Why Wood Wine Racks? Why Knot?

Yeah, why would I hand make wood wine racks? It’s not an easy answer… I don’t know… I don’t have a better idea?

I like to work and do stuff with my hands. Woodworking is a cool way to spend time. There are endless opportunities to learn about all kinds of things. A wise man told me that the thing that made it all tick was mystery.

I try to gather up piles of what is other wise wasted scrap material to make something. In this case, I had enough alder to make a taller piece, so I included a drawer and extra cornice molding. I have a few little design motifs that I use somehow on every piece I make. The moulding only works for me on taller pieces and I haven’t included it for a while. The mystery is, what works… what doesn’t? What could I make from this junk?

I do shop drawings and attach cut sheets so I can keep track of parts as I machine material for multiple pieces. Because of the modular nature of my basic design, I can and do change things as pieces get built. It starts with a little voice that asks what would happen if I…??

Some explanation why I make these things could be a kind of fascination with “stuff” and storing your “valuable stuff”. I saw comedian George Carlin way back in the ’60s and he did his famous routine about Stuff. I have always liked jewel boxes, display cases, cabinets that housed collections of stuff.

The real reason is that I read in the paper this week that the Oregon Wine Industry has grown from $500 million five years ago and now contributing $2.6 billion to the economy. The Mystery is how can I get noticed and find a slice of that?

Touring Oregon Wine Country?

After visiting all the great wineries and fantastic locations… YOU NEED ONE OF THESE… to hold the liquid gold!!

KTW#0911 -- 4 x 5 with a drawer -- African Mahogany and Alder

The summer has finally hit and we are in the 80s. The last couple years we had winter from Thanksgiving until July. Oregonians have coined a term; Junuary, for how dismal the weather was in June. I bet the grapes are loving it now.

Our winters are not that bad really, they just seem to last forever. It gets old, but the summers and fall here are worth it. We get a little bit of snow in the Willamette Valley if we are lucky, but not like the East… that is just crazy. Hey, if we want to see snow, all we have to do look east and Mt. Hood is glistening in the sun. They had great snow pack and were skiing and snow boarding through June. Drive 45 minutes and your in it.

Oh yeah, check out the triple lamination in the top. It’s an idea I stole from my cyber-friend in Austraila, Lazy Larry. The top came out pretty nice. This Mahogany has such a rich color and grain that my poor photography is not doing it justice. The water proof Poly finish I use really make it pop.

To the west is the Oregon Caost. One could be surfing out at Pacific City in the morning and in a few hours be up at Timberline on Mt. Hood looking at the Glacier! If you work it right, you could grab a bottle of wine from a tasting room along the way and cap the day off with a good meal.

My signature drawer pull. I was given four big slabs of this curly Maple from the Seattle area. It is dry as a bone and incredibly beautiful. I’m going to make an electric guitar or bass out of one of the slabs.

 

A long time ago, Oregonians decided that they wanted to leave the coast free of development, so the beaches and land is mostly like it always was… stunning. As is the rest of Oregon… the Cascade Mountain range through the Central part of the state and the arid high Desert in the east. Big place with not many people.

Portland is a gem of a town. It has taken a ribbing from the Portlandia spoof  on YouTube… Portland, the place where twenty-somethings go to retire. A Bay Area musician friend told me… “Portland is like a minature San Francisco only artsier.” Great music and arts scene, and as a people we are into food, beer and wine in a big way.

If you are lucky enough to be touring our Oregon wine country, I think you will find that you have only scratched the surface. You could spend months here… not see it all… and then it starts all over next year and is different.

Check back, I have more to show you soon.

 

 

 

 

Wine Racks Hand Made In Portland Oregon, USA

KTW #0711, #0811

Are you serious about your stash of wine?  GOT RACKS??

KTW #0711, #0811

A pair of six bottle wide racks that I cut out at the same time. Don’t they look naked without any wine bottles? That is where you aficionados come in…

KTW#0711 six bottles wide, five racks tall

… fill these racks with wine! Wouldn’t they look better with an eclectic mix of glass colors and labels? Ha,ha, ha!

KTW#0711 (6 x 5)

It would be too easy for me to draw a bunch of different rack designs, then go to my lumber supplier, buy a bunch of material and make them up. The first problem with that is that the material would cost me money. This is not a tool that I have.

KTW#0811 (6 x 6)

If you have followed this blog at all you know that I’m a scrappy, dumpster diving, recycling, reclaiming, up-cycling, woodworking kind of guy. Most of this material was salvaged from my neighbors who build custom uhpolstered furniture. They can’t really use small rips and off cuts from their manufacturing process, so they had been burning them or just putting it into the dumpster.

They buy ASC certified cabinet grade Alder. I really like the different shades of golden brown and tan that the water proof polyurethane finish I use imparts. For the features strip laminations, I use scraps of Oregon Black Walnut from logs I have dried and used for bigger pieces. I can’t bare to toss anything out, and I spend way too much of my time looking through stacks of scraps, to try and visualize what I might be able to make out of them.

I would have made an identicle pair but there weren’t any pieces long enough, so they are as tall as the pieces I could glean for the legs. It is so much harder to design and build pieces from found material.

I try to use the contrasting Black Walnut laminations to be part of the graphic image and design. The real reason is that I don’t get any really thick pieces and the woodworker in me thinks it is better to draw attention to the joinery than try to hide it.

If I had lots of big boards, so that I could make parts with all the color and grain patterns being similar, I could successfully deguise the joints. Still, I sort through stacks of my scraps to find complimentary color and grain patterns. But it’s organic you know? The boards were cut from trees growing out in the mountains. If you want it perfect, make it out of steel or plastic.

KTW #0711 & #0811