While I was tinkering around in my wood shop the other day I got a great idea for making a super simple and cool looking phone stand. I had so much fun making the first one that I made a second, and a third, and I'm heading out again today to make a fourth. Anyways If you've ever wanted a modern wooden phone stand, read on!

Step 1: Choose Your Wood

You can use any kind of wood you want. So far, I've made phone stands from pine (I rescued a nice roughed up pine board from Habitat this summer and it has been great for this project) and oak. For my fourth stand, I'm going to use maple.

Step 2: Chop Chop Chop

The size of your phone stand mostly depends on the size of your phone and how big you want it to be. The sizes for mine range from about 5.5 X 3.25 in to 6.25 X 3 in.

Step 3: Cut the Groove

I used a table saw to cut the groove that the phone sits in. I adjusted the blade to cut a slit about halfway through the wood. I think the deeper the grove the better because it will hold your phone in better, but I'm still experimenting.

To make the groove wider, I just kept running my board through the saw adjusting the fence as I went. About three to four cuts did the job. The width the works best for my phone is just under half and inch.

Step 4: Angle the Grove

Cutting a slight angle into tho groove allows the phone to sit at a bit of angle (which is nice). If I knew the degree of the angle, I would tell you but I really just adjusted it until it looked about right. You don't want too much of angle though!

Step 5: Smooth Out the Groove

Since I ended up breaking out some of the uncut pieces from the groove it was pretty uneven. I found a piece wood that was just the width of the groove and wrapped sandpaper around it. It worked really well to smooth things out.

Step 6: Finishing Up!

After I sanded everything down I sealed it with linseed oil.

Step 7: Optional Designs

For one of the stands, I taped off the edge and painted it white. When it was dry, I finished it up with linseed oil. I did not put the oil on the paint since I wasn't sure how it would react and I didn't want it to discolor it. Instead I sealed the white part with a clear acrylic finish.

You could just seal the whole thing with some kind of clear finish but I liked the color the pine took when it was oiled.