Christmas Gift Idea: Roubo Phone Stands

I have Ron Aylor to thank for this one.  I was fascinated when I first saw Roy Underhill make the Roubo book stand and ever since have wanted to make one.  Ron's post showed that you can adapt the idea to make smaller versions to use as a phone stand.  You can see how Ron did it in the linked post.  My method is mostly the same.

Prototype version

How it looks with phone

I started with a prototype to learn about any pitfalls so I could make fewer mistakes on the real thing.  One thing had to do with allowance for a power cord.  In the next pic, you see the 3/8" wide slot for a power cord that goes almost back to the knuckle.

Slot for power cord

Two things are important here.  First, the slot should lead to a connection with the knuckle.  In this pic, the shelf that the phone rests on is connected to the 1st, 3rd and 5th knuckles.  If I had laid it out so the 3rd knuckle was attached to the upright portion, there would be virtually no support for the wood at the back of the power cord slot.  Even so, there is very little material connecting that middle knuckle to the front ledge.  And that brings me to the second thing: for future pieces, I made the middle knuckle much wider than the rest.

Side view of the phone stand

Oh, yeah, there was a third thing I learned making this one.  I wanted the knuckles to be round in cross section, like in the picture above.  But when chiseling out the material for the knuckles prior to sawing the blank apart, I couldn't get deep enough.  I don't own any thin paring chisels and my regular bench chisels couldn't get deep enough while keeping the round shape.  On this prototype, I ended up breaking and splitting some wood to get it to open up.

So here's the story on making the real things.

9-10" long x 3 1/4" wide x 3/4-13/16" thick blank.
Lay out the knuckles.  This pic looks like I've laid out 6 knuckles,
but there are only 5 - the middle one is much wider than the rest.

About 3-3 1/2" from the bottom, lay out the knuckles, including the
cross section circle on the edge as a guide.

Knife lines at the base of each knuckle.
Drill 1/16" through holes at each corner.

I don't have a coping saw blade small enough to fit in the 1/16" holes, so I used the trick from Roy's show.  I made a little saw from a hacksaw blade and some scrap wood.  The piece of blade has a pointy end that can get inside the 1/16" holes - just barely.

Cut a section of a hacksaw blade, teeth pointing towards right (pull stroke)

Made a handle and I've got a specialty saw for the job

Put the tip in the hole and yank back, starting a tiny kerf

Getting deeper ...  You can work from both sides.

Eventually the whole blade fits in there and you can continue the cut.
This took a long time, but got easier and quicker with subsequent phone stands.

After the slots were cut, chisel out the knuckles.
Notice they didn't come out very round ...

Re-saw the blank into two, down to the knuckles - both top and bottom

Be careful when separating the book stand - these things can be fragile.
I ended up successfully gluing this one back together.

Saw off the excess to create the shelf and to shorten the front foot
to get the phone stand to sit at the right angle

After this was some clean-up of the sawn surfaces.  I used planes as much as possible, but a scraper did a lot of work.  The feet and the top of the backrest got some decorative shaping.  And to personalize them for the giftees, I added some carving to the backrest.  I'm definitely not a carver, but this was kind of fun.  I used paper templates glued to the backrest to guide marking out the outlines, then removed the paper and did the rest with what carving tools I have.

First two with Celtic knot and heart

I used two coats of BLO as a finish.  Very happy with how these came out.  I just hope the recipients like them.

And here they are all finished up and ready for the giving