Dividends in the form of caps

After collecting over 17,000 caps from friends and strangers around the country, I have quite a nice bottlecap collection - an unforseen dividend from the mural project.  I wanted to display the collection, but cruising the internet only provided unattractive (coffee tables) or permanent  (glue and epoxy) options.  I wanted something attractive, with the ability to move my caps around.  I came up with the following design - easy to do and not too expensive.  I had all the materials in the shed; the only purchase was the magnets (about $30 for 400).

The caps are placed on magnets set on top of wooden disks.  The extra height provides some dimension to the display and gives good finger grip when moving caps.  The 389 disks were cut from wooden dowels.


The back of the display is a piece of 1/2" plywood.  I measured out 1 1/4" squares in an offset grid so that the magnets (and caps) would be evenly spaced.  After making the grid, I glued 1/2" square trim around the edges, nothing fancy, but it gives a nice border to the display board.



Glueing the disks was pretty straightforward.  I used wood glue since each disk wasn't going to hold a lot of weight. I wasn't too worried about centering perfectly because the caps could be moved around on the magnets - tweaking would be easy to do by hand.






Glueing the magnets was a bit trickier.  When designing the board, I forgot one of the most important aspects of magnets, their magnetic properties towards one another.  Adjacent magnets would repel one another and slip off the disks before the glue (E-6000) set.  So, the magnets had to be glued every other row - it took about 3 days to finish this step.



Here I am placing caps on the finished display board.  Quite nice, if I say so myself.  The finished board has room for about 25 more caps, but since everything is painted black (see the top photo), you don't really notice the empty spots.  I can move caps around to my hearts content and everything is at eye level.  If the caps get dirty, I can pop them off and wash them.  The only downside to the board is that it is quite a bit heavier than one would expect.  I wouldn't suggest using thinner plywood, however (it warps easily).