A New Wine Rack, Part 2

Some good progress on the wine rack. After figuring out the basic layout and the setup to cut those curved bottle holders in Part 1, it was time to get down to business on the real thing. The first step was to create what is called a "story stick" - it basically tells the story of how to make something complicated. It's well worth the time, especially if you think you'll do it again someday. I used stable 1/2" plywood to make the stick, and scribed the location of each bottle.

Another great reason to make that story stick is that it helps you understand where you've gotten it wrong. See, I marked the centerline of each bottle location, but you can't really align to that, because the fence is cut out at that spot. Instead, I made precise marks at the "next" bottle location on the fence, and aligned to that instead. That worked great, until the last one. There was no "next!" I had to make an additional mark on both the workpiece and fence at the half-way point to align that last cut:

Do you see? If I had been able to see this through in my head, I would have made EVERY mark at the halfway point, and had only one alignment mark on the fence. Next time... and I must say this scheme worked perfectly this time.

Another thing to figure out: a better way to clamp the workpieces, which wanted to squirm badly under the torque of being cut on the edge that way. I found a pair of old toggle clamps and repurposed them for this, although I did have to still clamp one end of the workpiece to keep it from sliding sideways:

Then began the factory work - tons of doing the same thing over and over, to prepare a lot of similar pieces. It started by jointing (flattening one side) and planing (flattening the other) of each board. My jointer is the only thing in the shop without decent dust collection. That's on the list someday, because it makes a mess!

Finally, I had enough boards jointed, planed and cut to length and width to make 10 pairs:

Cutting seven bottle locations out of each board took some time...

Then, I needed to sand them, a yucky job, and a perfect opportunity for a new tool! I mean, what's the use of a big project without the opportunity to buy a new tool? This is an oscillating spindle sander, which rotates and moves up and down at the same time - the perfect tool to sand all those curved cuts.

I used the router table to round over the edges top and bottom, both for looks and for comfort should your hand contact one of  the rails while getting the wine out:

And finally, 10 pairs all done!

Next step is to make each front and back rail into a subassembly, and stain and finish them before continuing with the case. I mocked up several options, and decided I like this one best, with two rails laid flat, and installed below the center line of the rail. What do you think?

Continue on to Wine Rack, Part 3