Wine Rack (with SU pics)

[Andrew Nemeth]

I am posting some jpgs of a sketchup model of a wine rack that I am considering building for my better half. I am looking for critiques of both the piece itself and of the use of sketchup. I am just learning sketchup after using other solid modeling programs while I was in college (a while back). I have not detailed the jointery for the project in the drawing as I have not made it that far with SU. Although the piece has an arts and crafts theme I am considering using Cherry to give it a slightly more contemporary feel. There will be visible jointery (through motise and tenon front rails and a single pegs for each bottle support running front to back). The top will be solid wood and will most likely have some variation of breadboard ends.

[Stephen Massman]

I like the model. I would consider adding a drawer though. That would allow you to keep your bottle opener of choice and other stuff close at hand.

[John Schreiber]

That's very nice looking and the SU work looks good too. How will you connect the rails which hold the bottle to the horizontal shelves? That could be a tough job.

If you'd like to post the *.skp, we could take a look at that and make suggestions which might make your workflow easier.

[Andrew Nemeth]

John,

I have not made a final decision about the attachment of the bottle rails. I may use a shallow dado in the long rails to accept the full width of the bottle rails or I may use a sliding dovetail (either way I will have to re-size the bottle rails to be the same height as the cross rails and I would set a dowel through the front of the long rails to lock the bottle rails in place). Alternately, I could mortise and tenon every one (I just bought a new floor standing mortiser that I'm itching to use ).


Attached is the *.skp file. There is no jointery in this model as I have not figured out SU well enough to do that efficiently.

[Lee Schierer]

Make sure the horizontal rails are strong enough to hold the combined weight of all the bottles that will fit on them. You wouldn't want them to sag or worse still ...break.

[AL Ursich]

Well..... now that you mentioned it.... Here is my version.

Put the Quilt rack in as it shows using a 6 x 6 sublimated tile inlaid in the side of the Quilt rack.

Started with the Quilt Rack design and at a show a guy asked for a points up rack to store CD's. Then I was going to a Winery Show and wondered what to make for a Winery.... DUH.... A Wine Rack..... Can be made in any number of bottles wide.

The round top version is next years project. With a slip in top shelf.

Made on my Sears Compucarve Machine. It even cuts the square holes and shape.


AL

[James Biddle]

Andrew,
I think the spacing you have between bottles is too close. It will work for cab style bottles, but pinot style bottles are up to 3-1/4" wide. Same problem I have in the racks I bought several years ago. I'd rather give up a few bottles capacity than have half of the bottle backwards. You can gain some room by moving the outer bottle supports closer to the legs. Also, if you have the room, I'd design the length to be able to hold 12 bottles per row for those case buyers like me.

James

[Jamie Buxton]

This is a pet peeve of mine.... If you lay the bottles horizontal, and set the "shelves" close together, you can't read the labels. You can discover what wine is there only by pulling each bottle out to read the label. Spacing the shelves further apart, or tilting them, or both, helps. However, there is a limit to how far you can tilt the shelves: the wine is supposed to keep the cork wet.

[John Schreiber]

Alternately, I could mortise and tenon every one (I just bought a new floor standing mortiser that I'm itching to use ).

Even with a hollow chisel mortiser, that's a lot of mortises. One technique is to run a dado the length of the rail the same width as the supports and as you are gluing in the supports, also glue in spacers between each one. For an inside spot like that, it should be invisible and much easier. You also don't need to do everything at once, and that decreases stress during the glueup. (I find glueups very stressful.)

Attached is the *.skp file. There is no jointery in this model as I have not figured out SU well enough to do that efficiently.

The model looks very good. The trick you used with the "sides" where each set is a component works very well. I would expand that to almost everything. For example, if you made each shelf a component, and you wanted to change something on one shelf it would change them all.

That becomes even more useful when you start adding in joinery. For instance, each leg will probably be joined the same way. You could make one leg, then use the same leg at each corner. There's a trick for making a component which is identical except a mirror image. Move/copy the first leg, then Scale the leg to a value of -1. It becomes a mirror image of the first one. Then you can do the same to the pair of them and you've got four matched legs. If you need to modify the joinery later, you only have to do it to one of the legs and the others are fixed automatically.

Use of components also keeps your file size low since each item only needs to be stored once.

SketchUp is fun!