Do you have a number of mouthpieces you’d like to display? While I pretty much stick to one mouthpiece, I periodically like to go back and try other mouthpieces that I’ve collected over the years. Here’s a cool looking display you make relatively quickly. I’ll step you through the steps.

The Mouthpiece Display Stand

I started with a nice piece of solid maple, about 12 by 18 by 1 inches, leftover from a shelving project. I had in mind what I roughly wanted, so I also picked up a 3 foot long piece of 1/2 inch dowel. My friend Lon has a wonderful woodcutting studio, so I started by cutting the maple down to roughly 8 by 18.

We then routed the four sides of the maple, giving it a nice professional look.

Next I used the drill press and cut 1/2 inch holes, about 1/2 an inch deep. I picked a spacing of 2 inches (front to rear), and 3 inches (side to side). This would allow me to mount three rows of six dowels, or 18 total.

Next I cut the dowels. I cut six for the back row (sized for tenor mouthpieces), six slightly shorter (for alto), and six even shorter (for soprano).

The next step is to use a grinder to nicely finish the ends of the dowels, taking off the sharp edge.

Now it’s time to oil the maple for a nice finished look. I decided not to oil the dowels, since my mouthpieces were going to be on them. I used Teak Oil for the maple base, and it came out very nice.

Once the maple base was oiled, I mounted the dowels, long ones in the back and short ones in the front. I used just a touch of wood glue to make sure they wouldn’t wobble or come out.

All in all, a very easy project, and I know I’ll get a lot of use out of the stand!

See the photos below for more details of each step.

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