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RWW 181 Make Your Own Hardwood Switch Plates

21 comments
10 years ago
Miscellaneous Projects     Videos

My remodel is done but I’m adding some creature comforts and some aesthetic touches just because. I find little projects like these switch plates to be a lot of fun but also great opportunities to try new hand tool techniques. For the uninitiated hand tool user, they are great first steps. Let’s face it, hand planing a tiny board is much easier than a bigger one and it make the whole hand milling process much more approachable.

With these switch plates you can use up some scrap or go crazy and add some carving or whatever to put your own stamp on them. In the video I demonstrate the harder version with the bigger “mortise”, the light switch version took half the time because of the 30 seconds it took to chop out the recess. All of my outlets in the shop are GFI so I don’t have any switch plates with two plug recesses but I imagine those would be even easier since the starter hole you drill could be matched very close to the final shape and a carving gouge could be used to nibble back to the line much like I did with the square-ish recesses around the GFI outlets.

Enjoy this little diversion and go spruce up you own boring outlets.

It’s been brought to my attention that wooden switch plates may be an electrical code violation and possibly a fire hazard unless backed up with a fire resistant plate. I’m looking into this but like all things found on the internet, move forward at your own risk and do your research. If I come up with a definitive answer and/or solution I will post an amendment here.

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Jonathan Szczepanski

Nicely done sir. Fun simple projects like this sure are a nice break from large complex pieces. Have you thought about gluing on a 1/16″ strip around the back edge instead of hollowing it out? I think I would have broke that middle piece in between the outlet holes trying to hollow it out.

    Shannon

    That would work, though it would be 10x longer than hollowing it out. With the grain running vertically I think you will find it really tough to break that center piece. This is where the Travisher or a convex spokeshave is best since you can more accurately control the depth over just using a gouge.

Chet Kloss

A definite must for my shop. Now that you’ve done a few, do you see any benefit from doing the hollowing out first?

    Shannon

    Absolutely not. If you hollow first then you won’t have the material supported underneath while chiseling it out. At best you will get a lot of vibration and it will make chopping difficult. At worst, you will break the piece as it flexes.

      Andy G.

      When you were applying the roundover to the show face edge, I was thinking that I would probably have done that before hollowing out the back. You can see the flex in that plate as your off hand applied pressure to hold the plate in place. Excellent post, but I have to it on the QT. If my wife sees it, I’m dead ’cause we’ve got about 75 plates in our house.

Rob Horton

Fun stuff. Did you buy new black screws to hold the face plate on? Could you have torched off the paint and dipped the original screws in gun blue?

    Shannon

    Yes, but I was at the big box store anyway and the $1.50 for the box of screws was too good to pass up. Plus they are longer which I will need for a few of the other outlets that aren’t flush with the boxes. Also I’m out of gun blue and the screws are cheaper. 😉

Tim Charles

I really like how these turned out. It’s a good project to do just to get something done and feel accomplishment. These are on my to do list now.

Bill Rainford

Nice work. Our current house had some commercially made wood switch plates that I recently changed out (I put in the decora (aka rectangle) style plugs with built in child safety stuff — way better than the old plastic plugs they had back in the ’80s that were hard to get out even for grown ups)
Anyways on the backs of plates I removed they all had some thin sheet metal to ground them and be a potential spark arrester — something you may want to add especially if working with older switches etc.

Paul Roebuck

Please tell me you used something between the workpiece and the workbench to chop out the waste.