Make an Biodegradable Wooden Charging Dock for Any Phone!

After buying new smartphone I decided to make a charging dock to place it at the bedside. It had to be cheap, simple and "not so ugly" choice. I was some wood that I had cut few days ago and then the idea came... I decided to make natural dock for my phone. The cost was almost nothing, I have used parts that I have had in home.

There was a lot of cut wood lying around my backyard and i cut a piece of wood that was split in half... almost ;
I took two halves and placed them in boiler room, to let them dry a little. After a day or two I placed the wood at my balcony to dry it on the sun.

It was willow tree wood, horribly wet and hard to cut, because it sticks to saw. When dry it burns like paper, and it's lightweight. I would suggest you using other kind of wood.

When the wood dried I started my work.

I've marked the level of the base, then place where my phone will be. I used a dremel and a chisel to make the base as flat as possible, then I used dremel to smooth the surface and finally a Sandpaper (200-300 grit).

To cut the hole for my smartphone I used my dremel with attachment that you can see at the photo.

It took some time, but you can always use different technique.

I used my dremel to make space for micro USB plug and my drill to drill the hole through the dock to connect the wire.

Remember to make the hole a bit larger than plug, this will allow you to adjust the position when you will glue it in place.

I used a cord from old wall charger, I cut off the old fashion Simens plug and replaced it with micro USB.

I soldered together data pins to allow full current flow to fast charge of my smartphone, and then soldered black and red wires to + and - pins.

I wanted to use it with my genuine nokia charger which have USB port, so I cut off the charger and used an old USB plug and soldered it at the other end of the cable.

Plug everything and test if your phone is charging, if not - check every connection that you have made.

If everything is working allright you can go to the next step ;)

You have to glue the plug to the base, best choice would be sugru... but I don't have any (nope! sugru is expensive in my currency :D ) so I used... guess what?.... of course - hot glue!

The point is not glue your phone to the dock, but only micro usb plug. I taped my phone with blue painters tape to be sure that any glue will damage my phone. I put some glue in the hole and just placed phone in the dock with plugged charging connector. Important thing is that you have to wait till the glue is cold, then just remove phone from the dock.

Next and last thing you have to do is making a notch for the cord. I used my dremel to do it. The notch should be a little bit deeper than the diameter of the wire. After making a notch sipmply hot glue the cable in place.

Aaaand! You're done!

I've used double sided foam tape to hold the dock on my bedside.

Thank you for reading!

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