August 27th, 2006 |
The answer, my friend,
is blowing in the wind
the answer is blowing in the wind
Today I'll show you how I made a new incense holder. This quick weekend project takes about two hours from start to finish.
The ones that come with incense that you buy for too much in fancy stores are total pieces of junk. Little more than a flat platform with a hole inexpertly drilled in it. The one we've been using is so crooked that the incense hangs off the side of the stick and just dumps ash everywhere.
There has to be a better way. Grab a chunk of wood. Say 1.5" x 1.5" x whatever. Then drill a hole in it. This part is tricky if you don't have the setup to use a drill press or something to that effect. You want the hole to be as large as possible to give the biggest ash area, but you don't want to drill through the side of the wood. It's tricky. Just be careful. You can always make the area larger later, so err on the side of caution.
Of course, the tricky part is to drill through both ends so that the holes meet in the middle. Otherwise it'll be a pain to have to scoop out thta little extra bit. To facilitate this easier end, I wound up making the incense holder about an inch shorter than I had originally planned - but it still turned out really fine.
Sweet. Now comes the fancification.
ONE - Drill a brazillion evenly spaces holes along one of the top edges. As Homer Simpson would say, now it's got speed holes. You'll want the widest part of the drill diameter to be about level with the very top of the tunnel you drilled through.
TWO - Use a fine toothed saw to carefully remove this top section. The perfect tool for this? The Japanese pull saw. Like fireworks and ninjas, the Japanese make everything very kickass and very dangerous. Japanese pull saws are incredibly sharp, so be careful.
THREE - See? Just lift off the top like when Hannibal Lector lifted off that guy's skull in that movie. Clean up the little bits that remain hanging around.
FOUR - Now you need two more pieces to cap the ends. I chose some leftover walnut that I had laying around.
I beveled down the edges so that it would be more of a boat or cup shape, but I suppose it would work just as well if they were straight up.
A few minutes work with a rough dremel sander (watch out for dust) and theWAREHOUSE Dragon Boat incense holder is literally taking shape. I'm going for a carved, rough look, so I'm putting in extra facets on the "teeth" - it really enhances the line of the piece.
Now some sanding, a coat of oak stain, a coat of varnish, and one final step: drilling the hole for the incense. This is really quite tricky, because the whole point of the project was to get a precise, straight-on incense holder. Just be really careful and start with a very small hole. That way you can test its accuracy and adjust if you need it.
Teeth.
Work marks on a made thing. Signs of reality.
Not some perfected, templated, assembly-line sweatshop piece.
And now a bunch of cool pictures of smoke.
Enjoy your neat incense holder, hippies!
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