Some Details on Roubo Phone Stands

I've posted about making these things before, but I just made two more and thought I'd share some details.  This will be mostly pictorial, with text in the captions.  The wood is air-dried walnut, from my brother's property in North Carolina.

Starting with walnut, 9 1/2" x 3 1/4" x 3/4" thick.
Here, some layout lines have been penciled and knifed in.
The layout starts about 2 1/2" from the bottom.
Center "finger" is 1" wide, others are about 9/16" wide.

Drilling holes at the 8 corner points of the layout.
This layout shows three "fingers" on upper portion and two on lower.
It's the opposite on the bottom side - three on lower, two on upper.

Sawing the wood between drilled holes using tool made from hacksaw blade

The result of that sawing

Starting to chisel out the waste to create the hinge knuckles

This knife line is centered between the extents of the fingers

After chiseling out most of the waste, I set the chisel in that knife line
and use a 45 degree angle block to guide the final chiseling.

Here is the result - nice clean line

Since the extents of the fingers are the same distance apart as
the workpiece is thick, the 45 degree chops get you to the center
of the workpiece.

Another view.  Note the centered lengthwise guide lines on the side of the workpiece.
They'll guide the saw when separating the phone stand.

Then it's on to sawing down the thickness, down to the chiseled knuckles

You've got to saw all the way down to here

Red arrows show the saw in the cut.
Green arrow shows the little bits that fall out through the
chiseled knuckles telling you that you've sawn far enough.

If you've chiseled and sawn enough, the phone stand will open up easily

When opened, it's nice that the parts mate appropriately.
This works out this way if the distance between the extents of the "fingers"
(or knuckles) is the same as the thickness of the workpiece.

Then it's on to cleaning up the sawn surfaces.
Here, cleaning up a sawn face with a card scraper

You can also plane some of the sawn surface

The front shelf that holds the phone is 7/8" long.
I typically put a 7/16" slot centered in the shelf (seen below) for a charging cord.

Did some shaping to the top and the feet using templates

And here they are

But wait, there's more!!
I added a decorative carving before giving them four
coats of shellac, then paste wax.

These are going to my sister and to a family friend both visiting from the East Coast this week.  I have Ron Aylor to thank for the inspiration of these phone stands.