Tablet Stand

I made a permanent mount in the kitchen for my Android tablet a few months ago, but most of the time the tablet doesn’t live there. I find myself using it a lot around the rest of the house, strangely enough even when I’m at the computer where desk space is at a premium. I also find it inconvenient to use it while it is flat on the desk, so I started looking for ways to prop it up. Then browsing the web one day I found a iPad stand on the Casey Design Website and thought, “that would be a simple project to make.” I just needed to modify the design to fit my thicker tablet, but still be able to use it with my wife’s iPad.

I decided to use a piece of scrap leopard wood I had sitting in my shop for the stand, but first I used a scrap of pine to test the fit. I ended up making several passes with my table saw blade at 45° in increments of 1/8″ until the tablet fit in landscape mode, only to figure out it was thicker in portrait mode. Once I had that figured out, I ran the actual stand through the table saw and then eased the edges at the router. I encountered some tear-out of the slot at the router which I had to fix not once, but twice. You’d have thought I would have learned from my mistake!

I also had some trouble finishing the stand. I was experimenting with some new wipe-on oil+urethane from Rockler, but I was having problem with the finish becoming tacky and not drying in over a day in the cold of my basement. I switched to using just a wipe on urethane, which went better, but still wasn’t drying and was duller than it should have been. I gave up after four coats and buffed the finish with some steel wool and then a cotton cloth. It’s not as shiny as it should be, but it still looks pretty good.