Custom Wine Display
Design
I have designed some fairly challenging pieces over my career: designing stunts, creating custom props, and product displays put together solely with old world joinery. This was one of my more difficult projects. I was approached by my clients to create a display for their wine collection that could store as many bottles while taking up as little footprint as possible in their dinning room. After going with my client to pick out the right wood, he settled on a type of wood that was flat cut so that it would accentuate the grain and create interesting figuring, this was instead of the straight lines common in most wood bought at your regular box store. Next, came trying to figure out the right size to cut my wave shapes in order to accommodate as many different bottle sizes as possible while also leaving behind enough wood to make it secure. We also settled on downlighting between the verticals that could be dimmed and change color as desired.
Sourcing
The lumber was fairly easy to source. It was just important to find a lumber yard with enough stock so that I could pick through a large enough pile to find individual pieces that looked interesting. I ended up going with Ganahl lumber in Pasadena. The hard part of the sourcing was the lighting. The bays where the lights were going were only 4 inches apart. I knew I needed to go with L.E.D. lighting to avoid heat and keep as small a profile as possible. The problem with much of the L.E.D. puck lights available is that very few have warm white as an option. Pretty much all of them had cool white (most often used in hospitals, offices, etc.), not an option I was willing to entertain because it would be too harsh in the dining room. After some trial and error, and a few limitations with the product I went with sets of lights by a company called Torchstar.
Templates
First came creating templates that could be copied exactly. I first printed out the design and then went about creating one curve, then duplicating until I need up the proper piece. I needed two main templates. One for the top and bottom, the other template for my 18 vertical pieces.
Fabrication
This part consisted of creating all my pieces and sanding them all down. I would first trace the pattern, then jig saw the pieces outside the line and finish them off with the router bit to make them all exact.
Testing, stain, and sealer
This was the longest process. Between testing and letting things dry before clear coating it was quite a long time. I ended up creating a custom stain, blending together 1 part gray to 2 parts black.
Installation
To install, I used a top and bottom plate to hold all the vertical pieces against the back wall and the ceiling. Then after doing some final electrical testing and wiring them all up, I put on the top and bottom pieces.
