Adventures in Woodworking: Wine Crate Table

Pinterest is a nasty place. You can browse millions of complex projects summarized in a few images and think, "I could do that." Or even worse, "That probably wouldn't even take that long." I recently fell victim to such a project. The Wine Crate Table. It seems simple enough. Find four wine crates and attach them together. Done. Until you find a wine crate, decide it's too small for a table and decide to make your own custom crates.

Now you get to make all kinds of decisions. Not only dimensions, but what kind of wood, what kind of stain, oil or water based varnish, oh and let's put in on wheels! This of course requires some sort of support structure for everything to sit on which of course wasn't on Pinterest so we gotta figure that out too. We chose oak, Dark Walnut, and oil based, by the way.

I wanted each box to have support on all sides but didn't want to use a huge piece of wood so we came up with this contraption. Each box will have a beam to sit on and I only have to cut 800 pieces of wood or so.

Support Structure

Everything cut up

Support structure layout

Cutting the holes for the handles was where I really started questioning my resolve for the project. I'm no jigsaw or scroll saw master so punching holes in an expensive piece of wood wasn't something I was particularly excited for. Luckily we had a bit left over to practice on.

1-1/4 inch holes

Jigsaw the middle

Round over the edges with 1/4" roundover bit

Then we get to stain!

and stain.....

and stain.......

and stain!

 Then after 8 dozen countersink holes we were ready to assemble the boxes. Would it all line up or would this end up in a Pinterest fail collection I relate to so much.

Cardboard spacers

pretty close!

Support structure with 5" wheels

Frame for center hole.

Done!

This was a pretty fun project. It took us way too long but we're pretty happy with it. Hopefully someday we can get heat in the garage so we can stain for more than 4 months out of the year.
Anyway, let me know what you think!