Monthly Bill Organizer

[Kevin Baker]

Anyone seen plans to make one of these?


208070

[Duncan Crawford]

Kevin,

I've not seen plans, but here's a quick and dirty hack (using BoxIt) at something that might work, or at least give you some ideas. The material is 5 mm plywood (0.194 inches in the Lowes maple/birch stuff I can find here in MD). Note that I've not yet built this, so running it first on some box cardboard might be good.

For an item like this I'd normally fire up my trusty table saw and router table rather than the laser, but if you're making more than one... :-)

duncan

[Glen Monaghan]

For some reason, while I can open the organizer file in X4, the corrected file gives me an error about unsupported format...

-Glen

[Duncan Crawford]

Glen,

Apologies-- I was running late this afternoon and posted the file in X5. Here it is in X4. Thanks for the catch :-)

duncan

[Allen Isakson]

could you possibly post it in 11 so everyone can look at it.

Thanks

[Duncan Crawford]

Allen,

Here you go, I hope-- design was done in X5 and I've no way to test in ver 11 directly. I also updated some notes in the file, after running it (except the drawers) this morning using box cardboard. Everything fits, but the top compartment would need a few aesthetics tweaks once somebody decides on what sort of interior divider might be appropriate.

On edit, 22 Sept-- long job running so for grins added an internal divider for the top and trimmed sides down for better appearance. Also added necessary parts via BoxIt to allow someone to do the same sort of thing using 0.075 acrylic, e.g. stuff from any big box store that's intended for cheap window replacements. I do believe I'm "done" with this project unless I go make a real one out of wood.

duncan

[Chris DeGerolamo]

I dunno what you all are talking about....my bill organizer is just above my shredder. And my bill organizer has no bottom.

[Glen Monaghan]

Okay, being as how I'm a pooh bear of very little brain, you made my little brain work with this "innards" version.

It took a minute before I finally realized that you trimmed the sides (plus front/back) and renamed them "carcass", but you also left in the original front, back and sides (still labelled as such) just to confuse me.

And then I was briefly muddled by the wooden divider assembly with what I initially thought were three partition pieces. But, I soon realized that the right-hand piece was slightly different than the two vertically mirror-imaged pieces, and those two pieces must be the top and bottom (well, front and back?) of the divider... hmmm, no, the slots in the bottom and "sides" go the wrong way for that... Ah, those top and bottom pieces are the sides, while the left and right (slotted) pieces are the front and back!

So that Partition part, of which you say to make up to 13, is indeed a sample of the 13 possible partitions... but wait, aren't there 14 slots in the divider front/back/bottom? Ok, must mean make "up to 13 MORE" or just "up to 14 (total)". I guess this is a "two week bill organizer" rather than the original's "31 day organizer"... Wait... Had there in fact been 13 slots/partitions, it would have made 14 bins for a two week period, but 14 slots/partitions create 15 bins, so it's a 15-day organizer?

Never mind, doesn't really matter, I don't get bills every day anyway... I see off to the left there are a bunch of notched divider parts for a plastic version of the divider, but where are the notches or slots, and what is that funny dashed rectangle?

Hmm, are the dashes in that last part included as samples of the slots to be copied and pasted in the front, back and sides to receive the partitions' notch tabs? I think so: copy either the top or bottom row of dashes/slot rectangles and paste/position as many as desired into the bottom, then copy either the left or right column, rotate 90 degrees, and paste same number into front and back as were pasted into the bottom.

Umm, and I guess reshape the top edges of the front, back, sides, and partitions to remove the superfluous crennelations and shape as desired (e.g., straight front and back, with sides and partitions curved upward like the original photo showed or downward curve like the wooden divider example provided here.)

Must be time for me to go find my honey jar... ;^P

-Glen

[Duncan Crawford]

Glen,

Yup, a puzzle... left the original and just modified the shell off to the left as an example of what might look better re porportions. The divider has four sides plus bottom-- just "fold them up" from the position shown. Make as many dividers as make sense -- I kinda like the other post re bottomless organizer right over the shredder :-) I also left it shorter than the full length of the compartment-- just weld on an extension to expand the possible number of bills :-)The plastic parts are those needed to replicate the wooden divider, but I didn't do any trimming, layout of slots, etc. That's all standard Corel stuff, whereas generating the basic parts needs BoxIt or equivalent and not everyone has purchased same. So, the rest of the plastic is the proverbial "exercise for the student" my old physics profs used to love.

duncan