Coffee Container Twine Holder

I do a lot of work in the garden and use a decent amount of twine to tie up plants. Dropping the roll and having it unwind all over the place is common occurrence. Definitely not fun when working with bushy tomatoes that need tying up! This Instructable shows a simple, free solution to the problem. BTW, I am not in the habit of drinking coffee but I have a ton of these available from my work. Apparently the stuff gets folks going in the morning. I brought a stack home so you might be seeing a few more projects in the coming weeks :). This project has been jazzed up mostly for the pictures but as explained below, you can make the same project for free.

Here is a video of the project:

Tools:

• Drill
• 3/8” Bit (With Bushing), 1/4" Bit (No Bushing)
• Printer (optional)

Materials:

• Coffee Container – Maxwell House (30.6 OZ shown)
• ¼” Rubber Bushing (optional)
• Paint (optional)
• Label (optional)
• Twine (#21 x 525 ft. Bundling Twine Natural shown)

Nowadays, the labels are actually printed on the container for both Maxwell House and Folgers. I tried removing the label on another container with acetone but it was taking longer than I liked. At the same time, the area on the container looked dull compared to the remainder of the container. If you don’t want to look at the Maxwell House logo every time you grab twine, either remove the label with acetone or paint the container. I chose to paint the container option but used a nice glossy blue very similar to the coffee can's color of blue.

The label was printed on an Avery 8 1/2" x 11" shipping label. I chose the 3 1/3” x 4” template since it fit the container pretty well. I pulled the template from the Avery website and added some cheesy clip art and the word “Twine” to the top. Note that Folgers has a free Can Decorator App. Once I finished the design, I printed the label on an HP office Jet. I don’t think you need a label since you see the twine coming out the top but this might give you an idea if you are using the containers for another purpose.

Drill a hole through center of lid. See next step for size.

The original 1/4” hole through the top wasn’t very smooth and I was worried that the twine might catch as it was exiting the hole. To solve this, I decided to add a rubber bushing. You can find these in old electronics (computers, scanners, lamps, etc.) or buy them from a hardware store. I used a 1/4” bushing which requires a 3/8” diameter hole.

The twine is Everbilt #21 x 525 ft and was purchased from Home Depot. The spool size (4" x 3.5") fits nicely into this container. Feed string through the hole/bushing.

All done!