottom I cut slots for and glued splines into the corners.

After letting the glue dry overnight I used a flush cut saw to trim the splines. I used some other scrap to make the bottom with an opening to pull the towels through. Rather than gluing up a panel and then cutting the hole out I instead just glued up 4 pieces leaving a gap in the middle. 

This was glued to the bottom of the box again using blue painters tape as a clamp.

The bottom was just a hair oversized. I cleaned it up with a block plane.

I made a simple top with a chamfered edge. It has cleats on the bottom that keep it from just sliding off but otherwise it is just held in place with gravity. To hang the box on the wall I put two keyhole slots on the back near the top. To help "lock" it into place I added a single centered hole in the back near the bottom that can be accessed through the towel access hole.

The above picture is from my workshop before I added finish.

And mounted in my friend's powder room. The vase was their addition and I think it really adds to the beauty of the piece.

This was a fun quick project and while I didn't have enough material to properly wrap the grain around the box I am still very happy with how it came out.