Wood Nightstand Catchall

The nightstand catchall came into creation out of pure necessity. I had one that was made out of some type of acrylic or plastic that discolored over time, and I felt it was time for a new one. I also had a wooden phone dock I made from a piece of walnut years ago that sat on top of my previous catchall, and I thought, “Wouldn’t it be awesome to have one item that encompasses both!” With that thought I opened up my design software of choice and started playing with shapes until I settled on the one I liked. After finalizing the design, I saved the .svg file and imported it into easel.

Note: (The dimension of the Phone slot on the catchall was designed to fit “MY” Smartphone. I have the Samsung S6 Galaxy Edge Plus – if you have a different phone you will have to make adjustments to the phone slot to fit your phone. This can be done easily by simply using a pair of digital calipers to measure the width of the phone. The depth of cut will remain the same.)

The next step was to choose the wood I would use for the catchall. Although I think it would look awesome made out of Walnut, I choose to recycle the wood from a 70 year old table that I saved from the landfill, so the wood used in this project is Oak.
After securing the material on the machine, I installed the largest bit I had in the router, and set out making my new catchall.
The bit used: High speed steel 2 flute upcut Spiral.
Cut Settings: I utilized the recommend cut settings, however I feel this was entirely too safe and I could have increased the Feed Rate/Depth per pass a tad.

After the job was complete, I sanded over the entire piece with 220 grit sand paper, and then applied a homebrew wood conditioner to give it a soft luster and satiny feel.