I was inspired by this candle holder I found on pinterest. I thought it would be something that I could keep and within my ability range.
Materials & tools:
• Wood
• Wood glue
• The cutting thing in the shop
• The sanding machine in shop
• Clamps
Create Relevant Conten
I started with marking up the wood into equal pieces. Since I only need rectangular stripes for my project, I simply just drew a reference line. At first, I wanted to rely on the blocking board on the cutting machine so that it has a set width all the time. However, the width I need was too thin and the board cannot go that far, and I totally forgot about adding other pieces of materials inbetween as a solution. So I drew a solid line for everything I needed to cut. It wasn't hard as they are just straight lines.
I had so many small pieces of woods after the first cut. My idea was to make the every pole on my candle holder separately and then glue them together.
I first glued the sides of each candle holder together. I used a clamp, but I thought it was a little hard to control because there isn't any supporting parts on my material so the clamp would wiggle. Until this point, I did not notice the future harshness yet.
Then, when I was trying to glue the top pieces, I realized that I forgot the difference between the front and the side of the bars. Therefore, half of my cuts doesn't work becuase they are too short for the side ways. So I had to recalculate and cutted 10 more pieces.
The sanding process was much more painful than I thought it would be. There were so many pieces that I had to sand one by one. I stood there for half an hour. My black hoodie eventually became grey. My pieces are too thin that its too hard to hold on to. On of my nail extentions got sanded off a corner as well. I thought it was really scary.
I also realized later that I might have sanded too much materials off that they became even more uneven. For some reason, each of my candle holder has one leg that is not touching the base. I thought it might be becuase the tops are uneven as well so they are not forming a flat surface on the bottom but curved.
Final Product
Conclusion
I learned through my failures that it is important to not be lazy and calculate all the dimensions so I don't have to redo anything. The cutting and sanding definately needs to be more precise, but I am still figuring out how exactly I can achieve that. One thing that I would definately do next time is that I would not rely on the line references I drew by hand and utilize other materials to set the width. I am wondering if I should not have used the sanding machine because of how strong and fast it is. It makes it too hard for me to control, especially with such a small piece of wood.