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Opus One

Something (Probably) Unique

One great thing about being able to make stuff is that you can end up with stuff that nobody else has. I'll bet that no-one else on my street has a curly maple, cherry and walnut toilet roll holder spindle!

I may have mentioned elsewhere that I came to woodworking somewhat by accident. I'd been obliged to buy a table saw to replace an old one that failed and the new one required a lot of work to get around its poor quality. To make some molding that I needed for the casing of a window, I build a table for my router. I'd also realized how much more useful my belt sander would be if I mounted it securely on a bench. With all this new equipment, I began to wonder what else I could now do that wasn't previously possible. Being retired, I decided to find out. And that's how it all got started.

While looking around for a woodworking project, my head was still very much wrapped up in the bathroom remodel for which I'd needed the molding. I'd replaced all the tile work. The original tile had included one of those toilet roll holders that is basically a small niche inside the wall with a spindle that clips inside. My wife wanted the new tile work to include this feature. It wasn't too hard to find a suitable in-wall toilet roll holder, but it was nowhere near the quality of the original. The first one was visibly out-of-square. The second one also seemed out-of-square to me, but my wife could not see it so I went ahead with that. But, my wife was not entirely happy that the spindle was cheap plastic. The original had a wood spindle. Unfortunately, it did not fit in the new holder, so that's how things were left. Until, that is, I put together my desire to find a woodworking project and our disappointment with the ugly plastic spindle. The answer was to make a wood spindle! But, not just any wood spindle, an artisanal toilet roll holder spindle!

I have a few friends that are into woodworking and they make pens and cutting boards (and probably other stuff that I've not taken much notice of). We go to arts and crafts shows a lot and there are many woodworkers there, with spoons, jewelry boxes, salad bowls and so on. A theme seems to be to take some contrasting but complementary woods, cut them into pieces, glue them all together and make the art item out of the composite piece. So, that is what I would do. I would take maple, cherry and walnut (the ice cream flavor woods), cut some strips, glue them up and somehow make it round with a spring and plunger to locate in the holder.

The Planning Stage