Mini Christmas Tree

Prior to this year’s Thanksgiving visit, my three-year old grandson expressed an interest in a tour of Grappy’s (that’s me) workshop. Instead of just showing him random tool usage, I wanted to come up with a simple and quick (with some prefabricated parts) Christmas-themed project we could work on together. Ideally, it would produce something he could touch and that would look interesting to him (and remain interesting as he ages). I also wanted to let him (help me) operate my drill press and do some hand sanding and assembly.

I’ve seen these Christmas tree projects on the web, and I thought a miniature one would be a good choice. This one is about 13” tall and 9” wide. It’s just a bunch of thin strips that rotate around a dowel plus a base and star. The branches are maple, and the base and star are walnut. I finished the walnut parts with Arm-R-Seal and left the maple parts unfinished. The base is removable so the tree can be stored flat.

The fun thing about these trees is that the branches can be arranged in a variety of ways. I’m partial to the spiral, but the criss-cross isn’t bad. A random arrangement is another option.

Young kids don’t always have the longest attention spans, so I wanted to build this project in an efficient way. To determine the approach, get an idea about the time required, and prefabricate the complicated parts (the star and base), I built a test version ahead of time. Below, I’ll describe the work I did. At the end, I’ll talk about how the joint work went.

I posted the SketchUp Model in 3D Warehouse, or you can view it directly below. As usual for my models, it's best to navigate the model via Scenes/My Scenes.

Design
The tree’s rotating branches are thin strips (3/4” wide, 1/4” thick), each with a 3/8” hole in center. The branches taper from 9” wide at the bottom to 3/4" wide at the top. (The top surface of the topmost branch is a 3/4" square.)

The trunk is a 3/8” diameter dowel with a collar (a short dowel segment with a through hole) on each end to capture the strips. The base collar is 3/4” diameter, and the top collar is 1 /2” diameter. The top is smaller because it fits into a 3/4” thick star.

The base collar sits in a counterbore in the base, and the top collar fits into a counterbore in the star topper.

Branches (Thin Strips)
I cut the 39 branches, each a 1/4” thick strip, from a 33” x 3” x 3/4" maple board. To minimize the amount of drilling required, I drilled the holes for the trunk (dowel) first. That way, we’d need to drill only five holes, not 39. Then I cut the board into sections so I wouldn’t have to cut 33” long strips.

For the strips, I thought about making a nice thin strip jig or using my MicroJig GRR-Ripper. In the end, I just made a temporary push block with a hook at the back. Both the block and the hook have a slot for the blade. The push block let me cut the strips on the right side of the blade without having to move the fence or adjust the GRR-Ripper, and it covered and applied downward pressure to the strip being cut.

As you can see, I cut the strips in four sections. (I combined the two shortest sections and cut them to length afterward.) It would have been easier to cut the strips in two sections. That would have reduced the number of rip cuts in half.

To cut the angled sides of the tree, I slipped the strips over a dowel to align them and used my taper sled to trim both sides.

With the sides cut, all I had to do was sand off the burn marks on the strips. I did that by hand because of how small most of the strips are.

Trunk (Dowels and Collars)
The tree’s trunk is a 3/8” poplar dowel with a short collar on each end. To help center the holes in the collars, I made a simple drilling jig. It’s just a piece of scrap with 1/2" and 3/4" diameter counterbores centered across the width.  To use it, I used a Forstner bit to position the jig, switched to a 3/8” bit, and placed the collar segment in the counterbore. The results weren’t perfect, but good enough for this project.

[02.01 Trunk - Finished collars.jpg]

Base
I didn’t have a wide enough walnut board for the base, so I glued two pieces together.

After drilling the counterbores for the trunk’s base collar, I used a router and Jasper circle-cutting jig to cut out the base disks.

Then I chamfered the tops of the disks on the router table.

Star Topper
The star topper was by far the most time-consuming part of the project. I considered building some sort of rotating jig for my crosscut sled to cut the star sides, but I decided to use hand tools instead.

