An Awesome Gear Shaped Mug Holder

This was my 4th project, and I've learned a lot so far!  It's still taking me a while to finish my projects, but I'm starting to learn how to plan ahead a little better and learning easier/quicker techniques.  I made this at the TechShop in Menlo Park (www.techshop.com).

I took both the Wood Shop SBU and CNC ShopBot SBU class to make this project.

I forgot to take a picture of the materials I used for this, so I will just make a list.  This was very inexpensive; all I had to purchase were the dowels and a 15" x 15" piece of plywood.

Materials:
1) wood glue
2) 15" x 15" piece of wood, mine was 3/4" think
3) screws (found in the TechShop bin wall)

Tools/equipment:
1) ShopBot
2) Drill press
3) Small hand saw

I used the CNC ShopBot to cut out the gear shape.  This was very easy; all I had to do was create a file of a gear (which can be time consuming) in the exact size that i wanted, the ShopBot did most of the work for me.  I highly recommend taking this class!  

I used a straight router bit to clean the edges, and used a 3/8" round over router bit to round all the edges.

I used the drill press to drill shallow holes for the dowels (for the mug handles to hook onto).  The angle of the base can be changed, so I changed it to a 30 degree angle.  This ensured that all the angles of my holes would be uniform.  I used calipers to measure the dowel to figure out which drill bit would be best.  I used a piece of scrap to test the angle and depth of the drill.  Then I set up my gear on the drill press, and made sure that I did not change the direction of the gear at all, I just moved it up and down.  If I changed the direction of the gear, all the dowels would be facing different directions. 

I sanded the surface of the gear after drilling because the wood splintered a little from the drill press.

I dropped a little bit of wood glue into each hole so the dowels would not be loose.

I cut the dowels down to 3" long pieces using a small hand saw, and then inserted them into the holes on the gear.

Here's the finished product; perfect for any wall!