Craig’s Crafts

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen cooks on the Food Channel measure out ingredients, and they’ve still got the measuring spoons on the ring that is used to keep them together when they ship them to you. The wives on Take Home Chef on TLC are some of the worst for this. (And don’t get me started on them wearing rubber gloves just to handle vegetables!) Even Martha Stewart still has them on a ring. Once you’ve used one to measure a liquid, what do you do? Let it drip? Get another ring of spoons and use just one of them?

Take them off the ring!

We have two sets of measuring spoons that we regularly use here, a regular sized set and a narrow set to fit into spice bottles. Since we actually use these spoons, they were removed from their shipping rings years ago, and I made a wall-mounted measuring spoon holder to hold both sets. We can pick the individual spoon needed, and can mix and match measuring wet and/or dry ingredients without dragging along a handful of unused spoons along. We can also tell at a glance if one is missing.
So, my next project is going to be to make a Measuring Spoon Holder in two versions, holding either a single or double set of spoons. All sets of spoons I’ve seen have the same number and dimensions of spoons, even the cheap ones. (I don’t count the sets that have odd sizes or extra big/small spoons.) Here’s what it needs to do:

1. Hold a complete set(s) of spoons without hindering use
2. When replacing spoons, it should be easy to re-hang them without interference
3. Easy to mount on kitchen wall
4. Made of wood (I like wood)

I hope to have a prototype ready in a couple of days, once I do some measuring.

I have decided to make a couple of changes to the design of the holder. As I said it has a awful lot of pieces to make and put together, leading to some problems, such as:

• Handling and assembly of small pieces is dificult;
• Machining small pieces is dangerous with power tools;
• Takes too much time to assemble;
• Open spaces between rails sometimes lets handles of utensils poke out when inserting them;
• Lower rail needs to be higher to stop handles

So here’s the new version. The advantages of it are:

• Larger and solid pieces for the sides are easy to make and assemble;
• Solid sides and divider controls tools, stopping them from “sticking out”;
• Higher bottom rail helps with control as well;
• Fewer pieces (only 10 now) are easier to make and assemble

I’m pretty disapointed that I can’t seem to get everything exactly right. In this case I still have the bottom rail positioned so it’s not flush with the bottom. At least I got the lengths right so it covers the sides.

And I’m not going to have that ruler in the pictures any longer. The dimensions for this version are 8″W x 8″H x 5″D, slightly shorter than the others. This improves the looks and still holds the very long items (knife steel, ruler, ladles, etc.) in a stable manner.

The wood used was salvaged from a shipping pallet. I have no idea what type of wood it is, but it’s a very heavy hardwood, maybe oak or hickory. Most of the pallets I come across are softwoods, with a few hardwood planks now and then. I don’t use this very much, as it’s usually very dirty, broken up, and worst of all, they use about 200 nails to hold them together, and it’s almost impossible to pull them out.

Since I’m not sure what type of wood I’m going to make the “real” Utensil Holder, I just gather a bunch of scrap pieces and using various power tools I make a set of parts for each prototype. I haven’t made a formal set of plans yet, even though I took Mechanical Drawing in high school. I just sketch out an outline of a part, mark it with dimensions (and how many I’ll need of it), and start cutting.

I’m about to drop this method, as it always seems to bite me by having the end grain of some parts show when they shouldn’t and changing a dimension for one part without following through on others that mate with it. Accounting for thickness of some parts is often forgotten until I begin to assemble the project. I have much more respect for whoever draws up plans in the woodworking magazines.

So, here are some pictures of my latest try. I’m still using a fence-like method of construction here, but the number and size of the rails may become a problem. This has 19 pieces, and that’s a awful lot for such a small project. I’m going to see if I can simplify the design.

I showed this one to my wife and it’s now being used in our kitchen. After just a few days of “road-testing”, she suggested making the bottom rails higher, it doesn’t need to be quite so tall, and make the openings between the rails smaller. I’ll see if I can do this in the next version.

Here is the second version.

At this point I’ve abandoned the trapezoidal shape and gone back to vertical corner supports with rails to prevent the various utensils from poking out as you insert them. As you can see from the front view I’m still having a few problems when it comes to cutting parts to exact lengths. And I can’t seem to remember that end grain is mostly ugly and should be hidden.

The good points in this design are:

1. The top and bottom dividers that keep the utensils in two groupings
2. The dividers also prevent shorter items from sliding down too far and becoming hard to retrieve
3. The bottom rail holds everything in
4. Open railing gives a good view of the contents

Once again, parts alignment is a problem. When I get ready to make a more complete prototype, I’ll make a jig to hold the parts.

Here are two more pictures showing overall dimensions (ruler is still upside-down!). One last problem I discovered is that the order of assembly is important. Pin-nail the rails on all the way around, and I can’t get to the bottom divider, and I don’t want to just have glue and a press fit holding it in.