Seed Vial Tray

Some years ago, I built a quick little tray to hold vials of seeds in the basement refrigerator.  The seeds last a lot longer in the fridge, and the vials keep them from getting dried out or damp. Te vials are specimen containers I once found real cheap online!  I'm good at looking at things functionally, rather than just by intended purpose, LOL!

But the original had holes that were both tight and a bit too close together.  So I decided to make a new one.

I made the new one with holes 1/4" farther apart.  That may not seem like much, but it made a lot of difference.  And I knew because I drilled a couple of holes in scrap wood to check. 

I decided this one should have looser holes.  But since the vials wouldn't stand upright in loose holes, I made both a top and bottom.  To make sure the holes on each matched, and to save time, I screwed the top and bottom together, drew a grid on the top, and drilled right through both pieces at once.

I LOVE my drill-press!

The pencil line on the board in back allowed me to line that up the grid lines on the pieces without having to "eyeball them each time.  The drill bit you see there is called a "forstner bit".  They drill large holes with flat bottoms.   My set goes from 1/4" to 2 1/2".  The thing you see stuck in the drill where the bit goes is the  "chuck key" that tightens the bit .  I keep it clamped lightly in there so I can't lose it.

Here is the fully drilled top and bottom.  The solid piece of plywood behind them is the real bottom.  That piece is so the vials don't fall through the drilled holes.

I spread wood glue between the holes of the drilled bottom and the solid piece.  You can never have too many clamps.  If you need a gift for a woodworker, clamps are usually a safe bet!  

All those drilled holes created a lot of sawdust shavings.  I dump that stuff in the woods.  I don't compost it because of all the chemicals in plywood.  The trees don't mind a bit...

Then I needed to support the top 1 1/2" over the bottom.  I had cut sides from leftover plywood.  But I was going crazy because the kept coming out slightly tapered!  I kept checking the fence and the blade and they were perfectly square.  But I had actually cut them first, and didn't remember that, before that, I had changed the miter gauge a degree off "0" for another project and neglected to set it back to ).  Argh!  But I fixed that and the sides came out perfect. 

I glued the sides to the bottom upside down deliberately so that the glue squeeze-out didn't attach the pieces to the assembly stand.  Don't laugh.  Better woodworkers than me have done that...

I used scrap wood and shims to raise the bottom to even with the sides, then glued and clamped it.

Then I turned the whole thing over and repeated that to attach the top.  There was a slight difference in height in the center of the sides.  It made no functional difference, and no one would ever see it but me.  But I would, so I used a block plane to shave it down and a finishing sander to smooth it.  Putting it on my utterly flat table saw showed not the slightest wobbly in any direction.

Here is the finished try next to the old one.  A nice difference.

You can't really see it, but all of the vials are numbered.  I keep a list of the vial numbers and contents.  In fact, for safety, I keep 3.  One is with the seed tray, one is with the box of index cards listing the planting dates, planting depths, and growing notes, and one is in a permanent notebook.  Losing track of which seeds are in which vials would be a DISASTER!!!

And I got it done just in time.  Planting indoors starts next week...

So now I'm ready to build wood frames for the 2 bathroom mirrors. 

And I need to buy a trailer-load of compost for the garden beds.  My trash barrel of starter soil from last year is all used up.  Fortunately, the weather is going to be decent Saturday.