Mini Vodka Bottles Holder With LEDs

Hi everyone!

In this instructable I'm gonna show you a holder that I made as birthday present for my best friend.

Since he loves and collects Absolut Vodka I bought him six mini bottles of different flavors. I bought them online and they arrived without any box so I decided to make a simple yet nice display using scrap pieces of plywood and some bright orange LEDs (his favourite color).

Follow this guide to see how I made it.

MATERIALS:

- 9x40cm of plywood (thick 1,5cm)

- 9x40cm of plywood (thick 5mm)

- 6x bright orange LEDs

- 3x 100ohm resistors

- 1x 2AA battery holder

TOOLS:

- drill (38mm hole saw)

- wood glue

- finishing oil

- orbital sander (or sanding paper)

- router with round over bit (or sanding paper)

First of all I placed the bottles onto a scrap piece of plywood that I had and I tried to space them equally apart. Doing this, I decided to make the holder 9x40cm.

I used two pieces of plywood of different thickness because I wanted to have a sort of hollow that hold the bottle in place.

So I simply marked a section of the right dimension, I cut the 2 pieces, and I clamped them together before drilling the holes for the LEDs.

Then I took the 1,5cm thick piece of plywood, and I made a groove on the bottom (3mm deep) using a router with a 1cm dado bit.

This groove will be useful later to neatly hide the connections for the LEDs on the base.

As you can see from the photos above, in order to make the groove lined up correctly with the LEDs, I used the metal straight guide that I bought with the router.

In this step you can understand why I decided to glue a piece of plywood 5mm thick onto the 1,5cm one.

Since the bottles measure 36mm of diameter, I used a 38mm hole saw drill bit. The small holes for the LEDs made in the Step 2 helped me to drill all the holes in the right place.

After a little bit of sanding, I used wood glue to attach them together.

Then I left them clamped for a couple of hours waiting the glue to dry.

Once the glue has dried I firstly used the router with a round over bit, and finally sanding paper to smooth all the edges.

If you don't own a router you could use an orbital sander, a file or a piece of sanding paper attached to a small block of wood.

To finish the woodworking process, I simply applied a hand of protective and regenerating oil.

As you can see in the 1st picture, the circuit is really basic and simple.

I simply connected together 3 couples of LEDs (with a resistor) in parallel.

First of all I inserted the 6 LEDs in the holes, then I soldered each couple of LEDs to a resistor, and finally I connected them to the 2AA battery holder.

The battery holder that I used was saved from broken IKEA christmas light. The cool thing about it is that it already had a switch.

I placed it at one side of the wooden base, I marked and drilled two little holes for the wires, and finally I soldered them to the internal switch.

In order to cover and protect the circuit you could simply use a piece of electrical tape, or you could also attach a piece of adhesive felt.

As you have seen, it is a really easy and quick project that can be made completely out of scrap materials.

I hope that you enjoyed it!

Thank you for reading my Instructable. ;)
Feel free to comment and ask if you need to know something!

manuelmasc