This is a project I made for my sister from a photo she sent me. She saw it somewhere asked if I could make one. Of course I could for her!!
The frame is made from 1/2" rebar with angled pieces of rebar welded all around it. The angled pieces have 5/16" steel rods soldered into holes in the end of them. The 5/16" rod will then go through the center of corks I pressed into the bottles. I made a piece for the end out of Osage Orange. It is threaded in the center and screws onto the bottom of the center rebar which I turned down and threaded. Osage orange holds up pretty well outdoors but I coated it with epoxy for added protection.
I picked up 20 ( one full one) of these bottles yesterday at the Boathouse Vineyards in Leelenau, Mi. They have screw on caps when they sell the wine but I had to press corks in them with a hole in them for the 5/16" rods. Pressing a cork in with a hole in it totally destroys the cork so I made this internally thread piece of 5/16" rod and put that in the cork first before installing it. Then I was able to pull that rod out afterwards so I had a hole in which to mount the bottle. I have some shots below. Cheers, Jim
Cheers, Jim ........................ Variety is the spice of life...............Learn something new every day
Looks good Jim, I would be worried about it swinging in the wind. A well-constructed tree.
We have one in the garden; the bottles just slip onto the copper branches. I had to drive pipe into to the ground about 18" to install it. The 4" tangs on the bottom just were not enough.
I haven’t seen any signs of breakage on the ones at the neighbor’s house, and we get 60mph winds here in the spring. But his yard is fairly well protected from three directions thanks to trees, the house, and the “berm path,” which is a levee along the edge of the arroyo here (we’ve seen water in the arroyo just once since moving here, and it was the result of an inch of rain in an hour in October 2019).
Thanks you all for the nice comments. This is going to be hug from a tree by a chain and there will be nothing near it. It could swing out at 45 degrees and hit nothing. The bottles are on real tight too and when the corks get wet -even tighter. I have made a number of bottle flowers , mounting the bottles the same way and only had one come loose that was hanging on the bottom, A little E 6000 fixed it for good. No breakage.
Cheers, Jim
Cheers, Jim ........................ Variety is the spice of life...............Learn something new every day
