Wood for Wine Rack Construction

Use seomthing they don't have to ship across the country. Perhaps cedar or SYP?

scott

I used poplar and shellac to get the result below. 'May- or may not be to your liking (I realize you are building something rather different) but it's worth a look:

It's a sad but true commentary that building it yourself is not cheaper than buying premade. Those companies get the wood for *pennies*/board ft where we pay *dollars*/board ft. If you want the joy of crafting it yourself, you will pay for that pleasure.

Good luck,

Vic

Humidity (well and price of course) is the enemy. Any hard wood that's locally available will do, really. Maple would we really nice. Cedar might be too strongly scented -- although I don't think so personally -- for the cellar as strong odours are to be avoided. Beech, exotic (renewable of course), whatever.

Really comes down to what's available. What are the options?

-E

Looks nice Tim. There really is no stain on that rack? It's a very nice color for the normally bland poplar, and I'm surprised you could get that color with just shellac and wax. If the color is all from the shellac, what color shellac did you use, and how many coats?

Thanks, Mark

The humidity shouldn't be an issue as long as it's more or less constant--it's changes in humidity that are bad. On the other hand, if the floor is damp you might want to consider elevating the cabinet base a bit--Ikea sells plastic cabinet supports that hold up something like a half a ton a set for 6 bucks IIRC, complete with skirt clips.

As for choice of wood, if redwood is too steep that lets out most of the tropicals. Locally cypress and white oak are listing for around $3.75/board foot. Either of those should hold up fine.

Have you considered alternatives to wood? English farmers use clay land drains to drain their fields. I have discovered a much better ancillary use as wine racks. They are each about 12 inches in length and just bigger than a standard bottle in internal dimensions. Stacked they make very good wine racks and, especially if you buy ones which have failed in firing or are "seconds" for some other reason, are really very cheap. The insulate well, have no risk of rotting and will easily see out the best Port or claret in terms of life! I don't know if you can find them in the USA but, if so, they are worth considering though you would, of course, lose the ?pleasure? of making them yourself.

Tim Hartley

Got money? Purpleheart!

I think I may have oiled it prior to the shellac - I cannot recall - and that may account for the color. I used Orange shellac, probably

I second that. That is an EXCELLENT finish on poplar. It really doesn't look like poplar.

Well, if one can afford to stock a wine rack of that size, they've likely got all the money they need for purpleheart.

I like the wood pile in the first photo.

So that works out to about $6.50 a board foot. What do you figure to pay? Most "better" woods are $4.50 and up. If you want cheap, you are limited to MDF. Check out Downes & Reader in Stoughton MA or Connecticut Hardwood Group in Enfield CT for prices. There is a sawmill in MA that has pine boards for as little as $100 a bd. ft.

You can do what I did. I have my son's old entertainment center and just lay the cardboard boxes on their side in it. Right now I've got about 200 bottles stored that way. Not pretty, but certainly cost effective.

Most of us do woodworking for the fun of it. You can buy most things cheaper (but not better).

Thanks Larry (and others). It's been a while since I did that project and I cannot recall exactly what I used. It may well be shellac-only. I am certain that I used that :) plus a homebrew polish made of beeswax and turpentine. I'm not sure I would do the latter again - for all the aggravation involved, I'll probably just use store-bought wax on future projects.

If you live near a sawmill, you might be able to buy nearly any wood they process at a much lower price if the wood has flaws. If you can select what you buy, you might be able to pick out some lumber that would have a flaw near the end of the board that can be sawed off, etc. Of course I doubt if there are any redwood sawmills in New England :-).

The best choice I can think of is teak. Garden furniture made from it can last a very long time without rot in even very moist climates. England is full of very old teak garden furniture on private estates and in parks. The teak slowly turns gray as it ages outdoors and often is not treated. There is a less expensive wood than teak now being used for outdoor garden furniture. I do not recall the name - it may be from South America.

No redwood, but eastern white cedar, white oak, etc are available.

While teak is durable in outdoor furniture, it's not the only wood for which that is the case. Ipe, osage orange (while most Americans think of this as more or less a shrub, in the tropics it grows to a good size), jarrah (if you can find it), purpleheart, and a few others are exceptionally decay resistant, but they'd be overkill for this application unless one was using them for the appearance.

In practice, anything from the first column of table 3-10 of the FPL "Wood Handbook" (a standard engineering reference, and it's free besides ) or that comes up on the list when you select "decay reistance high" in woodpicker should be more than adequate in a basement. That includes most of the more popular US cabinet woods--white oak, black cherry, and black walnut are all reasonably decay resistant.

The trouble is that the OP was objecting to paying something like $7 a board foot for redwood, and any of the tropicals will cost more than that, and the more popular cabinet woods aren't a whole lot cheaper.

Personally for me if price was no object I'd go with black mesquite--it's one of the most stable woods around, has good decay resistance, has good mechanical properties, and it looks very nice.

The just ignore the humidity issue. Basement humidity is not nasty enough to rot just about any wood with a little finish to seal the grain. Wood movement is not really an issue with a skelletal wine rack design.

As others have said, contain the cost by finding a locally available (harvested), common species. In the NE USA, that would be Oak/Maple, Cherry or Walnut if you want to move up-market. Poplar would not be my choice as It's a bit on the soft side.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the look and you would have to up-size the components a bit to accomodate all that weight. IMO, good plan; avoid pine.

Where are you?

_Steve