Let’s see how to make a wooden hand mirror. A task that at first I thought would be simple, but in the end needed a lot of steps to be finished. Here we are going to see how to make the wooden mirror frame, and in a future post I will try to polish a metal sheet to serve as a mirror.
I’m going to start by drawing the inner hole shape of the hand mirror and the handle. To draw the interior hole the best I could find was a belt sander belt. I put it on the 1 cm thick oak wood and draw the shape. And with a slat I draw more or less the shape of the handle.
Now I have to drill a hole with the drill. And now I can put the blade of the jigsaw to cut the inner hole of this wooden frame for the hand mirror.
Cutting with the jigsaw right on the line is tricky, so it is better to cut a few millimeters off the line and finish adjusting the exact shape of the hole with the sanding drum of the drill press.
Now I draw the outer shape of this wooden mirror and cut it with the jigsaw. Again keeping the blade a few millimeters from the cut line.
Note that if you are using a glass mirror you will want to leave a wider outer edge to avoid drilling the mirror when making the screw holes.
And I retouch and adjust the outer shape with the homemade disc sander and the drill sanding drum.
And before I forget, a rabbet needs to be routed on the inside of the frame hole. The best way to do this is to use the router table. And with the rabbet already made, it is necessary to check that the mirror will fit in the frame. In this case I will try to make a mirror by polishing a sheet metal, so I set the router bit to a height slightly higher than the thickness of the metallic sheet.
I can already draw the back of this wooden hand mirror. And just as before, I cut the shape with the jigsaw keeping the cutting blade a few millimeters from the edge of the line.
So, to adjust the shape of this part I am going to use a trim router bit with bearing to make a perfect copy of the front piece. I put the front piece of the wooden mirror, with the metal sheet, on top of the back, and I drill pilot holes so that I can join both pieces with decorative screws. I just have to make sure the drill bit won’t come out the other side. And it may also be necessary to widen the holes at the top to allow the screws to fit smoothly.
I just need the finishing touches to finish this wooden mirror. I am going to use a roundover router bit with bearing to round the edges of the wood frame. I also have to touch up the handle and finally I sand well all the wood of this hand mirror.
Finally I can varnish and assemble the pieces of this wooden frame to finish the hand mirror.
See also how I tried to polish the metal sheet for this hand mirror. Something that didn’t go as well as I had hoped 🙁 :
