Bent Lamination Headphone Stand

Practice some mass-assembly techniques to create this elegant stand.

- Collin Knoff

You know how it goes, you spot a need that you can fill with a woodworking project. In this case, I needed a place to put my headphones, as well as a tray for my drawing pens that are supposed be stored horizontally. Should be easy enough to build, right? Then again, if I'm taking the time, I could build more than one. Something like this would make a great gift after all. If I'm building more than one, I should probably make some jigs, make things easier on myself...

1-2 This was my first time really working the Shaper Origin into my project workflow. It's an impressive and intuitive machine, especially for precision template work.

And without warning you've seemingly gone full If You Give a Mouse a Cookie on what was once a rather simple project. But with a project like this one, the effort to make one headphone stand or 30 is nearly the same.

3 Transfer the shape of the curve with a scriber. Make sure to get it nice and tight in the corner.

Modern-Day Templates

Woodworkers have been making templates throughout all of history, but modern technology has made it easier than ever. The huge strides CNC woodworking have made in the past decade means that more people than ever have access to these useful machines. For this project, I took a spin with the Shaper Origin, which uses some novel tech to recreate the CNC experience with a much higher level of portability and flexibility.

4 Glue the rough cut forms to the perfect template form.

I created the shape I wanted on my computer, uploaded it to the Shaper, then cut it out. In order to achieve the thickness I would need for shaping the form, I had to laminate three pieces of MDF. With one perfect shape cut already, I quickly roughed out the other two on the band saw and used a pattern bit to cut everything to size.