This is a wastebasket I made for our study. My spouse had until then a black plastic Umbra unit that sat beside her desk and while perfectly acceptable, was very light and a bit top heavy. As a result, the merest nudge with the vaccuum could cause it to topple over and sometimes have its lid pop off and roll away. This kind of bugged me whenever it happened - admittedly quite infrequently given how often I vaccuum - but it seemed like a great idea when it occurred to me to replace it with something else.
Now we already have lots of natural-colored wood in the study, so I thought another black wastebasket was the way to go. After rejecting conventional designs as too...well...conventional, I tried to think of objects that might naturally be black and generally wastebasket-shaped. After some deliberation, the chess rook seemed like an ideal model.
This one was built up from 1" maple planks to form a hollow octagonal form, which was then turned on the lathe. It started as a 35 lb chunk of wood and glue (and it took most of a LARGE bottle of glue) and after turning ended up a svelte 17 lbs. And this baby is stable - it takes a determined effort to tilt it up to empty it. In fact I added a recessed ring on the bottom to aid in lifting it.
The cover is hinged off-center to provide a larger disposal opening and counterweighted so it closes level. The lightness of the cover combined with the close-fitting hole provides a nice damped action to the cover closing. Some construction details can be seen
here.
| Material: | Maple |
| Construction: | Segmented turning |
| Finish: | Rust-oleum Painter's Touch flat black latex |
| Size: | 12.75" dia x 18.75" high |
| Done: | March 6, 2015 |
