Beaver Lever - Something You Didn't Know You Wanted

The Beaver Lever is something that I wanted to buy from amazon but the available products with clips, flexible arms, or plastic arms simply didn't appeal to me. I also had a large stock of shelf pins, 10-24 threaded T-nuts and barrel bolts that I wanted to use.

Please take a look and feel free to ask me any questions. This Beaver lever actually works a lot better than I thought and the way it folds up or can be put away makes it a nice companion in the kitchen where I'm starting to use a lot of recipes to prepare for dinner.

SUPPLIES AND EQUIPMENT:

Shelf Pins (5 or 6mm). Shelf pins can be found in cabinets on the side of the road or trash. I have accumulated a lot over the years. Here is a link if you need to buy them.

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Support-FANDAMEI-L-Shaped-B...

Barrel bolts : these are a little tough to find. I accumulated extra from when we had to install bathroom partitions so that's why my bolts have a T27 security head. Here is the link if you need to buy some Barrel Bolts(M6 x 25 mm) Link: https://www.amazon.com/binifiMux-10-Pack-Socket-B...

T-nuts : 10-24 type can be found in pallets holding spools of electrical wire often. I think thats where I found these but they also can be found in pallets for mechanical equipment Link (Qty: 50 10-24 threaded nuts): https://www.amazon.com/Parts-Express-10-24-T-Nuts...

10-24 x 1 ½” bolts for T-Nuts I actually have to buy these but I keep a healthy stock of these just due to my use of T-nuts for knobs. Recommend going to a local hardware store instead. https://www.amazon.com/Phillips-Stainless-Quantit...

Common Hardware from you miscellaneous Jar or from the hardware store:

• ¼” lock washer
• ¼” washers
• 1 ¼” wood screws
• ⅝” wood screws I think I used a bunch of these

Wood:

• ¾” plywood (scrap)
• ¼” plywood (scrap)
• 11/16” cedar fencing material
• ⅜” cork (enough scraps to hold your phone. Wine corks would work as well)

Miscellaneous:

• Rubberband
• Dyneema rope or whatever you have to hold a rubberband in place
• Wood Glue

Equipment Used:

• Table saw (with cross cut sled) A lot easier but not required.
• Handsaw Since this is a prototype I actually used my little handsaw a lot on this project. 1/4" plywood is really easy to cut along with any crosscutting.
• Drill press A lot easier with a drill press especially when drilling through steel, but not required.
• Cordless drill You need to drill a lot of holes so this is probably necessary.
• Clamps For gluing cork to phone saddle.

Track:

I wanted my camera mount to move from left to right so I made a 1/4" wide groove into some leftover trim (painted poplar) and screwed that into the wall cabinet using shelf pins. See the markups on the pictures here. Notch out one side of the track so the mounting plate shelf pins have a spot to enter and exit.

Sliding Mount:

The sliding mount should be cut after measuring the distance between the track. This will vary for all cabinets.

The width of the mount is not important.

I'm stingy on the shelf pins that hold the Poor Susan (uspide down lazy Susan) in place, I placed the shelf pins at a 120 degree orientation but it would be easier and probably more stable with four shelf pins. See the next step for the Poor Susan swivel.

Lazy Tip:

You can stop here and order a cheap flexible mount from Amazon onto the sliding mount plate, but I'm cheap and wanted to explore these arm mechanisms so I decided to do all the other steps after this part.

The way I made this piece but don't recommend:

I cut out a 3 3/8" piece of plywood on the table saw using a similar method that Steve Ramsey shows here:

I then did something very dangerous to make the groove in the middle which I won't explain because it's too dangerous for most to try.

The way I should have done this:

I would cut 3 pieces of ~3 1/2" x 3 1/2" x 1/4" plywood. I would then cut two circles as shown by Steve Ramsey to 3 3/8" diameter, and the last square into a 2 3/8" diameter circle.

Glue the three circles together with the 2 3/8" diameter circle in the center.

The groove is just needed so the shelf pins can hold up the mount and spin around when needed.

Countersink a hole to receive a 10-24 T-nut

I used a 3/4" forstener bit to recess the hole, then drilled a 1/4" hole through that center. The T-nut will be the receiving end for the Shoulder of the arm to mount to the Poor Susan Swivel.

Please reference the drawings and pictures here. Pictures > Words in this case.

Arms: Rip some cedar to 1 1/8" wide and cut to a length that you want. Drill holes at the end 1 7/16: apart.

Plywood Gussets: Cut the triangles and also drill holes 1 7/16" apart.

