I was recently asked by a young friend if I would be able to make her a perspex screen easel. This friend is an artist and she has a toddler who wants to paint at the same time as her mum, so the perspex screen easel would let her paint with water based paint that could then be washed off after use. The design inspirations my friend had were all based around a vertically mounted piece of clear perspex.
I discussed the idea with my wife (who is a Pre-School Teacher) with two results:
- The suggestion that it would also be good to have the screen at an angle (more like a traditional easel)
- Could I make one for ourselves, so that our grandchildren could use it.
The second request actually made things easier and cheaper, because my material use would be more efficient. But the first request meant I had to think through my design to make it so the perspex screen could pivot, thus enabling it to be vertical or at an angle.
After playing around in my mind with a number of ideas for the pivot, I discovered ‘flush overlay hinges’ – these are meant to sit top and bottom of a door, but I used them slung underneath a cross piece on the easel.
Before I finalised my design, I also had to source clear perspex, with the best price being on eBay for 2 sheeets of 90×60 cm by 3mm thick. This was the most expensive part of the design, at $33 per sheet.
My desing then consisted of framing the perspex in 30mm square pine mouldings, routed out to accept the perspex and screwed together with no glue. The idea of ‘no glue’ was so that if the perspex happened to get damaged, it would be relatively easy to replace.
The easel has been constructed with a large platform base for sitting paints on, or for smaller children can actually be for standing on.
The framed perspex is held vertical with 2 9mm diameter dowels going through the easel into the frame, and which can be moved to an outboard position and act as supports holding the perspex at an angle.
The main frame for the easel was made from 18mm thick structural pine plywood. In hindsight, I would probably use a higher quality plywood in future, because the surface of the plywood was quite rough, even after a fair bit of sanding.
It was all finished with 3 coats of water based, sating finish varnish.
