Some wine bottle stoppers

I haven't ever run into this problem, but I hear it happens. Let's say you open a bottle of wine and can't finish it (gasp!) What does one do? Well, you could put the original cork back in, but that would be so passe. How about adorn the top of your bottle with a custom hand turned wine bottle stopper? Great idea.

I have turned a few of these and use chrome bottle stoppers with two silicone rings to get a nice air-tight seal. They are fun to make and allow me to experiment with different shapes and wood combinations. I have also started lining them up on my mantle piece as nicknacks. Plenty of folks comment on their resemblance to chess pieces. I have no interest at this point on making chess sets.

A few of the wine bottle stoppers I turned on my lathe. Different wood species and shapes. Notice the top two stoppers have the hardware attached. The bottom (rosewood) version doesn't have the chrome piece installed.

I played around with laminating a strip of maple in between two pieces of sapele for a pinstripe effect. These do not have the chrome hardware installed. Just playing around with shapes. They are drilled out on the bottoms so that I can add in the hardware later.

Here is a small maple bowl I turned with a collection of wine bottle stoppers thrown in.