There aren't many woodworking projects that are nice looking and useful that you can make in one day, but this is one of those exceptions. This little umbrella stand is easy to make and even finish in one day, provided you are using a pocket hole system, and in our case we used the Kreg unit. Of course the advantage of holding joints together with pocket screws is that you don't have to wait for glue to dry, which speeds things up immensely. We love the Kreg Pocket Hole System for other reasons too, there is no glue oozing our of joints, so you don't have to worry about white spots that the finish didn't penetrate because there was left over glue on the wood, and for some projects that need to be taken apart later on, the pocket hole screws are perfect, and they really do hold very well.
To start off with we needed 4 corner posts and after fitting together some scraps and knowing that our middle cross gable pieces were going to be 3/4 inch, we finally decided that the corner posts would need to be 1-1/4 inches square and 26 inches long. See CUT LIST in the Read More Section. When ever possible, always cut the largest pieces of your project first because what is left over can often be used of other pieces in the project, and in our case we were able to get about half or more of the spindles that were needed, these were the half inch square by 17 inch long pieces in the middle of each side.
The next pieces we need to make were the upper and lower gables. We decided on 3-1/2 inch by 3/4 inch Garry Oak. The first thing we needed to do with these pieces was to run a 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch dado in one end to hold the spindles. We set up the table saw as close to the center of the edge of the board as we could, and ran the board through.
We knew that the dado was off a tiny bit, so we would need to make sure that always one side of each gable was on the inside of the umbrella stand. To accomplish this we marked the back side of the board lightly, then cut the board into 7 inch long strips that would be used for the tops and bottoms of the gable sides.
The final pieces we needed to make were the spacers to be used between the spindles. We opted to use 1/2 inch spacers with a larger open area on each side of the spindle set. This helped balance the look of the sides and made for a more interesting looking stand and is in keeping with the Arts and Crafts Style of making furniture.
Cut List
4 - Corner posts 26" x 1-1/4" x 1-1/4"
8 - Gable Sides 3-1/2" x 7" x 3/4"
20 - Spindles 1/2" x 1/2" x 17"
48 - spacers - these should be sized as per how you want them to look. we made ours 1/2" square then made the ends spacers to balance the spindles in the middle with a bit of extra space on each side.
Just before the final assembly, we cut the pocket holes in the back of each of the cross member gables. We made sure that we oriented them correctly.
For the assembly we laid a couple of the corner posts on the bench with an upper and lower gable with the pocket holes exposed on the top side so we could drill the pocket holes into them. We then took the time to glue and insert the spindles and spacers into the dados of the gables. To ensure each of the sides would be identical we made a small jig to align the gable at a preset height and went about screwing and tightening pocket holes into the side piece.
When 2 of the sides were completed we attached one other side to each of these assemblies so that in the final assembly we could use the 25 - 45 degree or Flex Extender driver attachment to put the pocket screws in place.
The finished umbrella stand is great because it lets air through so wet umbrellas can dry out and not rot. They style of the stand makes it suitable for all sizes of umbrellas from small umbrellas, to parasols and even as large as golf umbrellas. This little piece or furniture will add class to your house plans and elegance to your home entrance.
Copyright - Colin Knecht
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