EcrosTechWiki | Woodworking / Wine Bottle Stoppers and Stopper / Coaster Sets

I first had the idea of turning wine bottle stoppers in August 2022. It seemed simple enough for my DIY micro-lathe to handle, more "serious" than fake pepper grinders and a more flexible gift than ratchet screwdrivers ?. I bought the necessary tools and some supplies from Craft Supplies USA. For reasons I don't recall, I put this to one side until early 2024, when my DIY micro-lathe was replaced with a Delta Model 46-250 midi lathe. This enabled me to follow the YouTube video published by Craft Supplies USA and quickly make a handful of attractive stoppers. This was good spindle turning practice, but rather tame when compared to bowl turning, which I was busy learning at that time. I also found it difficult to come up with more than just a few profiles that I found pleasing.

Then I hit upon the idea of pairing the stopper with a turned (round) coaster for the wine bottle. With a urethane finish, the coaster would catch drips and therefore actually serve some useful function. The stopper placed in the coaster would make a more attractive and practical display item than either piece on its own. Turning the coaster would give me practice for bowls. I immediately took the quickest path, using padauk, which I had in the necessary width, and was very pleased with the result. While by no means neglecting bowl turning, I made a half-dozen or more sets as gifts for the family.

Padauk Wine Bottle Stopper / Coaster Set

Being a fairly methodical person, my first step was to figure out the dimensions of a useful wind bottle coaster. The fattest wine bottle to hand (excluding sparkling wines) was Meiomi California pinot noir at 3.47 inches diameter. A 4 inch outside diameter with a rim of, say, 3/16 inches, would leave some wiggle room. Regarding height, I felt that the base should be at least a quarter inch thick and the rim should be another quarter inch high, making half-an-inch the absolute minimum total height. Conveniently, interesting woods are available in ¾ inch thickness. Even more conveniently, I had a piece of paduak that is ¾ inch thick and 4 inches wide. So I cut 4 inches off this piece and I had my first wine bottle coaster blank.

For the bottle stopper, the blank must be 1½ inches square by 2 inches long. I cut off another 2 inches from the 4 inch wide stock and then cut this in half along the grain. Then I glued these two pieces together to get 1½ inches thickness. When the glue was dry, I trimmed it to 1½ inches wide and I had my blank. I was concerned that sticking two pieces together, even from the same stock, would spoil the appearance. It turned out that the join is quite hard to see, even if you know it's there. My first stopper / coaster set was a success and so I immediately set about making a second one.

Canarywood Wine Bottle Stopper / Coaster Set

Most of my stock is ¾ inch thick but only 3 inches wide. I decided to figure out how to make a 4 inch diameter coaster and a stopper without buying more wood. I chose canarywood because, unlike padauk, it shows its growth rings and is attractive because of their variation rather than through a single, distinctive color. I cut two pieces, each 4 inches long, from the 3 inch wide stock. I cut one along the grain into a 1½ inch wide strip and whatever was left, about 1⅜ inches wide. The first I cut into two 2 inch pieces, using a thin kerf handsaw, to glue up into the stopper blank, as before. Then I had the other 3 inch piece and the 1⅜ inch piece, both 4 inches long, to glue up into a 4 inch square for the coaster.

Now, the glue seam in the padauk stopper was almost invisible. But, I doubt that a join between the two pieces of canarywood in the coaster would go unnoticed. I don't want it to look as if I tried and failed to match the wood up, so I won't even try. I'll put a strip of a different wood in between. I used claro walnut because it's darker and will make a nice contrast and also I have a lot of scraps hanging around. Adding this to the 3 inch and 1⅜ inch pieces, I have quite a bit more than the 4 inches I need, so I cut away and discarded some of the canarywood to, in my inexpert opinion, give the best appearance of the finished product.

So, what about the stopper then? To make the coaster and the stopper a "set", I added a piece of walnut to the glue-up. Its thickness is roughly in proportion to the width of the blank, but it's close to the mid-line, rather than off to one side. Nevertheless, I'm pleased with the result. I will use this technique again (see below).

