wine rack job coming up

[Chris Mire]

i have a customer who asked me to build a wine rack in the void below her staircase. i have built the wine racks before that are made using a front and back "lattice" type piece. she wants hers to be made of solid stock, about 10" deep. so i need to take 10" wide boards and turn the on a 45 and somehow make a grid with them. in my head i have come up with a few options for the joints but i wanted to throw this out there to see if anyone has done this before or has seen it done.

so anybody got any ideas on how to join all those boards together?


thanks
chris

[Dan Oelke]

You can see the way that David Marks did this at http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/ww_shelves_cabinets/article/0,2049,DIY_14444_2275205,00.html

He basically just ran one set of boards at a 45 and then short ones in between those.

[George Summers]

Don't know if it is the right term or not but you could 'egg-crate' the boards. You know, cut the boards half way through and slip them together. You just have to be very precise when cutting the slots.

George

[Al Killian]

I second George's idea of egg crate design. It will make less board to mess with and easeir at assembly.
Al

[Tony Falotico]

Don't know if it is the right term or not but you could 'egg-crate' the boards. You know, cut the boards half way through and slip them together. You just have to be very precise when cutting the slots.

George

I would make a jig with a very precise slot cut in it and an indexing peg, place the jig and pattern cut the first slot with a router and Flush Trim / Pattern Cutting Bit, move the jig indexing the first slot and cut the next slot, move the jig indexing the second slot and cut the next slot, so on and so forth.

Perfect slots precisely spaced.........

[Chris Mire]

Dan, That was one of my first ideas, but i hadn't come up with a good way to join the boards. i often forget about biscuits. thanks

George, Al, and Tony....also good ideas, i think Tony's idea of the jig with the router cuts would definitely be the way to go if i decide on this method.

i have plenty of time to plan this project. thanks again for the input.

chris

[Jamie Buxton]

The egg crate approach has some hazard in solid lumber -- at least when the crate is set up to store one bottle per pocket. Each board is something like a comb with real wide teeth. With 10" wide stock, each tooth is 5" by 3 1/2" or so. (750 ml wine bottles are about 3" to 3 1/4" diameter.) The short grain direction is the 3 1/2" direction. If that tooth gets hit sideways, it may break off. When might it get hit sideways? One possibility is when you're assembling the egg crate. If you're sliding parts together --- especially if the slots fit tightly --- things can jam. Another possibility is when the homeowner pulls a bottle out, and pulls it kinda sideways.

[Chris Mire]

Jamie,
good point. one thing i forgot to specify though, each square of the grid will be at least 10"x10". the homeowner wants to go with a larger hole size that she would use to stack multiple bottles in. I agree with her because it will be a rather large wine rack. roughly 7' tall, 7' wide minus the angle of the stairs above. so the smaller hole sizes might look a little busy. hope that makes sense.

anyway, so the teeth would actually be larger, not sure this would help make it much stronger. i may end up having to make a few prototypes out of some cheaper lumber to test the jointery methods i'm faced with.

thanks again for everyone's input.

[Ben Grunow]

Sounds like a job for plywood with a nice thick edgeband. The edge is all you will see when the racks are full anyway and the ply will ensure that you don't have to go back later. I installed a rack system that was purchased online (wouldn't recommend the company but we made it work) and they were plywood. We gave them the sizes and they made them to fit and shipped knocked down. I would make them in plywood given the choice in the future. See picture of wine cellar here (1500 bottles with didicated temp/humidity control, marvin windows, alabaster chandelier and barrel vaulted ceiling, all trim in mahogany41521- all it takes is money!)

[Gail O'Rourke]

Hi I have done a couple wine racking systems. I had to do a lot of glue ups, and in order to do many at the time, I would use pocket screws to tighten the joint on the ends that would be waste and then clamps in the middle, this allowed me to pull the joint tight and glue up more at one time.

I made large cubes to hold the wine, they hold 16 bottles I think, I made a cube with butt joints and glue and then secured 4 cubes into one larger box, on the diagonal. There are pictures on my site. I can't find it to upload here, let me know if you want more info.

Ply is also a reasonable way to go with this type of project.