wine tilts - wine balancers

Now thats interesting, as I too tried to make wine balancers and mine wouldn’t stand very well either. I shall have a go at changing my angles, thanks for the advice.

-- Colin, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. "Every craftsman was once an amateur"

Thanks for the information climber.

-- Grumpy - "Always look on the bright side of life"- Monty Python

My prototype, from MDF using RAH’s specs worked well. I was going to make a bunch out of hardwoods for Christmas presents, but other things got in the way. Maybe I should play around some more. Did you vary the hole position at all?

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Tom,

I did not intentionally play with the hole position. I started with a piece of 1×4 pine scrap from the big box. I cut the first test just likes RAH’s. I could get it to stand but it wasn’t as stable as I wanted. So I cut next test piece longer and tried different angles. So I guess I did play with the hole position a little bit, in that as I trimmed each new angle the hole got closer to the bottom. I did a google search on wine balancers and someone else recommended the 7 1/8 dimension. I tried that and by then I’d already figured out the 36 degrees was working for me. So I cut a prototype the dimensions above and that worked pretty well. I made the final pieces to that size and they all turned out pretty stable. Given that you can play with the neck position of the bottle in the balancer they seem to be reasonably forgiving.

Changing the angle does change the look, the lower angle stands a bit more vertical.

I did mine at 40 degrees. Works well with a full bottle, but it fades fast.

These are funny. I have a bunch of scrap and should make some for fun. Thanks for posting!

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I just took a closer look at RAHs and the ones I made. It looks like RAH puts his bottles in much closer to the end of the bottle and I shoved my bottles farther in up the neck. That probably explains why his works at a steeper angle than these. Different neck position gets the center of mass at a different distance horizontal from the balancer and should allow for a different angle. Looks like it’s pretty flexible.

they would make nice box lids… then remove the lid to display the bottle… not sure what you’d do with the rest of the box though.

1” thick wood?

-- ~ Debbie, Canada (http://www.execulink.com/~yohan)

Thanks for the post…..............Santa Clause is coming to town!

-- Only the Shadow knows....................

Very nice looking pieces!

-- - Michael [..for God's glory." 2 Cor. 10:31] Over 300000 species of trees, yet we take the credit for their beauty...

I am going to experiment with one of these. I am going to try and use scrap pieces of wine barrel staves. It will be a bit of a challange as the barrel stave is curved slightly. I think the stave should add a litte more uniqueness to the project.

Thanks for the information on dimensions and such.

Todd @ winecountrywhimsy

-- Todd @ winecountrywhimsy Sonoma County, CA

1st time i’ve seen those.. very cool, thanks for the details

-- It's not a sickness, i can stop buying tools anytime.

Very nice and a great gift for friends and family.

-- "The worst day fishing is better than the best day working!"