And yet more cigar boxes

I love me a good cigar box, you all know that. If it does something cool in addition to being a cigar box, well, that's a big bonus!

Recently, I succumbed to the washi tape craze. I have held myself in check because I can plainly see that these addictive lovely little tape rolls could easily take over. So...washi tape, cigar boxes and a little cruising on the interwebs for inspiration and a new project is born!


Here is the cast of characters: 4 new (used) cigar boxes fresh from my local cigar shop. This time I chose "naked" boxes with no decorative paper covering.

My good friend Chris from Fox Trail Knives was kind enough to cut these little "G" shapes out of some leftover wood I had from another project. We had a nice time brainstorming what their exact size and shape should be for what I wanted them to do. And since he has practically every woodworking tool known to mankind (well not really, but way more than what I have) it was no problem for him to cut these shapes pretty quickly.



Next, he cut and sanded down my dowel rods so that they fit inside each box. The interesting thing about cigar boxes is that they all are unique in size and dimensions. Even those that are for the same type of cigar have some fluctuations. I love that--machine made/computerized precision is death to the organic beauty and individuality of crafts, especially wooden ones.

I had also purchased some hacksaw blades and now I trimmed these to fit within each box.

The serrated blade will act as the cutting edge for some of the washi tape.

A little manipulation quickly demonstrated that if I just glued the blade down to the inside lip of the box (outside mounting would look too crude, I felt) the blade would interfere with the lid closing properly. So I needed a way to tilt the blade inward just a bit. I decided to glue down a piece of string as guard to fulfill that purpose. I used my favorite wood glue which dries yellow. sigh. yeah, next time I'll use the Elmer's so the yellow doesn't show on the white string. But the blade will cover most of it anyway.

After the string's glue was dry, I mounted my blade with E6000, some of my favorite adhesive. Its smelly, but it sure gets the job done. Then I used the wood glue to adhere the G-brackets and...

 Voila! Washi tape storage!

 The dowel rods easily lift out so that I can switch my tapes out, but because the bracket has a raised lip at the back end, the dowel rods easily stay in position.

I've removed the back rod here and you can see the where the rod rests on the bracket.


Thanks again, Chris! I would have had to undergo major contortions to accomplish these wooden cut-outs or something that approximates them.