Last week I tried to bring some order to the boxes of tea that were beginning to take over the kitchen counter (despite me being a one flavor & drink consumer, my wife and daughter can’t pass up a new flavor of tea…it’s somewhat disturbing.
Here’s a link to that posting:
There were some great comments from the Glowfolk. I really liked the suggestions recommending different designs to match the contents.
As I mentioned I needed to tighten up the design - my 1/8" Baltic Birch plywood was really only 0.118", not the 0.125" I expected. So I cleaned up the design a bit and made a couple more designs for the various mint flavors and some sleepy time tea flavor.
This time I made a new version in Baltic Birch and one in maple Proofgrade and a fourth one in cherry PG. The PG 1/8" plywood is a true 1/8" or 0.125" so the 2 new designs had appropriate slots and fingers. The 2nd Baltic Birch version was updated with tighter slots to match the true dimensions.
I finished the Baltic Birch one using Pecan Minwax stain and polyurethane all-in-one spray. The picture below has all 4 of the teabag houses:
From left to right - the unfinished unmasked Baltic Birch prototype, the maple Proofgrade, pecan finished Baltic Birch and finally the cherry Proofgrade version.
Close-up views of the original and maple versions.
And the finished Baltic Birch with the cherry Proofgrade.
I gotta say I really like Proofgrade for final versions of projects. Not needing to apply finishing is great - both from a time & effort savings perspective and a quality of the finish. The Proofgrade finish looks and feels baked in, a lot like the prefinished flooring you’ll find at the big box stores.
It’s a bit more expensive than straight laser quality Baltic Birch but its consistency, true to size and finish makes it hard to argue for spending the time & effort required to get a high quality final project.
Thanks for all the suggestions folks. I like the alternate editions.