DIY Geometric Headphone stand

This stand is made out of 3/4″ scrap plywood and 1/2″ copper pipe fittings.

Step- 1 – Make the base

Gathered few ¾” scrap plywood pieces and decided to make the base out of it. You can also make this out of any hardwood you have on hand, so literally anything works! To add substantial thickness to the base, I glued two pieces together and left it to dry overnight. On the following day, unclamped the wood and cut the edges off to make it into a 5-inch blank square.

How to cut octagon:

Marking: First mark the center of the square. To do this, draw two diagonals from the corner of the square. Using that center point, draw a circle touching all the sides of the square. All eight sides of an octagon are tangents of the largest circle that can be drawn inside a square. Grab a combination square and draw 45 degree tangents on all four sides. Thats your octagon.

Cutting the octagon:

Next, we are going to cut this octagon with a miter saw. First, remove the fence that came with your miter saw. Set your miter angle to 45 degree and fix a wood fence. Once the wood fence is secure, make a 45 deg cut on it. With this fence cut reference, place the square blank and align the 45 degree angle on the octagon. Using it as guide, secure the stop block. Now, do the first cut. next, rotate the piece and do the remaining three cuts on the drawn tangents. You will have an octagon now.

Looking at it, I decided to play around a little bit to make the shape more interesting. I set my miter saw blade’s bevel to 30 degree and cut the edge of octagon furthermore. This does not cut all the way through. It just slices the top edge off. My target was to cut the segment between the drawn circle and octagon edge.

Caution: As this base piece is small and we are only eyeballing the measurements, please be very careful with your hands during these cuts.

Once all the above cuts are made..

Step – 2 : Sand and Stain

Smoothen the edges of the base with a 120 grit sandpaper and then with a 240 grit sandpaper. Clean it with a tack cloth to remove all the dust and then stain the base in any shade of your choice. I used two coats of Ebony stain.

Step – 3 : Build the copper pipe holder

Gather the above shown materials to build the upper half of the stand. Start off by cleaning the pipe and fittings with alcohol and steel wool. If there are any text prints on the tube, then it can be easily removed by scrubbing with steel wool. Next cut 1/2″ copper pipe with a pipe cutter into a 9 inch length and 2-1/2″ length pieces.

Before fixing the pipes its good to do a rough fit in order to see if you like the way it looks and how it fits your headphone. I tried three different combinations during the rough fit and decided to go with the 90 degree elbow joint. Basically, you have to connect the 90 deg elbow on top end of the 9 inch and then connect 2-1/2″ pipe to the elbow and next the end cap. The whole piece is screwed into the base with a 1/2″ adapter.

Step – 4 : Assembly

In order to fix the copper pipe to the base, we have to drill a 3/4 inch hole to insert the 1/2″ adapter. Use a spade bit and drill just deep enough to house the threaded portion of the adaptor. Use some gorilla glue and screw the adaptor into the base. To connect the fittings, dampen one side of the tube and apply gorilla glue on the other side. The gorilla glue tends to expand and fills the gap. So just a little glue will go a long way.

Finally, scrub the copper pipe and fitting with steel wool. This will bring out the shine and polished finish to the metal. Now, all that is remaining to do is a little paint touch up and add felt bumpers underneath.

I also made a laptop stand with another similar geometric base. I just notched off wood in the center about an inch wide and added felt lining. This holds my laptop very well and also matches with the headphone stand!