If You Give A Mouse A Cookie…

Sometimes a finished product isn’t quite so finished, and it’s up to the user to get it across the line. When I was a kid growing up in the 80s, unfinished furniture stores were big business. Evidently paint or stain was the bulk of the furniture cost back then, so it was worthwhile to buy your furniture unfinished and then take it home and finish it yourself.

These days, products are more likely to need a little help because of poor design or workmanship than someone deliberately dipping out before the job was done. Take for instance this wall-mount corkscrew I found at the Goodwill for $3. What a deal! The first time I used it, however, I got a face full of wine, and not in a conventional way. It was such a spectacular and unexpected mishap that I felt it was worthy of recreating for the world to see. Fortunately, the corkscrew sucked in a consistent and measurable way so that recreating the explosion was no trouble at all.

The problem was that the screw was pushing the cork into the bottle instead of threading itself into the cork. That was partly because the shaft needed to be lubed (that’s what she said) but mostly because there was nothing to set the bottle on. This meant that while the corkscrew was coming down, I had to push the bottle up with as much or more force than I was pushing down with the handle resulting in wine all over the kitchen and all over me.

The simple and obvious solution would have been to simply mount the corkscrew over the countertop. Fortunately for me, that isn’t possible in my kitchen because there is not enough room between the countertop and the cabinets, so I had no choice but to build a little shelf to go under the corkscrew. That’s where my Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig comes in. I thought it would be cool to make the shelf with sliding dovetails on two axes.

I had never made a sliding dovetail before, and this just seemed like the perfect opportunity to try it out. Plus, if it didn’t come out, no one was ever going to see it. At first, I thought it might be a little overkill to overbuild such a little shelf, but it actually needs to be quite sturdy to handle the downward force being applied as the corkscrew winds its way into the cork, so I think the sliding dovetails were the way to go here.

It’s All In The Planning

As with any project, the prep work takes 80% of the time. In this case, it was laying out my cuts and then getting the Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig dialed in to make them. Once you get it, though, making your cuts goes quickly. The Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig can simultaneously do the mortises and tenons for dovetails. That saves time and ensures that your dovetails fit perfectly. Unfortunately, you must cut your mortises and tenons for sliding dovetails separately.

Since this was my first time, I went slowly, taking off just a little bit of wood with each pass. My joints fit a little looser than I would have liked, but I didn’t worry about it too much since I was gluing them anyway.

Every so often, one must remind oneself of things one already knows. On this project, I was reminded of the importance of marking my pieces of wood. I measured, marked, and drilled four screw holes to align with the studs in the wall. But then, I absent-mindedly glued the piece upside down. Had the screw holes been symmetrical on the piece of wood, it would not have mattered. The screw holes, however, were not symmetrical. Of course, I didn’t discover my mistake until the glue was completely dry, so I had to drill four more holes.

Rather than trying to fill the four extra holes, badly as they would have been, I simply used eight screws and colored the heads with a brown Sharpie. Not an elegant or skillful solution, but it worked. 

Was It Worthwhile to Use Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig For Such a Simple Project?

Now I have a very sturdy little shelf mounted under my corkscrew. Between it and a little grease on the corkscrew shaft, I now have a functioning bottle opener. It cost $3, and I got the wood for free. Factoring in the cost of the router and the Porter Cable 4216 Dovetail Jig I’m deep in the hole. I would have been better off buying a brand-new corkscrew than going this route. Of course, the shelf’s cost will amortize as I make more dovetails, so I’m confident that in the near future, I’ll be back in the black again. I made a video of the whole project, including the reenactment of the wine explosion. You can see it at that link or at the end of this post. Happy making!

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