What do these two things have in common ??? Nothing really unless you also happen to toss your empty prescription bottles around your shop. I however had an idea several months back to start saving up my empty pill bottles for a project which I decided to start on today.
It starts with a scrap piece of 4×4 lumber, condition is really not important although straight is suggested. You’ll need to square up both ends. I just hit my piece with the hand plane making sure to leave a bit of character on the wood.
So after that was done I grabbed my Defiance 1222 1/2 and marked off where I needed to cut to square up the ends of the board.
From there I once again used my try-square to mark out the center point on each end.
With that knocked out I used a random center punch from Harbor Fright I believe to mark the center. Now don’t ask me why I didn’t bother to take a picture of me using my Defiance 1250 Brace to make the hole for the bearings but I didn’t. You’ll need to do this on each end and then using some 5 minute epoxy just glue them bad boys in. These are just generic bearings like you would find in the neighbors skateboard wheels.
Now set that aside and you have to be quick, you only have 5 minutes to complete this next step before the epoxy sets up !!!
You need to make something akin to a paper towel dispenser. You’ll need the back of it to be about 1/8 of an inch longer than your 4×4 with the bearings sticking out if you did it like pictured. You’ll also need some scrap wood big and strong enough to be able to be screwed to the back piece and to have a hole and screw put in at the other end.
Now at this point you might have an idea of what comes next. Now you’re going to pre-drill a hole for a screw at the end of each of the arms, then grab your 4×4 and using a couple of those little plastic drywall things, drive your screw in until it catches the drywall thingy and turns freely on the bearing, repeat for the other end.
See what we did, we made a spinny thing !!! It SHOULD spin freely but not to freely, if you need to you can tighten the end screws some. And now comes the moment you’ve all been waiting for… what the heck did we need all those prescription bottles for ????
Just like back in the day when it was common to see something like this with mason jars screwed to it, I just decided to take a sustainable resource like pill bottles and put them to use for holding odd little things.
Go ahead and remove the tops from all the bottles you’re going to use then lay them out, mark where you want them, and then put two screws into the top of each bottle top. If I have to tell why you need two screws in each, please put down your tools, shred up your man card, and ask your parental unit to teach you how to crochet.
Keep doing this for all of the bottles you want to use until the whole thing is filled up. It was getting a bit late so after the first row got screwed on I decided it was time to just come in the house and watch some YouTube videos for a while.
And yes, my 4×4 has a huge crack in it, so what, it’s not structural and it only has to hand a couple gajillion screws put into it. Plus I think it adds character. And there you have it, easy peasy lemon squeezy !!! Now fill it with all that random junk on top of your workbench and relish in the new found work area you have reclaimed using shop junk and your collection of pill bottles.