All of the used toothbrushes in the house make their way to the workshop where I use them for all sorts of odd jobs from cleaning, to gluing, to finishing. The one above, made by Mable, was handed down to me from my environmentally conscious daughter, Emma, last week. Solid bamboo with a slim tapered cone for a handle and a painted end for identification. Now this is a workshop toothbrush.

Of course, it can be used for all sorts of brushing tasks in the shop, like any toothbrush, but that bamboo handle can have all sorts of additional uses. It tapers from just over 3/4″ (19mm) at the base to just under 1/4″ (5.5mm) below the handle. The handle portion, excluding the head, is 6 5/16″ (16cm) long. In the photo above, I’ve wrapped some fine sandpaper around it to sharpen the inner curve of a hook knife. Honing compound can also be rubbed onto the handle.

Above, I’m polishing the inner curve of a small gouge, but this is all just scratching the surface. The bamboo is incredibly strong. With some divergent thinking, you may have a set of legs for a quirky box or a handle for a small carving tool. At the very least, you’ll have a toothbrush that won’t still exist in a landfill or in the ocean a few centuries from now.

You may have noticed on the Mable site, they have a natural bamboo travel case for your toothbrush, but instead you could make one of these skinny shrink tubes. I wrote a post about making these a while ago, including a special groove cutter made from a chunk of broomstick and a couple screws. I received an email over the weekend asking for clarification about the shape of the cutters, so I made the little sketch below and added it to the original post.

And just to be clear, I have no economic connection to Mable or broomsticks.