Wooden Enclosure for a Digital Thermometer.

This I how I made a wood enclosure for a cheap digital thermometer I bought of eBay for £2.60 all in. These thermometers are designed to be inserted into panels etc. so they are kind of ugly if not enclosed, seeing as I wanted to use it on the hot plate for the Stirling engine I decided to make a simple wooden box that would not look out of place on the hot plate.

I had a board cut from a wind fallen tree limb, it was cut green and left to season and as it was only about 6-8 mm thick it seasoned perfectly in just about 6 months.

I cut the board down to a strip approx 25mm wide and squared it up on the linisher

I used CA glue and activator to glue the side walls together, a word of caution about CA and activator, as I was gluing the first joint I received a text and as I reached for my phone some glue and activator mixture ran down onto my left hand unnoticed and as I was reading the message the reaction kicked in and the thermal reaction both burned me leaving a small blister and stuck the piece of wood to my hand quite securely. So if you are going for the loads of glue method its a good idea to pay attention and ignore distractions until after the reaction takes place.

Having removed the wood from my finger I finished gluing the 4 walls of the box into a frame, the bottom of the frame was sanded flat on the linisher and I also sanded the piece of board being used as the base of the box flat.

The frame was glued to the base and then trimmed up on the band saw before the box was squared up and sanded smooth on a 240 grit belt on the linisher. The corners where also rounded. I then used a sheet of 240 grit wrapped around a small sanding block to chamfer the edges of the box.

I then gave the box a few coats of French polish before using the cotton mop to buff up the finish and add a coat of bees wax.

A hole was drilled in the side of the box the same size as the probe so it could be fed through, the box is deeper than the body of the thermometer this allows me to store the excess cable inside the box rather than cut the cable down and the thermometer can be used on other project if needed.

This project took about an hour from start to finish (including unsticking my hand) and the only tools used where a band-saw, linisher, drill, sandpaper and polish

Thanks for looking, hope you liked this idea.