The Woodshop Shed

Carved monogram valet tray

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


I had been leaving my keys on the nightstand night after night, and always worried they'd eventually end up scratching up the finish on my nightstand, so I decided to make this valet tray to give a proper home to my keys, wallet, and phone at night. It's made from walnut that I salvaged from an old end table.Before I started, I thought routing out the recesses would be the trickiest, most interesting part. In reality that part was a bit underwhelming (messy though!). The harder part was making the template for routing, and the lots of card scraping and sanding of the recesses to smooth everything out.Other than a bit of practice on some scraps, this was my first time carving. After all the time spent routing, scraping, and sanding, I was really praying my amateur carving skills wouldn't ruin the thing!I learned some things along the way with this one, and the noticeable imperfections will serve as a reminder of those lessons forevermore. But all in all, I'm pleased with how it turned out. And I'm a bit of a neat freak, so for me, it's satisfying to have a perfect place to set all my things at night.

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