An incremental improvement in safety and efficiency when drilling angled holes.

As I ramped up production on the hair ties, I began to think about improving my process. The wood cubes are small pieces, difficult to control firmly between fingers in the absence of leverage.

Once it’s rough-cut from the lumber stock, it’s too small (e.g. 0.75" x 0.75" x 0.75" for the mini size) to run through the table or miter saws to make finer size adjustments – by hand, anyway.

The Problem

Likewise, it’s hard to fix the cube at a 45-degree angle under the drill press, to bore a hole between two adjacent faces. Here were some of my issues:

Holding the cube by vise would be safest, but:
- too slow and unwieldy to load and unload.
Holding the cube by hand is quicker, but:
- fingers get dangerously close to rotating bit,
- it’s hard to keep the eyeball-estimated angle consistent between holes,
- and it’s hard to keep the cube stable against the weight of the bit.

The Jig

I had some leftover redwood stock already beveled to 45-degrees from a previous french cleat project. By chopping off a few inches and gluing a short lip at the base of the slope, we get a simple jig.

The slope and the lip support the cube, resulting in a compromise that makes it slightly safer and easier to drill the holes, without making it awkward to load and unload.

The Outcome

I’ll still need a more serious jig to do more precise holes at scale, but this was all right for now. I was able to produce another small batch of hair ties in oak this weekend, with a less overhead.