Just another pencil holder

I spend a lot of my time coming up with designs that minimise the “difficult” bits of woodworking, which, for me at least, is any form of joint that isn’t just “add glue and squeeze for a while”. As you can imagine, this is somewhat limiting, although it does force me to think a lot about things. I recently decided, however, that it’s about time I bit some joint bullets, so I’ve recently been trying to not avoid joints.
This isn’t the first such project I’ve made, but it is the first I don’t feel too embarrassed about. The 2 sets of 45 degree corners were first cut in the oak with a router bit. The challenge was then to cut a spline on that angled face – easy on the router table, but I don’t have one, so a fat piece of wood and a lot of clamps to hold in position. Cut not quite straight, and one dead 3mm router bit later I have the spline slot. Chop into 4 pieces.
The “spliney bit” you can see on the top is actually cork – not processed cork from the shop, but cork cut fresh from the tree a couple of years ago – it was supposed to “ping” out of the basic end-grain wood in a reddish kind of way, which was what it did when I tested it, but it didn’t on the actual piece – cork for highlighting – think again! Internally there’s a beech spline. Adding the mahogany “detail strip” was easy – glue and clamp, which is my kind of joint. That bit of mahogany I picked up in the “free” bin at the DIY shop is going a long way. Recess the base and add plywood bottom and voila!
I’d just read the forum discussion on not sanding greater than 220 – I’d always sanded down to 1000, which I thought was the right thing to do – so I thought I’d give that a go (although I’ve never even seen 220 here in Portugal, so I went with 240). The jury’s still out on that – under a magnifying glass I can still see some tiny scratches.
I learned some lessons (one of which was “you’re still no good at joints”), which was the main thing. Having filled the house with small stools and tables, it’s now starting to fill up with pencil holders!
The odyssey continues…

Oak, cork & mahogany details, finished with old antique oil.