What, you might ask, does an abacus have to do with a craft room? Nothing, really. If any ciphering is going on in there, it’s on a calculator. But I digress. The abacus idea came from a basket of antique spools. I knew I wanted to display them more prominently in my new craft space, but how? String them, letting them dangle from someplace? Naw. Some sort of peg board display dealy-bob? Nope. It finally came to me last weekend. An abacus!
MWT started by ripping down two scrap pieces of 3/4″ oak to 2″ x 17″. Next he drilled six 1/4″ holes evenly spaced on one side of each of the scrap pieces. We dry-fitted six 36″ oak dowels, purchased at the big box store for about 50 cents a piece. MWT sanded the individual pieces up and then, to set the wood off on my blue walls, I decided to apply a pickling gel to them.
When the pieces were dry, I slipped the spools on the dowels and fitted them into the side pieces.
If you don’t have a hundred antique wooden spools laying around, this could work with large beads or whatever else you can find with a hole in the center. If you made the side pieces wider, you could even string old CDs for a funky ancient technology meets modern technology art piece.
Tomorrow’s post: the completed room…finally.
