Recipe for a Wine Lantern

Anvil complete, and a special-order trellis panel built and out the door, it was time for Keith to get back to inventory production. Everything we sell is made here in the shop, so if we're running low on something, it's up to Keith to make more. Keeping our inventory up when Keith is in the midst of a commission can be tricky, so he tries to produce as much product as possible between larger jobs. With one commission already slated for this month and more on the way, Keith's trying to gain some inventory ground while he can.

Since the fall our Wine Lanterns have been selling almost as quickly as Keith could make them. In the store stands their display rack, maximum capacity eight, so it's obvious when stock is thin. He managed to finish up a batch of lantern bodies toward the end of December, but we were starting to run low on glass hurricanes. Keith fabricates the bodies from domestic steel using jigs he designed and built, while recycled wine bottles constitute the wind barrier. To make the latter, Keith goes through a multi-step process in his cold-working station. The first order of business is label removal. The bottles have to be soaked for several days, then scraped. Next the top and bottom sections are cut off, leaving just the 6" cylinder. This fits within the steel structure and protects the candle flame while burning.

We only use Bordeaux bottles for the hurricanes. Bottles used in Burgundy wine production don't work because their curvy shape yields a too-short cylinder. Several friends and neighbors, including Luke Bates of UFO Pizza down the street, have (kindly) gotten into the habit of saving bottles for us. "Shoulders not hips" is the mnemonic device we've been using to help folks remember which bottles to keep, and which to put out with the rest of the recycling.

In the spirit of using every part of the animal, as it were, Keith is in the midst of new product development. An elegant candelabra incorporating the wine bottle bottoms is on the welding table as of this writing, and he has several ideas for candle lighting solutions using the spout ends. He just completed a beer lantern prototype on Saturday, and a beer-inspired chandelier is in the works.