That's some of the rough lumber that I'm using for this project. It's dimensional lumber, another way of saying that it's beefy. A two by four is measured before it is planed, so when you buy it at the lumberyard it's really only 1 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches. These boards are really two inches thick and still a bit rough cut. some are seven inches wide and some are nine inches. I haven't figured out exactly what the shelves are going to look like just yet, but with a little bit of good weather, I wanted to get them out from under the plastic tarp and take a look at them. In the mean time I'm doing the boring work of building supports for the wine counter.
I used the same template that I made for the counter top to build a support that wraps around the column between two windows at the shop. That's it to the left. It looks a bit like a mantel piece to me. I considered several ways to support this end of the counter, but this is the most stable. The column is old brick covered by plaster, so I didn't feel comfortable just hanging the support on the column. This system will support the counter almost all the way along its width, and since it's made with the same wood as the counter top it should look just like it fits in the space.
I was going to just use a barrel for the other end of the counter top, but it made me nervous. I've removed a few of the metal bands that help give the barrel its strength, so am not sure if over the long run it would hold all of that weight. But I still wanted to use the barrel. The question is how do you fit a
support to a barrel which is curved in two directions. One answer turns out to be 25 degrees. The first thing I did was to take a piece of scrap plywood and scribe it to the side of the barrel. This gave me the rough curve that I was looking for. As I went to cut it out I realized I had several dozen barrel staves sitting in my garage, so I took one and traced it onto a piece of two by six. Then I took those two pieces, set them against the barrel and cut a piece of wood to fit between them. It turned out the angle I needed on each side of that board was 25 degrees which I figured out by trial and error. Once I knew the right angle I was able to rip a board on both sides, and viola! I added a cross piece (which makes the support look like a cross ironically enough) so it sits against that piece that I ripped. I'll put in a couple of screws to hold it to the barrel which should give it plenty of support for our 13 foot long counter top! Of course that's all just guess work. I realize that as a woodworker you are doing a lot of engineering work as you go. I've really over designed the supports for this counter. A two by four at each end would have probably done the job. We're going to install the counter on Sunday afternoon, and then have our reopening celebration on Thursday, May 12th. Come by and have a seat--I'm fairly certain that the wine counter won't fall over on top of you!