My spouse is right-handed but for reasons too esoteric for me to grasp, uses her computer mouse on the left side. Her computer is a laptop and the power and network cables also engage on the left side and tend to interfere with the mouse movement. Her solution was to restrain the cables with a heavy object, namely an orange
weighted hockey puck. Now, this was an effective solution but also fair game for a guy who keeps his eye out for potential woodworking projects.
Upon consultation, she was good with a new wooden cable restraint as a more-decorative replacement. To avoid diluting the Canadian-ness added by the hockey puck, I decided to go with a Maple leaf motif. It might have had a certain satisfying symmetry if I'd selected Maple for the wood but I decided to use Cherry instead just because it's a nicer wood. For the design I opted for a realistic shape; it was
cut out to copy a leaf from a Silver Maple tree in our back yard.
Of course a little piece of wood isn't going to weigh nearly as much as a weighted puck so the leaf was made about an inch tall and got it's own weights in the form of seven short sections of 1/2"-diameter steel bar stock embedded from the bottom. A cable cutout on the underside does the restraint duty while the 1/3-pound weight combined with some grippy vinyl feet keep it in place.
| Material: | Cherry |
| Finish: | 3 coats Miniwax Fast-Dry Poly, Clear Satin |
| Size: | 3.5" wide x 3.3" long x 0.95" thick |
| Done: | Oct 10, 2023 |
