The first step involves acquiring the necessary materials and proper tools. It is best to get everything prepared before commencing because you become free to progress without unnecessary interruptions.

We will start by preparing the wood. If you are surfacing rough lumber, then you will have to follow the basic steps of surfacing. If you are using surfaced lumber you can omit this step. We used a 39" (1m) long piece of rough cherry and jointed a face until it was flat. As always, ensure that your board is free from any nails or staples to save your jointer blades. Position the concave side down.

Next, plane the opposing face so that it parallel to the first side. Make several passes removing a small amount of material each time until you reach a point where the entire rough surface has been removed.

Joint one of the edges by performing several passes until it is flat. Lastly, rip the remaining edge with the table saw. You don't have to worry about the ends of the board because you can trim them after you finish the upcoming cuts.

Next, you can cut the wine rack to its final shape. Essentially this project requires you to create a rigid structure with holes held out from the wall. We will make the holes in the following step, but we need to consider them now when we are preparing to cut the board. We recommend that you use 1 1/2" holes (38mm). Even though the necks of most wine bottles are 1 1/10" (28mm) we want to make sure that the holder can accommodate virtually any bottle. Note that the larger hole, does not sacrifice the holding ability of the rack. The centerline of this hole should be about 2 3/4" (70mm) (ours was a bit more; 2" (5cm) is the minimum) from the wall - this will leave you plenty of room in case you want to store wider bottles. Lastly, we recommend that you keep 1/2" (13mm) wall thickness on the outside of the hole, which means that the entire rack should be 4" (102mm) wide.

You should review the entire plan and especially the design considerations section at the end of this plan before deciding on the shape you want to pursue. We made our rack using a simple sine curve because the recessed areas are used by the opposing rack thereby efficiently using the wood. See the graphic on the right. You can use the pattern that we used by printing it out and transferring it to the wood in succession until you have the desired number of holes. Note that since the racks are offset, you need more slightly more wood than the final length of the racks. We recommend that you distance the centerlines of the holes 6" (150mm) apart, so your board will need to be 3" (75mm) more to accommodate for this offset.

With the pattern cut, lets drill the holes. We used a 1 1/2" diameter drill bit (38mm). You can use a smaller or larger bit, but test it out in some scrap wood before proceeding. Make sure you back up the piece that you are cutting through with some scrap wood so you don't get any tearout where the bit exits your wood.

At this point, you can provide an edge detail if you like. We added a simple roundover with a roundover bit in a table router. Do not make a detail on the mounting face of the wine rack because this will compromise stability. Also, we recommend that you do not remove a significant amount of material on the inside surfaces of the holes - doing so will diminish their effectiveness. We simply knocked off the corners of the holes with sandpaper.

Now lets finalize the shape. You can use an oscillating spindle sander, disc sander, or hand sanding to get the wine racks to the desired shape.

Next lets drill the mounting holes. We drilled three clearance holes through the valleys or lowpoints of the rack - one at each end, and one in the middle. We used toggle bolts and mounted the wine rack to a hollow wall made out of drywall. We used finish washers as shown on the image on the right, but you can also counterbore the mounting holes and cover the holes with plugs if desired.

mounting the wine rack

To use this wall mounted wine rack, you need to firmly fasten it to a wall or other rigid surface. Finding wall studs would be ideal, but using toggle bolts is fine. If you have plaster, or brick walls, use appropriate fasteners. If you would like to hide the screw heads (nails will probably not be strong enough) you can drill a counterbore to recess the screw head below the surface of the wood; you can cover these holes with plugs.

layout

There are many layouts that you can employ to achieve different looks or to maximize the bottle-holding capacity of your wall space. You can arrange several of these racks in parallel orientation or in contrasting angles. See the images on the margin for some options: use your imagination!

materials

We used cherry because we had some extra after making the magazine holder. Almost any wood would be suitable. We wouldn't stray from wood though because it is strong enough to do the job, but soft enough so that you don't have to worry about scratching or threatening the glass bottles.

shape

When you are choosing your pattern, keep in mind that you may want to minimize the interior radii to the size of your smallest sanding drum. If you cannot get into those spaces with a power sanding device, the sanding step will be much more time-consuming. Note that you can use a simple rectangular piece for this project; it would be much easier to make but use unnecessary material. The wave pattern shown in the margin may be attractive, but since it is not symmetrical, the opposing piece of wood would not have a matching pattern, so there would be wasted material.