Today on the Rockstar DIY stage is Brad! Brad is our first guy rocker to join the tour. He has an amazing creative brain and woodworking skills that will blow your mind. Brad has created this State Pride Magnetic Key Holder for you to build. And if you look close you’ll notice that it’s magic because there are no hooks in sight!
I told you he’d blow your mind. Brad normally rocks on his home turf at FixThisBuildThat.
You may have seen his amazing Party Station recently. This cart comes complete with a spot for your beverage cooler, storage drawers and speakers. See, I told you he rocks!
I hear the whine of the scroll saw now, so let’s give it up for Brad!
Hey, everyone! Like Brittany said, I’m Brad from FixThisBuildThat.com. My site is all about helping you with Woodworking & DIY Projects, Posts and Plans. And today I’m happy to be here on Pretty Handy Girl to show you how to make this fun State Pride Magnetic Key Holder. If you want to check out some of my other work you can see one of my most popular posts, the Adjustable Shoe Storage Bench.
I’ve always been in love with state signs and cut outs and I’ve made several large state signs. But I wanted do something smaller, and I also wanted to solve the issue of always looking for my keys. In my house finding a set of keys is a little like playing Marco Polo…except the keys don’t usually call back!
I had a really nice piece of figured walnut I wanted to use for something and that’s when it hit me. State sign + really nice wood + key holder = Awesome project. I’d seen some similar things around the interwebs so I knew the perfect project to solve my issue.
Here is what you’ll need for this project.
Materials:
- Approx 6″x6″ piece of 3/4″ wood (size varies by state)
- 12 neodynium super magnets – 0.47″ dia x 0.10″ thick
- Quick set epoxy
- Picture hanger hardware
- Spray adhesive
- Jigsaw or scroll saw
- Drill
- 1/2″ forstner drill bit (brad point or twist will work too)
- Sandpaper
- Stain/Finish of your choice
Instructions:
Here is the piece of wood I started with. It is approximately 6″ by 6″ rough cut walnut that was just under 7/8″ thick. I had to do some serious sanding to this thing, but knew there was beautiful grain underneath to uncover.
After a ton of sanding I got it down smooth to 3/4″ and here is what was underneath it…gorgeous! (I added a little mineral spirits to show off the grain)
If you have a special small piece of wood this is the perfect project for it. If you don’t have any nice hardwoods laying around this could be your perfect chance to try working with walnut, cherry, maple, mahogany or something else. Go to your local woodworking or lumber store and see if they have any small offcuts. If you want to stay with wood from the home center then a 1×6 or 1×8 will do just fine as well.
I decided to use Ohio as my state for this project. My wife and I lived there for 13 years, but really it’s just because it fit way better on my board than Tennessee would have 🙂 To get the state shape onto my wood I used a printed outline of Ohio. I found a site called Coloring Castle that has state outlines for kids to color. The outlines are softened a little so it was just what I wanted.
I copied the image of Ohio and pasted it into Powerpoint and sized the image until it fit my board the way I wanted it. You can use a host of different programs or photo editors to do this.
After I printed out the Ohio shape I decided to take a little creative license with the shape of the state. I wanted straight sides and didn’t want to mess with some of the more intricate tight curves like the peninsula up top. So I just drew in new lines where I wanted to cut. Empower yourself and redraw state lines as you see fit!
Next you need to temporarily glue the outline to the wood. Cut the shape out leaving about 1/4″ around the edges. Then spray a light coating of spray adhesive onto the backside of the cutout. Don’t go crazy here or you won’t be able to get the paper off without scraping or sanding. Practicing with some scrap wood and paper will give you a feel for how sticky your specific spray adhesive is. Read more