Knobs:

1. Use a 1 1/2" diameter holesaw to cut out the 3/4" plywood. It'll make a wood piece that's 1 3/8" in diameter.
2. I wrapped some sandpaper around a 7/8" rod at 120 degrees apart to make a 3 sided knob. This is not necessary but definitely helps when tightening the joints.
3. Countersink a hole into the center of the knob with a 3/4" forstener bit ~3/8" deep. This is just to allow the T-nut to receive the 10-24 bolt.
4. I sanded the edges on my knobs a little but should really sand them off a little more.
5. The sequence of the knobs with the lock washers are important. Please be sure to reference my picture of where the lock washers and regular washers go.

Assemble the Mechanism: Use the barrel bolts to sandwhich the 1/4" plywood gussets between the cedar. No wood glue here necessary but you can if you dont want the adjustability. I may want to change out my lengths on the arms so I just use barrel bolts only.

Please reference the drawings and pictures here. Pictures > Words in this case.

Back Panel:

I have an android phone and my wife has an IPhone so I cut 3/16" plywood to 3 1/16" wide by 5 9/16" long. I cut the corners off at ~45 degree angle to make this mount less square. I drilled a 1/4" hole somewhere towards the center of the back panel for the 10-24 bolt to fasten into the "wrist" of the arm mechanism.

Side/Bottom Cleats:

1. I ripped a piece of cedar to 1 1/4" wide and cut it to 5 9/16" long. attach these to the bottom of the back panel with some 5/8" wood screws. I'm not sure why I used the mod truss head screws.... Probably just because they were closer than my 5/8" wood screws.
2. I chiseled out an 11/16" wide x 1/4" deep on the edge so I could secure the 1/4" plywood tabs. These just act as a stop to keep my phone from slipping out.
3. I Cut out a tiny triangle ~1 1/4" x 1 1/4" wide and attach to the cedar with some 5/8" wood screws.

Cork Pads:

I had some scrap cork to pad the phone as well as lift the phone away from the plate to avoid conflict with the 10-24 bolt. The 10-24 bolt can tighten or loosen from the face of the back plate and will allow rotation of the phone saddle. You can use any type of cork include a Wine or Patron Cork. TIP: Wood glue works well for Cork to wood.

Spring Loaded Phone Clamp:

My engineering brain overcomplicated this mechanism. E ended up building two versions of this and am likely to make another version. This mechanism just needs to be lightweight and cheap. All you really need is a track to hold a rod/thingy to pull the phone down into the cleat. I encourage you to make your own version of this part, but this is how I scrapped together my mechanism (see pictures at the end for my previous mechanisms and notes):

1. I cut out a small 1 3/8" x 3/4" piece of 3/4" plywood. Drill a 1/4" hole through the edge grain (not recommended). This worked good enough though. I would just make a channel in a piece of wood or simply glue a cardboard tube from those doggy bag things.
2. I happened to have small piece of steel with an L-shape stainless steel rod. I cut it to about 1 3/4" long and drilled an 1/8" hole near the bottom. and put a little loop of dyneema rope to tie a rubber band to.
3. I added two 1 1/4" wood screws to wrap the rubberbands. This works well because you can adjust the tension based on the spacing or just wrapping the rubberbands around the screws more.
4. My knot from the rope to the screws was kind of a mess. Unfortunately, I can't explain it well but I'm sure you could figure out a better way to do this anyway.

Phone Saddle to Wrist Joint:

I screwed in a 10-24 bolt to attach the phone saddle to the wrist joint of the arm. I will loosen the 10-24 bolt to rotate the phone saddle as needed.

Shoulder Joint to Poor Susan:

I Use a 10-24 bolt to attach the shoulder joint into the Poor Susan disc. You can tighten this as much as you want as it won't be flexible.

Poor Susan to Base Plate:

I used 3 shelf pins with 5/8" wood screws to secure in the Poor Susan disc. You can use more shelf pins if you want but it may just get in the way.

Slide the Beaver Lever shelf pins into the grooves below the wall cabinet (this is where that notch at the end of the groove comes in).

If I don't feel like looking at this thing for a while, I'll just remove this whole thing.

Adjust the joints (shoulder, elbow, and wrist) as tight as you need to provide the right amount of friction to move your phone around.

I wanted to leave a little bit about my design process and sketches here. My process can best be described as below:

• Get as much constraints, requirements and measurements listed out
• Start thinking of solutions, writting notes and sketching non-sense
• Start prototyping and realize that some of my requirements are unreasonable. Example: An Ipad is too large to be practical vs the tradeoff of having something that can be folded away with all the movement that I wanted.
• Test out parts and simplify each small part in my build.
• Start refining.

If you got this far, Thank you very much for reading. I understand the aesthetic of the Beaver Lever may not be for everyone but you may be able to use some of the part on this build like the use of shelf pins or the knobs from 10-24 T-nuts. This was a lot of fun and I hope that this is helpful to at least one other person.

Let me know if you have any questions and I hope to post some to scale plans as soon I get the phone saddle cleaned up a bit.