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Desk Note Pad Organizer

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744 opens
359 copies
3 comments
Jeff Parish

Project by

Jeff Parish
Kailua Kona, Hawaii

General Information

A simple desk organizer for your note pad, pen, phone, clips, cards and what ever.

Like this project Open in Easel®
Material Description Price
Walnut

Walnut

6" × 12" × 3/4" Walnut

$11.43

Add to Cart

$11.43
from Inventables

1

Easel Layout

It’s very important to carefully measure your material thickness since you will be thru cutting the outline with tabs. Also a good idea to use a sacrificial board under the material so you don’t cut up your nice Inventables work surface. My material was .65 thick so I set my material thickness to .68 in Easel to make sure I cut completely thru. I also set my tabs to .25 wide and .120 high to make sure the tabs held when I cut the outline. Nothing worse than cutting the very last part, which is usually the outline and having the tabs not there anymore cause you didn’t set them high enough. If the tabs don’t hold, the piece will move, catching the bit at full depth, possibly flying pieces of wood or metal or both in all directions. Not good! (no need to ask me how I know.) Make double sure you have a thick enough tab that it will hold. It’s a lot easier to cut off a extra thick tab than ruining the piece (or worse) and starting all over.

2

Cutting

40 minutes

I set my Z depth on the lower left corner as Easel suggests and just used the paper method to set height to material. I usually use a touch plate for my Z height, but paper is faster and Z is not critical with this cut.

I set my depth of cut to .06" with a feed rate of 120 ipm using a 2 flute .125 down cut bit. The down cut bit will give you a much cleaner top edge. Definitely my bit of choice! These setting’s work great for a well tuned machine with the Dewalt 611 router. If you have something else or doubts, you might consider cutting slower and less deep. Be safe, and experiment with what your comfortable with and what your X-Carve can handle.

The pockets were cut .45" deep which left .20 thickness of for the bottom.
Note with using a downcut bit: It’s important to keep the cut cleared of shavings so the bit can move freely in the slot. A good dust system or just following it around with the vacuum hose is a good idea.

3

Finished Cutting

1 minute

Here’s the finished cut with tabs intact…yeah!

4

Cutting Tabs

1 minute

I use a dremel with a cut off blade to remove my tabs, but a simple utility knife works well also.

5

Finish

10 minutes

A light sanding is all that is usually required with a few coats of spray lacquer (no sanding between coats required) and your ready to set your very cool notepad organizer on the desk for everyone to admire!

Tony Nowakowski
Not shared publicly. :(
Tony Nowakowski
Juan (Ponch) . Vera
how did you come up with the feed rate of 120? just curious , i still need to experiment with this option, not crazy about having to wait over 5 hours with the recommended settings .
Juan (Ponch) . Vera
Jeff Parish
Key is to experiment as to what your particular machine can handle. There is much on this subject in the forum .
Jeff Parish