Hot Glue Gun Station

I was in the shop using my hot glue gun and finally decided to make a holder which turned into an elaborate station. I definitely experienced OCD on this project. I tried to think of every conceivable thing that I would need in the future. I didn’t want to do what everyone else had done. That is my personality. I like to improve on designs, or just make my own. I ended up creating a dispenser much like the ones you see for toothpicks.

As usual, I fired up Sketchup and designed something. There were several designs until I got what I wanted. That is the great thing about Sketchup, you can test the theory of how things fit and work before the actual build. What I mean is, by seeing dimensions and angles you can more effectively build things.

As you can see in the illustration above, my design was going to work but I had a drawer that was too small for all the storage and I wasn’t quite happy with the design to hang it on the wall. I wanted to hang this on the wall with the tool. So I went back to the drawing board and came up with a new design. The re-design offered everything I wanted. A larger drawer for storage, a working dispenser, and a system to hang the jig and the tool on the wall.

So I carefully planned out each piece from gluing to clamping. The gluing was so I wouldn’t get any where the dispensing cylinder would be. The clamping was making sure that the ends of the clamp didn’t concave the box as it dried. It was specifically and methodically designed. I regret to say that nowhere online or in any hobby shop did they have the metal tray that I wanted. So I used a glass jar lid. For the build, I used some leftover poplar from the previous nightstand project, and some pine dowels.

I think of all my projects this was the most involved and funnest to date. When people see it I don’t think they realize how much planning went into the functionality or design. I’m not saying It’s anything special, but I do think that other woodworkers would appreciate it.

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