Round Box From Recycled Plastic Cylinder

Have you ever ended up with something that looked like it should be good for something!

I was given a set of knives in a plastic turntable. Because of limited counter space I kept the knives but was disposing of the plastic container when I realized I might be able to use the black plastic cylinder so I put it away. Now, with a bit of work I have an attractive container for all of those little things that were on the dresser.

I used this cylinder but any cylinder will do. Look in the plumbing department and the stove pipe section etc. You need:

Plywood .188 in diameter

Glue

Paint and decorations

I cut 3 circles on the Epilog laser cutter at our local makerspace.

One circle of plywood was cut for the top of the cylinder. Using calipers I measured the outside diameter of the cylinder and using the circle tool on CorelDraw x7 I made a circle with that measurement and cut it on the cutter. I then cut the circle for the bottom of the cylinder.

Since the laser cutter can be very accurate if it is given an accurate measurement of the inside diameter of the cylinder, the circle could fit snug enough to be quite secure. Even with the tight fit, I put a rim of glue around the inside bottom of the cylinder and glued the disc in one end of the cylinder.

Another circle of plywood was cut a 1/16th smaller than the bottom circle. This was glued to the bottom of the lid to keep the lid settled on the cylinder.

When you glue the smallest circle to the largest circle, ensure that the smaller circle is in the centre of the largest circle.

When the glue has cured, fit the lid to the cylinder.

After the glue has cured, you can paint your container. I used black since the cylinder was already black.

Give the paint time to dry according to the directions that accompany the paint.

Now after that extreme effort you have just put in, you can try different ideas for decorating the box. Decorations can be suited to different ages.

The snowflakes were cut from white paper using a paper punch.

The Sunflowers were from a scrapbooking section in the store.

I used a string of beads attached to the lid with a glue gun. I used my smallest glue gun and make very tiny dots dropped here and there. After a couple of dots, I pressed some of the beads into the glue and dropped more dots and did this until all of the beads were glued. I did not glue every bead but only one bead here and there according to where the glue dots were. It ended up a relaxed design. Don't try to do too many glue dots at a time as the glue dries very quickly