Wine Glass Shelf

I saw one of these at an antique store and since my wife and I needed a stemware storage location, I thought it would do good to fill the need. Also, it was an excuse to use my new Delta 12 1/2 inch planer.

The shelf is made of scrap pallet wood that I had. After several runs through the planer, it turned out to be some very usable wood of about 1/2” thickness. I didn’t do any fancy joinery for it, though after I finished I almost wish I had just to get the extra practice.

The strip it is hanging off of is some 1×6 that I had laying around and just doctored up and hung up with some anchor bolts. We had plenty of room to add a hook on each end to hang some cast iron skillets that were otherwise in the way. I liked the look of Shaker designs, so I incorporated this into the shelf project simply because I wanted to make it easy to hang and relatively sturdy on the wall (I break enough stemware myself and don’t need help).

I finished both pieces with Minwax gel stain. The shelf got a under coat of a light stain (Early American, I think) and both the shelf and the wall strip got a coat of walnut. I like the contrast between the lighter shelf and the darker strip. To make sure it kept well, I also gave the shelf a coat of tung oil (spelling?). The wife loves it.

This was my first attempt at building something without a written plan or a jaunt through Sketchup. It was kind of fun not have the picture to put the pieces together by. However, the few mistakes that I did make along the way would not have happened if I had put some sort of written plan on paper before I started working. But, if it’s scrap wood anyway, who cares if you make a mistake or two?

~DB

-- He said wood...http://hickbyassociation.blogspot.com/