For Christmas Jay made me a wine rack. It is beautiful and really does a great job. As we were designing it I suggested that he cut out wine glass shapes and use those as the side supports.

 

 

 

 

 

As he was cutting out the supports he had the idea of cutting out extras and make them into coasters. I liked the idea, but then said that we needed to make a wine bottle-shaped holder for them. This led down a very busy path for both of us.

 

Jay cut out the shapes and glued the bottles to their bases. He then created a jig that he can use to drill the holes to correctly position the pegs to hold the coasters (as you will see later). He also cut out more wine glasses, too.

 

 

Apparently I am the finishing department in our enterprise, so once the CNC Router had done it’s job the blanks all came to me. I used elbow grease and some sandpaper to round out the edges and smooth any rough spots.

 

 

Next came the staining. Here we have three different colors of stain that I’ve used for the coasters. I was asked to make four sets, but only had room for three on my work table.

 

 

 

I stained the holders a lighter color so that there would be some contrast.

Then each coaster and holder received five coats of gloss polyurethane. I wanted them shiny and smooth!

After the poly was dry I glued felt onto the back of the coasters so that if somebody placed them on a piece of furniture the coaster wouldn’t leave any marks.

 

 

My thought is this: There are some people who want to protect their furniture so they request that a coaster be used all of the time, even if there’s no danger of condensation pooling at the bottom of the glass. Typically wine won’t condensate, so the poly’d coasters are perfect for this as they weren’t meant to soak up any moisture. If you happen to spill something on them they are easily wiped up.

 

 

And then we added pegs on the back to hold your wine glass markers. I received a set of these for Christmas and had no idea where I was going to store them. Now I have a place!

Not everybody has wine glass markers, though, so I figured that if we were going to give these away (or sell them if we can figure out a reasonable price) I should include a set of glass markers, too.

I’m not good at jewelry making, so hopefully these didn’t turn out too bad:

 

We have a wine-themed set…

 

 

 

 

 

 

A set of leaves with rhinestones as accents…

 

 

 

 

 

 

A set of hearts…

 

 

 

 

 

 

A beach-themed set…

 

 

 

 

 

 

And bells!

 

Jay’s mom wants to give a few of these to her friends as gifts, so I’ve been trying to get them all done. What do you think? Is this a marketable idea?

 

 

 

An update to the CNC Router – Wildlife post from a few weeks ago:

Jay’s uncle picked up the routed doors and took them home to be finished. He then sent pictures to Jay of the finished product.

You have to look really close to see them, but the two ducks are the top left, the moose and elk are bottom left, the jumping deer is top right and the bear is bottom right.

I was worried that once he stained them the grain of the oak would overshadow the routed image. Maybe you just have to look at it from a different angle. You can actually see the moose in this one.

And here are the ducks. The flying one is on the left with the swimming duck on the right. I hope that he was really happy with them!