Reclaimed Terracotta Tile Wine Rack

Josh, a friend of mine, sent me a message saying that he needed to have his terracotta roof redone, and he wanted to know if I could use some salvaged tiles to build a wine rack. Wine racks are something of my specialty, so I said of course, and we set to work designing something. He asked me because he wanted to give his wife a nice birthday present... so: Happy Birthday, Julie. I hope you enjoy the unexpected benefits of needing to replace your roof.

Misc. Exotic Woods

I was at a woodworking store the other day and just perused the lumber area to snap a few pics to put up since I recently posted about how diverse wood colors and appearances can be. I haven't worked with most of these, and most are really expensive.

After the jump are a bunch of pics....

Wine Rack 3.0

I sort of stumbled into developing wine racks as a s specialty. When I was in high school I decided to make a wine rack to give my brother and sister-in-law for their wedding. That was wine rack 1.0. This... this is wine rack 3.0, the sum of lessons learned from prior versions.

Stain vs. No Stain

I don't like stain. I don't hate it. Things that have been stained can look quite striking. However, I think that nature gifted us with a broad spectrum of natural wood colors to choose from, and those species' natural colors contribute greatly to the beauty of a piece.

I'm putting this post together to try to give you a window into my design preference. Other people's tastes may differ, which is certainly okay. I'm going to post a few pictures of stained and unstained woods. Hopefully it gives you a sense for some of the things that are out there, though I'm not really going to do the subject justice because there are literally woods of any color of the rainbow (orange, red, purple, white, and black among hundreds, if not thousands, more).

Lot's of pictures after the jump, some of which are kind of big. I'm not sure whether when google makes thumbnails of the pictures for in-text-viewing if it downloads the whole image (I'm inclined to think no), but if it does, then that would eat up 25ish MB-sized chunk of your mobile data. If you open the images separately  however, I'm sure it would load a large image. So proceed informed.

Nostalgia Table

Back when I was a wee (as wee as any 15 year old scrawny little fella can be) little freshman in high school, I ended up enrolled in the equivalent of Woodworking 2. Did I skip Woodworking 1 due to my talent? Test out of it? Nope... It was pretty much just the ineptitude of the guidance counselors, but hey, any port in a storm right? Woodworking 1 was for chuds.

Anyway, in this class we built this end table cabinet thing. More or less, it was my first real woodworking project. (I built a Nativity Scene when I was in middle school, but it's not the right season, so I'm just not going to count it).

Why am I posting about this? Mainly to show where I started, and to give you a sense of how far I've come.

Update: What Am I?

Interwebs points, but not many, to whoever can tell me what this is.

Answer: Pattern for the reclaimed tile wine rack.

Chessboard

I built this chessboard in 2007. The "black" squares are made of bloodwood, which has a naturally-occurring deep red color. The "white" squares are maple. The light border is also maple, and the dark wood framing the entire chessboard is walnut.