Wine Barrel Lazy Susan and Cheese Boards

Have you ever gotten this call from a colleague a few days before Christmas: “Hey, Matt…this is Dennis…I heard you had a table saw—can I come over and make a few cuts?”

Two days later we had three cool projects and I got to share my shop and my (limited) expertise with a colleague…

The projects were to take used wine barrel tops and turn them into serving boards and a lazy susan.

Dennis (a fellow teacher and a real good person) wanted to make these real fast…but once we got into it of course its a lot more of a project when you get into the details—-although living in Napa I had never worked with used barrels…one of my goals is to make some furniture down the road but have never had the chance…

When he brought them over Dennis thought we could just cut through the wood and sand them down…the problem is the individual boards were connected with metal pins or double pointed nails…so of course we could not just run them through…we needed to separate the boards so we could re-glue them—-in their current state there were too many gaps to be used as a serving tray/cheese board…

In the end and after two days of work i think we had three pretty cool gifts—-I wish that we had more time…they could have been better…One disagreement we had (LOL) was that dennis wanted to keep them a bit rougher—-original form…and i wanted to sand them smoother…you can see this on the curved or board with a handle…—-the logo is the only place we did not sand smooth…the rest we sanded nicely…the other boards we did a light sanding…

Dennis left me with some extra staves and some extra wine barrel tops…which is why i just remembered to post this—-since I finally used one of the barrel tops for some unique wood in the pen trade…

The round project does not show the lazy susan apparatus that we screwed in the back…it was super easy to use and the wine barrel top made a perfect size…

That is definitely what I will do with one of the tops he left me with…

Matt

-- Matt, Napa, CA...fun is beautiful...just trying to have some fun...