New Listing - Gunstock Wine Bottle Holder

Walnut Gunstock Balancing Wine Bottle Holder
While working on trying to complete some pillboxes that seem to be taking for just about ever, a friend of mine asked if he could 'borrow' my bandsaw to cut up some walnut he had on hand so he could replace the gunstock on his old 1908 Ithaca 12-gauge side-by-side shotgun. He showed me the original wood from the gun, and its 100-plus years of wear were abundantly in evidence. Sections of wood were missing, and bolts were being used to hold some of it together - not at all a safe condition for actually wanting to use the gun.

He traced the general shape onto his walnut and proceeded to coax the block into shape. The woodblock itself was almost twice as thick as what he needed to complete his gunstock, and since the remainder was too thin to make another gunstock, I inherited it and set it aside til I could figure out what to do with it.

This weekend, inspiration finally struck me while I was waiting for the glue to dry on one of those pillboxes. Why not a bottle holder? When I laid out where the hole would have to go in a block of wood the general shape and size of a gunstock, it all just fell into place for me.

Gunstock Bottle Holder Layout
I planed down the wood to a consistent thickness, cut the angled bottom, smoothed out all the rough cuts my friend had made (while being true to the intended shape of the piece), then drilled the angled hole through the wood. Keeping the piece steady while the hole was bored out was a bit more of a challenge due to the fact that it didn't fit in my usual jig for making these bottle holders. Once all the cuts had been made, though, I sanded the piece down to a P-320 grit (very fine), used a charged cheesecloth to suck up the dust stuck in the open pores, and applied 5 or 6 coats of clear lacquer to bring out the grain structure and to protect the wood.

Closeup of Gunstock Bottle Holder, showing woodgrain
I listed the bottle holder for sale this afternoon in my Etsy shop, then updated my google base data feed to include it so it can be found in the search engines. Hope you like it!