Wine Stave Candle Holder

I seem to have hit some writer's block on this particular post, and therefore haven't posted in over a week. Perhaps you don't mind. For starters, I just did a post about candle holders. Also, part of my humor revolves around being self-deprecating.  Since I made these candles holders as Christmas gifts for my soon-to-be in-laws I couldn't hardly write "look at this crap I built for the most amazing in-laws a guy could ever ask for."



In reality, I'm very proud of these candle holders, otherwise they would still be sitting in my work shop with the candle holder that I wasn't too proud of.







I've gotten quite a few miles out of this wine barrel so far (a couple clocks and a wine rack). And I've still got a couple ideas left in the chamber. As you can see from the picture there are 17 staves in just half the barrel, so there's quite a bit of lumber in it.

The incredible purple color of the wine lends itself well to being used for decorative purposes.

For symmetry I chose the staves that were approximately 3" at the middle (the staves varied from 2.5" to slightly more than 3.5"). Since the tea light candles are 1" I wanted there to be about 1" of wood on each side.

I cut off the ends and used one of them for the base. Using complex math that I still don't understand, I determined how far apart to drill each of the holes so that they would all be equidistant from each other and the end of the stave. Miraculously, I got it right by adhering to the old carpenters creed of "Measure 67 times, cut once."

Because the staves are curved, I had to brace it before drilling. The hole for the candle must remain parallel with the table or the hot wax will drip out of the candle.  Once the holes were drilled I ran a wood screw through the center of the center hole and into the base. Because the wood is fairly rough I used a highly flammable spray lacquer (nah, I'm just kidding. I don't know if it's flammable or not) to give it a nice sheen.