Sunday was a big day for the cupholders! I’ve been nervous about drilling these huge (90mm, or 3 1/2”) holes: it’s a lot of wood to remove, does my drillpress have enough torque, can I hold them steady, will the walls be too thin and the wood will collapse or tear out…but today was the day to face the fears.

First I needed to actually make the huge blocks. I had a few leftover 8/4 chunks from the original resaw and I had just enough for 8 cupholders:

In my original design I have two cupholders on each end of the table as that’s just how the spacing worked out. I wondered if I could replace one of them on each end with something useful. I had a vision of a fold-out dice tower and figured the 6” wide block would be just enough room to contain one. I’m thinking it will fold down like the player stations, which would potentially double it’s height/depth.

But that’s for a future project. For now, it means that I only need 6 cupholders instead of 8. I glued up my longer scraps, which was just long enough to end up with 6 cubes of 4 1/2” length:

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While those were gluing, I took some time with the shooting board to make sure the cupholders vertical supports were a perfect 90°:

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I drilled holes for assembling the cupholder box, and drilled the corresponding holes in the base for attaching the cupholders:

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By now the big block was ready for milling. First I planed one side to 5” wide, then sawed off one end to get the other down to 3 5/8”:

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When it was time to cut them into blocks I had to make two passes to get all the way through the board, flipping it 180° each time:

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Finally, it was time for The Drill:

I clamped the block to the fence to make sure it stayed steady. It took a while, and it makes a TON of wood chips, but I set my drill to the lowest RPMs (200) and just took my time:

And the hole fits amazingly well. So well, the inserts have a piston fit:

After all six were done I dry fit my pieces again, and sure enough, I had a cupholder module:

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Finally, I cut a groove for the linear rail that the cupholder is going to slide on, and started doing some test fitting. I may end up doubling up on the rails and use two for each cupholder, just to make sure they’re stable and don’t have any side-to-side rocking when extended:

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Next up will be fine tuning the rail fitting and then a lot of sanding, before finally assembling these things!

I spent a little time last night experimenting with attaching the cupholder slides. The slides themselves were pre-tapped with 3mm holes, but I needed to add a couple more to align with my pieces. I also drilled out the pre-tapped holes and tapped the wood instead, so that the bolt head pulls down on the slide and locks it against the wood. (If you screw though one tapped piece into another tapped piece, they’re never really drawn together because the threads will keep them at a fixed distance from each other no matter what.)

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What’s with the playing cards? I cut the groove just slightly wider than the slide so that it doesn’t bind up as it slides back and forth. The playing cards make sure the slide stays centered in the groove as I cut my holes and bolt everything in place!

The finish on the corners is finally done curing, so I was able to assemble and install them!

I also sanded the parts of the test cupholder, and attached the front:

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I’m using a single playing card to elevate the front lip just a hair to make sure it doesn’t bind on the base when the unit is opened. It may end up that after a few seasons the wood has expanded just a bit and they start scraping, but if that happens I can detach the whole module and take off a couple thousandths of an inch with the hand plane.

I’m going to assemble this unit for real, install it in position on the base, and test out the latching mechanism. Assuming everything works, I’ll copy my learnings to the other five and then sand the 6 pieces that make up each module (36 total) and start the finishing process. This is another one where I’ll finish the individual pieces first, then assemble them after the third coat is dry.

It works!

It’s been slow going the last few days as I fit and finish each cupholder. Four out of six are done are getting coats of finish. The other two should be done this week and all finish and assembly should be done by the weekend. I spent Saturday on a quick project, more on that over here.