Wine stop and corkscrew

For some reason, I felt that gifting the wine rack alone wasn’t quite complete—it felt like it needed something more. After some discussion, we decided to add a wine stopper and corkscrew to the gift. The idea was to provide everything you might need in one perfect package.

We came across a really cool wood-turning kit that combined a bottle stopper and corkscrew, which seemed like a fantastic addition. With that in mind, we got to work.

Process:

1. First step was to find an interesting piece of wood that had enough character to make it stand out as the handle for the corkscrew. I found a really striking piece of recycled Rimu which had come from an old schoolhouse which had figuring and a really ornate looking knot. It seemed perfect, so I cut out the blank ready to make the handle.
2. The most important thing was to get the metal corkscrew and stopper hardware concentrically centered with the handle. The way I went about making this happen was by drilling my centers in the blank before turning. This way, I was able to use the actual mounting hole in the lathes live center, meaning my accuracy when mounting the lathe would be fixed by the piece holding itself centered. I had cut the piece oversize to allow for this variation.
3. I then mounted the blank on the lathe to turn between centers, using a spur drive and a live center to hold the wood true. I then spindle turned the blank into a cylinder.
4. Once I had the cylinder I laid out the ideal dimensions for the handle and started turning it to shape.
5. I got it almost all the way done, when a slip of the chisel on the finishing pass caused a gouge which needed to be cut out. I reshaped the handle to remove the gouge which left me with a smaller handle than I wanted initially. 
6. With the piece at final shape, and barely being held on by spurs, I sanded the handle up to 600 grit for a super smooth surface finish.
7. I then parted the piece off, and hand sanded the parted surfaces down to leave a nice smooth surface the whole way around.
8. I was then able to screw the corkscrew into the predrilled hole in the handle and was glad to see it was a perfect fit. 
9. Lastly I finished it off with a coating of raw linseed oil, to nourish and protect the wood while being food safe and simple to maintain, while bringing out even more of the yellow Rimus warm tones.

With that little finishing touch, the gift felt truly complete, and they seemed genuinely happy to have received it. They use it frequently, which makes it even more rewarding to know it’s become a cherished part of their routine.

Things to Improve on

• Keep practicing with the lathe. It took a few tries to get the corkscrew perfectly centered, chisel slips caused material wastage. But that's all part of the learning process, which led to the knot curving around the ball of the handle in a beautiful accident.