Mid-century wine rack

Two things drive every other dimension and both are outside your control, so settle them first.

Buy the legs first. You want 10″ tapered legs with brass ferrules and 8° angled mounting plates. Check the plates are angled — plenty of sellers ship flat 0° ones by default.

Ask what board width your yard actually stocks, surfaced. Whatever you get becomes the case depth.

A 1×12 is 11-1/4″ nominal-actual with slightly rounded edges from the moulder. Both of those have to go: the edges become the visible front and back of every part, and they are the datum the lap slots get measured from. You cannot measure 4-1/2″ reliably from a rounded edge.

Rough-crosscut to length first. This is what keeps the ripping manageable: break the boards down oversize on the mitre saw and the longest rip becomes about 26″, not eight feet. A four-foot straightedge then covers every cut in the project and you never need a track.

Straighten one edge of each board. Clamp the guide so it takes off just enough to clean up — this edge only needs to be straight, not a particular width.

Then rip every board to final width off that straight edge. Here is the part that matters: with no fence, there is nothing enforcing that the boards match. So cut two spacer sticks to (final width − blade offset) and use them, one at each end, to set the straightedge off the board's straight edge. Same two sticks on every board. Never a tape measure, never a pencil line.

The straightedge goes on the keeper side, not the waste side. You are only trimming a couple of sixteenths off, so there is nothing on the waste side to clamp to — and the saw needs the keeper under it or it tips into the cut.

Check three of them against each other when you are done. They must match. A board 1/64″ narrow means a shelf sits proud at the front of the case permanently — and it means its lap will not close.

Whatever width you actually land on, that is the number the rest of this guide depends on. Measure it and set DEPTH in the model to match. The lap slots are exactly half of it and there is no tolerance in that.

Mitre saw with a stop block, or a crosscut sled. Never measure each piece individually.

Check the fence is square before you cut anything real. Across 9″ a fence off by half a degree puts the ends 0.08″ out of square, the shelf then seats skewed in its housing, and the case leans. Cut a test piece, flip one half over and butt the two cut edges together — any error doubles and becomes obvious.

Support the offcut. A 9-1/4″ piece hanging in mid-air droops as you finish the cut, pinches the blade and burns.

The 7 B parts set the case width. If they differ from each other the case racks and no amount of clamping fixes it. One stop setting, 7 cuts.

Cut the longest parts first. If you start with the short ones you will find yourself two feet short of a stile with only offcuts left. Lay out every part in pencil on the boards before the saw runs, and put the knots where they will be cut away.

Label every part in pencil, and mark which edge is the FRONT. That matters in step 8 and it is not recoverable later.

Cut two extra offcuts for test joints. Don't skip them.

Put calipers on your “3/4 inch” boards. They will read something like 0.72″ or 0.74″. Write that number on the wall. Every housing you cut has to match it, not the nominal 3/4″.

A strip of 1/2″ plywood about 30″ long, with a shorter piece fixed across one end at 90°. The long arm is the fence the router rides; the short arm hooks over the edge of the board, which is what makes the cut square without measuring an angle.

The housing has to match your stock, not a number. Two ways to guarantee that; the first is much easier to set up.

Option A — pattern bit and template

A pattern bit (top-bearing straight bit) has a ball bearing above the cutter, made to exactly the cutter's diameter. So the cut reproduces the template one-to-one, with no offset at all — which means the gap in your jig simply is the housing.

The one dimension to get right: template thickness ≈ cutter length − cut depth, so the bearing lands within the template's thickness. With a typical 1″ cutter and a 1/4″ deep housing that's 3/4″ ply or MDF, not 1/2″. Too thin and the bearing rides above the template and guides nothing.

Run the bearing against one rail, then back along the other. Add a crossbar at 90° so the jig registers square to the edge.

Option B — two fences, no special bit

If you'd rather not buy a pattern bit, capture the router base between two fences instead. Same idea, but now the base diameter enters the arithmetic:

gap between fences = width + baseØ − bitØ
router free travel  = width − bitØ

With a 6″ base and a 1/2″ bit on 3/4″ stock: a 6-1/4″ gap and 1/4″ of travel. Make one fence adjustable, then dial it in with test cuts in scrap.

Half an hour here saves the project. Pine will lie to you about fit — it crushes. Use walnut or cherry offcuts.

• A housing plus a shelf end. Creep the second pass until an offcut slides in with hand pressure and no mallet.
• A rabbet at a board end. Same setup, run off the end.
• One lap crossing. The only joint here you haven't done before.

