Fred Housel
Warren, Ohio
This is a simple lid design for the Libbey 853 glass container. I purchased these containers in cases to use for candle making. I wanted to use wood lids that I could customize by laser engraving.
1 minute
I purchased a few cases of these Libbey 853 glass containers from JarStore.com to use as containers for candles I made as Christmas gifts. They have pretty excellent customer support, by the way. I believe the sell lids for these, but I wanted to make my own so I could customize them, plus I like the look of wood lids.
Anyway, for this project I had some 4/4 White Oak boards that had been planed down and joined. In short, I was using some random-sized wood. This file is easy to customize though, and you can make these lids out of any material that’s about 3/4" or larger.
I’m sure you can figure this out on your own, but…
The black ring is the cut path. you just want to make sure it cuts all the way through your material. It might be hard to see, but there are two dark gray rings in my design that are set to 13mm deep. You need both rings. You will not need to change their shape, but depending on the thickness of your material you can change the depth of cut deeper for a sleeker lid, higher for a lid that sits lower into the container. Finally there is a fill object that you can use to set the overall thickness of the lid itself. Play with these settings to get the type of lid you like best!
While editing your Easel file, you can drag your pieces around, as it might be hard to select the two gray rings individually. When you’re done setting your depths select all the paths and center align them vertically and horizontally. Just make sure you don’t change the order of the objects. These are layered to get a certain cut.
I know the two rings thing seems confusing, but I was surprised how difficult it was to make lids in Easel. This was the best solution I found. Hope this helps someone!
10 minutes
After your lid(s) are cut, sand the top and bottom with some fine grit paper. Do no sand the face of the lid that sits inside the jar though. If you sand this portion the lid might not fit as tightly.
I made a little graphic for each lid on the laser, sanded, and finished with mineral oil and beeswax.
