Wine Rack Project
Darrell LaRue
Bill said t'other day "Astonishingly little stuff gets posted on WC"
I sorta went Hmmm, he's right, I don't post much of my work here.
Here is a Covid-shoptime project from the Museum of The Transmundane (that's the sign on my shop door, ha ha)
We started brewing mead a couple of years ago, and a batch makes 30 bottles. Plus the wine we made, and the wine we bought, and now we were running out of room for it. This, despite the fact that we were drinking more than we used to. Weekend events used to involve driving somewhere, so no drinking. Events during Covid were virtual, so we could have a glass or two, and we did, we do, we are! But still, we did need more wine storage.
I decided that this would be a hand-tools only project. I picked out two nice cherry planks. Then started in on them with an off-brand Hunt Mfg Co transitional plane. I got them flat enough for me.
Then it was on to the Simonds crosscut and the Disston D8 rip saw. I was using my hewing bench and a couple of holdfasts to pin down the stock. Lots of ripping. My arm got tired, so I started switching hands. I think I used my off hand for 20% of the cutting. I am quite pleased at this, I didn't think it would work so well. There's like 35 feet of ripping in there. So tired.
After jointing the reference edge I used a combination plane rather than a marking gauge to set the width of the stock. This leaves a nice rebate to plane to, making it REALLY obvious where I am aiming at.
I laid out and cut a lot of lap joints. Plenty of work with the small saw and paring chisels. It all went together pretty well. The next step was to cut the M&T joints to fit the front and rear frames together. Lots of bashing away on a mortise chisel. I even got to use my lock-mortise chisel.
For the semi-circular cutouts for the bottle necks I tried various things to use an auger bit or forstner bit but those were dismal failures. I resorted to a much simpler method: coping saw and file. Sometimes the simple ways are better.
Then it was time to glue it up! I used fish glue because it has a one-hour open time. No rushing about, no aggravation, no bashing on stuck parts with too large of a hammer. It went quite well, and I had a clamp left over. That was nice.
After 3 coats of shellac and a few days in the sun it began to darken to that rich colour we love with cherry.
Here it is in the kitchen, sitting under the table I made for it. That's another story.
