CORK TRIVETS

I kept seeing these things in airline magazines for too much money. I started saving corks. The trivet shown has 72 corks. Perhaps the most fun of the project was emptying 72 bottles of wine. We ended up with a nice variety of corks. I have also seen the trivet used as a bulletin board.

My wife likes this so well that I am now signed up to make a couple as Christmas gifts. It took a long time to collect 72 corks, so she actually bought used corks on eBay for the next ones.

This first one was a spur of the moment project. I had a fair piece of poplar and a little 1/8 plywood. Frame construction took very little time. I did not stain the frame and used clear polyurethane. Corks were placed in more or less random order using a glue gun. This was experience #1 with the glue gun and I only burnt my fingers a couple of times.

For dimensions, I laid the corks out on a table and measured the grid. Piece of cake. The only tools used were my radial arm saw, sander, and glue gun. Frame back fits in groves cut with saw. Assembly is all glued, no fasteners of any kind.

This is one of the Christmas trivets during staining and before varnishing or gluing corks.

If you are interested in building, these are the dimensions I used. Using a 3/4 thick board. Each side is 12" long and 1" thick with a 45 deg miter at each end. This yields an inside square of 10 1/4". A 1/8' wide / 1/4" deep groove is cut 1/8" from the back side. A square 10  3/4" of 1/8"  plywood is glued into the groove at assembly. I place the good side of the plywood on the back since the front is covered with corks.