I started by cutting blocks for the stars and drilling the counterbores for the trunk’s top collars. I knew I was going to mess up a few times, so I cut extra blocks.

I printed a full-sized template and taped it to the block so I wouldn’t have to draw cut lines.

I tried using a backsaw (one that came with a cheap plastic miter boxes 30 years ago), but I didn’t get good results. I switched to a coping saw. That didn’t work great either, but I kept at it and eventually managed to keep the blade outside the cut lines and perpendicular to the star’s face. (Flipping that clamp/vise on its side so it held the block vertically and let me saw straight down helped a lot.) Then I was able to use a flat file and sandpaper to finish one star. The second went quicker.

How would you cut this star, and what type of saw would you recommend for cutting small parts like this? I know a coping saw isn’t the answer, but it’s all I had.

With the stars cut, I did a dry fit to see how the tree looked. At first, my wife and I thought the star looked a bit off. Maybe it was too big.

I wasn’t looking forward to cutting smaller stars, so I thought about buying some from a craft store. Those tend to be thin, though, so I’d have to find a different way to attach them. I prototyped a triangular block at the top of the tree. I could cut a slot in it to hold a smaller, thinner star.

In the end, we decided that the problem was that the original top collar was too tall, so I shortened it, and that made the original star look a little better.

Final Assembly
I finished the base and star with Arm-R-Seal to warm up the walnut. The strips looked fine, so I left them unfinished.

I knew I wanted the base to detach so the tree would store flat. I decided to use a threaded insert in the bottom of the trunk and a countersunk screw up through the bottom of the base.

I found #10-24 brass inserts and screws at Home Depot. I haven’t installed many of these, but I read that it’s easy to break them by using a flat bladed screwdriver in the slot at the top of the insert. I also read that using a nut and screw to install the insert helps reduce that risk, so that’s what I did. It worked fine.

With that done, all that remained was adding the strips and attaching the top collar and star. I considered using a small screw (something like a #2) to attach the top collar, but I didn’t have any on hand, so I just glued it on. There shouldn’t be any need to disassemble the tree anyway.

The last step (not shown here) was adding some thin cork pads to the bottom of the base.

The Main Event
Anybody who has read this far is probably wondering how it went with my grandson over Thanksgiving.

It started out well. He liked the project, which we had not previously revealed to him, and he liked wearing the pint-sized PPE (safety glasses and ear projection) we bought for him. He got a kick out of pulling the drill press handles as we drilled the holes in the branch (strip) stock. We were working well as a team.

When we moved to the saw, though, the inevitable “creative differences” reared their head. Drunk with power after his first taste of using a real power tool, he started to challenge my status as lord and master of the shop. He decreed that the best vantage point for watching me cut the branch strips was bodied right up against the outfeed side of the saw. When the adults in the room explained that that was a no-go, he pivoted to Plan B: bodied up to the saw’s side. Marginally better, but still no dice. At that point, he still strongly argued his case, but everyone else decided it was time for him to go inside for a brief change of scenery.

I wound up cutting and tapering the strips myself, and he came back for the important dry fitting of the branches and trunk. Then I put a big smile back on his face when I let him vacuum all the loose sawdust on the saw. On that high note, we quit for the day.

The next day, sanding elves (i.e., me) surreptitiously sanded the branch strips and installed the threaded insert at the base of the trunk, and we were ready for the next work session. That went well. He did some light hand sanding of the branches and started sliding branch strips onto the trunk dowl. After a handful, he decided that he had learned all he needed and delegated the remaining branches to me. He had higher-priority work: stuffing scraps into the bag his safety glasses shipped in. (In all fairness, the bag was made of bubble wrap, so it was no ordinary bag.) I glued on the star topper. He helped screw the base to the trunk and added the cork pads to the base, and we were done.

All in all, I think he had fun working on the project. He and tree are back home now, and the tree has a home on his nightstand.