Butterfly Wine Rack

A tip 'o the hat to our buddy Jerry from "over there" for making me want to build one of these. A great way to put some nice bits o' board to use.

I've made a few since this project from 3 years back, they sell quickly and hold eight standard wine bottles, enough for an afternoon of pottzPorch activities.

This was an adventure! (sorry for the white balance issues with the photos!)

I recently spotted one of these racks in the "aisle of interior furnishings" at a "discount" store. This immediately reminded me of Jerry's rack that had been on my to-do list. I had to take a closer look to see the deep-down secrets of Far East joinery used by the craftsmen in some exclusive corner of China.

This rack certainly would "rack". About a 2" shift left/right as I pushed on the side. It was built to be flat-packaged and assembled at home, Basically it was "E" shaped sections designed to en-mesh together. The funny thing was a sticker that claimed "Genuine simulated wood grain". Basically a decal on particle board. My thoughts of learning secrets soon vanished, only to be replaced with "what not to do"

Total junk! I had to make it better, faster, stronger than before but at less then $6 mil.

I figured my creation had to hold up to being danced on by a rotund drinker at a wine party. It's just how I roll when building stuff, I want survival pieces of mine left after a party.

Doing the build the way I did added significant grief and effort, but that builds character right?

The thought was to make five sections that could interleave for strength. Build it out of hickory just to add some punishment on top of all I will be enduring.

Each bottle hole is 3-5/8" square. The material is 5/8" thick and I didn't add the nice end grain hiding features that Jerry used.

Here are two mating sections that illustrate the cross linked layers I planned on using. This allows alternate layers to bridge the butt joints of their neighbors :

 

To keep each "leaf" looking consistent, I sectioned them to preserve the grain match. Dadoes were then cut along with sectioning the alternating boards to length (do you see where I'm going with this?)

 

Edges were splined for alignment during glue-up. 
This is what each of the three center sub-assemblies looks like:

 

The idea is I could turn each section 90 degrees so the dados would alternate for ultimate strength.
Stack/glue the sections and add the outer strips (alternating), Bam! simple right?

I'm still not finished with this one 8^) A few more weeks of pain left to atone for my insanity.

This one ended up being a prototype, so I started over with another design, only simpler.

This time cherry:

 

And only two center sections 8^)

This is what you see for this projects main photo. I actually finished this one and it went a lot better than the hickory 8^)

Still too complicated!

Finally I decided to make a third unit with a single, simple center section. To strengthen the dados, I'd still add the alternating outer strips (all grain matched by cutting from the wide board first).

 

This is some figured white oak, still more than strong enough for the rotund dancer scenario (and a whole lot easier).

Details include walnut splines:

 

All edges have a 1/8" radius, the Amana bit with the 1/8" pilot bearing allows me to get fully into the corners

 

The outer leafs are secured with screws, capped with square ebony plugs (as seen on the cherry version)

 

Most of my stuff goes through design iterations, but they usually are minor changes. I bit the big one with silly notions during the evolution of these! At least my final go worked out really well and I feel it is a good design.