I hate to admit this, but my jewelry bench is an absolute mess. As part of my ongoing effort to fix this, I noticed that my emery sticks (which are just different grades of sandpaper glued to a piece of wood, a cheap and useful tool at the bench) were laying about, tossed in coffee cups, etc. So I thought of a quick modification to give these a more permanent, easy-to-find-and-put-away home on the bench. To help organize other things like files, punches, pliers, etc., I use several hardwood blocks with varying-sized holes in them, so I thought that cutting down the sticks to provide a sort of handle, and then sticking the “handle” in a hardwood block would be a reasonable solution (although since then, I’ve come up with a possibly better way to make the blocks, more on that later.)

I started by standardizing the size and thickness, which happened to be the same size of some scrap wood that I had left over from a recent deck project. Then on my table saw (everyone should have a table saw… though this could be done with a pocketknife) I cut down the edges by about a third, leaving a roughly 1/4″ square stem. This I sanded to an octagon shape using a bench belt grinder, but this could also be done with a fine file or even another emery stick.

Step two was just to find a hardwood block and drill some holes. I have some oak what was formerly a headboard that I liberated from a trash pile. I cut a small block, sanded off the sharp edges, drilled the holes and gave it a coat of linseed oil just for fun, and the job was finished.

My bench is still a wreck, but I can find my emery sticks now.

My Version Two of this project would probably be easier… instead of a block with holes, I’ll cut a block with slots on the table saw, just a little wider than the thickness of the emery sticks, and dispense with the little handles altogether. I always seem to think of a better way to do something when I’m halfway through a project!