Spice Rack

One of the problems with building a spice rack is that spice packagers use all different sized bottles. Making the rack large enough to accommodate the biggest bottles means that the small bottles will escape. Walt on s/v Suppose solves this problem by purchasing a set of uniformly sized bottles and then building a clever rack to fit them...

When two people share a 31 foot sailboat, it's hard to keep secrets.  But, when Kathy traveled to Colorado for a few days to visit her family, it gave me a chance to build a spice rack as a surprise for her return.  She was pleased.

The spice rack holds 15 four inch tall spice bottles from Bed, Bath, and Beyond for $1 each.  The rotating fiddles allow easy removal of one bottle without turning the other 4 on the shelf loose to fly out.   A strip of 1/4 inch weather stripping on the back of the fiddles  provides gentle pressure that prevents rattles.

The spice rack is built from mahogany that the lumber yard milled to 5/8 inch thickness for the sides and 1/2 inch for the two shelves and three fiddles. I used a simple box construction with rabbeted joints at the corners, dado joints for the shelves, and a 1/4 inch birch plywood back.  After the box was constructed, I used a 1/4 inch, quarter round router bit to soften the corners.  The 5/8 inch thickness was sufficient to rout the sides down for a facing trim.