Write the final jig offset on the jig in pencil, then stop.

Each is 3/4″ wide (your real thickness) × 1/4″ deep, straight through front to back. Measured from the bottom end to the lower edge of each:

All 3/4″ wide × 4-1/2″ deep, cut in from an edge, all the way through the thickness. Five in the shelves, five in the divider.

Positions are to the lower / nearer edge of each slot. All 10 are 3/4″ wide × 4-1/2″ deep.

Three or four depth passes — don't try to hog 3/4″ of walnut in one go. Cut the slot a hair fat so the parts go together without forcing.

Only the top and bottom rails get these — the five shelves don't, because the lap does that job there.

3/4″ wide × 3/16″ deep, through, centred 4-1/4″ to 5″ from either end. Bottom rail on its top face only; top rail on its bottom face only.

First just the egg crate. Stand the five shelves up in order, line the divider up behind them with its notches on the shelves, and push it forward 4-1/2″ until everything is flush. It goes together by hand and stands square on its own.

Measure the openings while it's dry; they should all be 4 × 4″.

Then the whole carcass, dry, no glue.

Fix problems now. Once glue is on twelve housings you have minutes, not hours.

Do it in two stages. Landing fourteen housings and ten lap joints in one go is the most stressful glue-up in the project, and it is avoidable. Use Titebond Extend or liquid hide glue — you want the open time.

Stage one — the egg crate on its own. Glue the ten lap faces lightly, slide the divider forward into the shelves as you did dry, square it up, clamp lightly and let it cure. You now have one rigid grid instead of six loose parts.

Stage two — the carcass.

• Thin glue in the housing, not on the shelf end — less squeeze-out to clean.

• Check the diagonals and rack it square before the glue grabs.
• Wipe squeeze-out inside the cells now. Dried glue blocks finish and shows as pale patches.

Leave it overnight.

• Glue a 3/4 × 1-1/2 cleat along the front and back edges of the bottom cell floor, inside. It doubles the screw purchase and is invisible from outside.
• Screw the plates to the underside, set in 3/8″ from the edges, each rotated 45° in plan so its angle leans out toward the nearest corner.
• Screw in the legs. If it rocks, trim the long foot flat and parallel to the floor — not square to the leg.
• Sand 120 → 180 → 220, breaking every sharp edge. Hardwax oil or wiping varnish, two or three thin coats.

Cherry keeps darkening for about a year. That's normal, and it's the good part.

Variant — the Scandinavian legs

The mid-century version uses bought splayed legs on angled plates. The Scandinavian version uses square tapered legs you make yourself, standing plumb, held by glue blocks — no bought hardware at all. It is also the cheaper first build, which is why it makes a good rehearsal.

Stock

A nominal 2×2 is actually 1-1/2″ square — exactly the leg section, so no glue-up. One short length covers all four legs plus spares. Pick it carefully: construction 2×2 is often twisted and knotty, and a leg that isn't straight is obvious in a way a shelf isn't.

Cut the taper on the two INNER faces only

How to cut it. Two options, and for four short pine legs I would take the second:

• Table saw with a tapering jig — a board with a stop that holds the leg at an angle to the fence. Cut one face, rotate 90°, cut the next. After the first cut that face is no longer square, so the jig must ride on the faces you haven't cut yet.
• Saw close and plane to the line. Mark the taper on both faces, saw just outside it, then plane down. Removing 5/8″ over 10″ in pine is a few minutes per face, it needs no jig, and there is nothing to go wrong at speed.

Ease every long edge lightly afterwards — a small chamfer or a couple of plane strokes. Pine dents if you look at it, and a crisp arris will not survive being moved around.

Fixing them on

Glue and rub the blocks into place, then check the piece stands without rocking before the glue sets. If it rocks, trim the long foot flat and parallel to the floor.

Common setup problems

Check these points during dry assembly.

1. Boards not all the same width. Shelves sit proud or shy at the front. Fixed in step 2, nowhere else.
2. Housings cut to nominal 3/4″ instead of your real thickness. Sloppy joints throughout. Step 4.
3. Stiles routed separately. Shelves land at slightly different heights left to right and the whole grid looks off. Step 7 — clamp them together.
4. Lap slots cut from the wrong edge. The grid won't assemble. Step 8.
5. Rushing the glue-up. Long-open-time glue, and dry fit twice.