Bocote Wine Bottle Stopper / Coaster Set

Again, the story of this set starts with the question of how to get the blank for the coaster. Plus, I rather like bocote because it's so, well, in your face. I had a piece of bocote ¾ inch thick and cut down to a width of 2 inches at a 45° angle. If I cut two four inch pieces from this I could flip one over and glue it to the other one to get the four inch square I need. Again, there's the issue of what this would look like. However, there were two differences from the canarywood. First, I had bocote blanks for the stopper in the variety pack from Craft Supplies USA. Second, this wood being left over from a bud vase project, I was more prepared to scrap it if it didn't work out.

However, it did work out. By pure good fortune, the glue line is invisible until you look for it and, even then, takes effort to find. You would expect it to show badly on the outer edge of the coaster, where you are looking at end grain and can see a break in the growth ring pattern. I think it may be less visible because it's at a 45° angle.

Bocote was fairly easy to work with and produced a reasonable finish off the tool. I needed 240 and 320 grit sandpaper only.

Figured (Tiger?) Maple Wine Bottle Stopper / Coaster Set

I had a quite nice piece of figured maple 3½” wide (and ¾” thick) but it had a band of bark running along it at an angle making about an inch of the width unusable. I used the same basic ideas as for the canarywood set, above, but cut the board along the edge of the bark to give an angled join in the coaster. This, of course, isn’t apparent when the coaster is turned round. The accent wood is again claro walnut.

Maple is an easy wood to work with but the figure can cause some tear-out. I worked carefully, sharpened the gouge and finished with a scraper. Having done this, I needed 240 and 320 grit sandpaper only.

Leopardwood Wine Bottle Stopper / Coaster Set

My leopardwood board is, strangely, 3 11/16” wide (¾” thick). So, cutting 4” off, I was only 5/16” lacking in the width. Well, even after slicing this in two with a table saw, I could pad this out with 7/16” of accent woods. Since I could make the cut anywhere I wanted to, I put it near the middle, trying for similar proportions in the coaster and stopper. Cutting another 2” from the board and ripping that in half I had what I needed to glue up a blank for the stopper.

Claro walnut alone worked fine as the accent wood with light-colored maple and canarywood, but I decided that for the darker tone of leopardwood I needed more contrast. I’ve done this before by bracketing a dark wood with narrow strips of light wood. Tired of the walnut, I looked around and came up with some scraps of granadillo. For the coaster, I cut thin strips of maple to go on either side. For the stopper, I used two layers of birch veneer, which is the same light color.

Leopardwood is not easy to work with. I experienced some tear-out, especially on end grain. I kept my tools very sharp and worked slowly, particularly on finishing cuts. I was able to sand away the tear-out with 180 grit sandpaper and then continued with 240 and 320.

Birdseye Maple Wine Bottle Stopper / Coaster Set

My birdseye maple board is 3 11/16” wide, the same as the leopardwood (huh?). So, again, I just need to take a 4” length and pad out the width a bit. I don’t need to cut another 2” for the stopper as I have birdseye maple stopper blanks in the assortment I bought from Craft Supplies USA. Where, then, to make the cut to insert the padding? I decided to try not to interrupt the birdseye figure by placing the cut quite close to one edge where the figure fades out. The main accent wood is cherry, but I decided to give it a bit more snap with thin, dark lines on either side. This looks like walnut, but actually I don’t know what it is. I used veneer that I bought in an assortment and this isn’t even straightforward veneer, it looks like a slice of a block made by stacking veneer. You can see this in the finished coaster if you look closely, but the overall effect is what I wanted.

The birdseye figure caused less difficulty than the tiger, above, so turning both the coaster and stopper went very smoothly. I used only 240 and 320 grit sandpaper.

I was disappointed to find that the color of the stopper (turned from a blank sourced independently of the coaster) is much darker than that of the coaster.

Figured Black Walnut Wine Bottle Stopper / Coaster Set

I have a couple of ¾” thick pieces of figured walnut 3” wide. When I buy something like this from, for example, Woodcraft, I usually buy two in the expectation that one will be really nice and the other will barely fit the description. I want to save the really nice piece for something like a jewelry box. The other piece has very little figure and is, frankly, rather blotchy looking. But, once again, I was able to hatch a plan so that by slicing off two 4” lengths I could make the blanks for the coaster and the stopper and discard the least desirable wood. The accent woods that hide the join are cherry and maple. Actually, in the stopper the pale wood is not maple, it’s the birch veneer that I used in the leopardwood stopper, but it has the same appearance.

Walnut is another friendly wood and I had no problems with either the coaster or the stopper. I was able to sand with 240 and 320 grit only.