Meowcellany: License Plate Media Holder

Okay, so I made this thing for my new kindle and cell phone:

Out of this stuff and some screws:

I spent 99 cents on a set of small hinges.  That's it.

I wanted to share how I did this, because I put great value in having a connection to my possessions like this.  As a society, we are so dependent on buying things, I think we've lost touch with the ideal of making our own unique and very personal possessions, things that tell a story of our life.

My very first car had the plate number CAP 9706 and when they issued the new plates I was distraught that my number had changed to DKD 7434.  I'd had the old number memorized, and was convinced I'd never remember the new one.  I was also quite upset that when pronounced, it phonetically came out to basically sound like "dicked 7,434."  What an atrocity, I had been wronged by the DMV in a very tangible way.  Clearly.   It may have even been an intentional encroachment on their part.  Don't you agree?

Here we have these plates.  My history, regaining a place in my daily life.

I don't care that I could sell these.  I'm not up for commission.  Just for the record, I want to say that.  I'd rather see others bringing their clutter to a better daily use and thinking creatively about their belongings.  I'd much rather see that.

So what do we have?  2 license plates, a 1x2x3 or so peice of lumber, and some foam from shipping (I order apple products as part of work, these boxes are packing from the Apple Superdrives which packaging I brought home instead of sending to a landfill.)

You'll also need: a drill, saw, various screws, 2 hinges, and some combination similar to a gated hook, a chain, tiny nuts/bolts/washers, and a picture mounting clasp.

And here's how I came up with the idea, because if the shoe fits....

So I drilled several holes in plate #1, then measured, cut and mounted the wood, leaving something like an extra 1/8 to 1/4 inch give space between the devices and the slats.  I'm lazy and have a large collection of tools, so I used a circular saw (I had 7 types of saws to choose from).  You can use whatever saw you have, thin wood like this isn't much of a problem.  Most normal drill bits will put holes in the license plate metal no problem.  Drilling pilot holes into the slats is a darn good idea with wood this thin, otherwise you're very likely to split it with the screws.  It's also recommendable to take a rasp to all the rough edges of the wood.  Or sandpaper.  Whatever you got.  The rasp made very quick work of it.

An afterthought - save the plate you most prefer for the next step.  The plate used above doesn't show as much in use as the one that becomes the door flap below.  I'm still "dicked 7,434."  The DMV still wins, over a decade later.  Oops, this time it's my fault.
So then I started scraping foam off of cardboard with a pancake lifter from my kitchen.  It worked.

I cut the foam to dry fit in all the places.  And put hinges on the bottom of the casing.  I didn't end up using those clamps.  Thought I'd need them, but really I didn't use them at all.  They're still sitting on the table looking lonely right now.  I also got the glue (goop brand) out of the freezer at this point, could have stood to do this sooner.  Goop keeps best in the freezer, it's completely crazy like that.

Then I got the front door to go on.  I used sharpie marker to see where the hinge screw holes should go.  I needed a bigger drill bit so that the little nuts would fit in the license plate holes I drilled.  Washer, bolt, washer, nut through each hole.  That holds it on great.  The shorter and tinier the bolts the better.  You can also see that I attached a picture backing hook in a similar way to the side that opens.  This is the eyelet that the hook goes through to hold it closed.

So then I put glue on the wooden parts and smooshed foam into place with books.  My bookshelf has lots of stuff about gardening and herbs and natural medicine.  Can you tell?

And the next day I placed the foam to line up with the indentations, held it in with painters tape to test the alignment, glued it down, and put books on again.  You can see the painters tape there.  And my growing mess.

So you can see that I measure the openings in the wood to gain access to charge ports and power buttons, here is the microUSB port on my cell phone showing.  Turns out that between this gap and the metal, the sound of the ringer and the vibration setting carry BETTER than the phone would just on it's own.  It's loud!

Here's a view of it closed before I put the carry chain on.    You can see the screws I used to affix the back license plate to the wood slats, and you can see the hook that holds it shut.  This is the gated type of hook that has a spring to hold it shut, otherwise it's just a normal gate hook.  The spring is fancy and a little clumbsy to operate, so if you have a better idea, have at, and comment for me to let me know what you do with this.

The chain is held on by wire strung through the original holes at the top of the CAP 9706 plate.  Wish I would have thought of that before it was all constructed, but it wasn't too hard to just slip the wire in there after all is done.

Now...
Please go make something cool out of stuff you already have!  Because you're awesome like that.
And comment to tell me what you made.  Maybe even send me pictures?  Because you rock.