Christmas Stocking Trees
If you have followed my Friday Update series you are already familiar with these stocking trees. If not, a stocking tree is a tree like structure with hooks made to hold Christmas stockings. I was commissioned to make two of these trees for a client. In this article I will explain the process and retrospect on what I would change next time I make a stocking tree, or a garden obelisk as it is essentially the same design.
Design
Speaking of design, I am very happy with the way these trees turned out. My previous iteration used a flat piece of wood on top with a finial to cap the tree, which I wasn’t wild about as soon as I put it on.
Old Version
New Version
My new design took that finial out of the equation, terminating the tops all together into a point. This gives the tree a modern, sleek look, matching the rest of the tree rather than clashing like the old design did. In short, I implemented a lesson learned from the last time I built one of these and I’m happy with the result.
Construction
Creating the trees was straight forward. I started with 2x12s because large lumber like a 2x12 comes from bigger trees than 2x4s meaning there is less likelihood of pith entering your project. The pith is the center of the tree and it’s best to cut out and avoid using because of the way the tree expands and contracts with changes in humidity. I’ll explain.
Trees are porous, they move water up and down the trunk from the roots to the branches and carry back down energy consumed from the sun. Trees are also circular and as they grow they become thicker, creating ever larger circles around the center of the tree. As a tree dries, it releases moisture and the fibers shrink, contracting together, and the whole tree is collapsing on itself but because the circles are all different sizes they will dry at different rates, building tension in the wood until it cracks. That’s why we cut wood into planks, by severing those circles we allow the wood to contract more evenly. This is also why there are specific ways to cut trees to improve stability and reduce cracking or warping.
I won’t get into the differences between rift sawn, quarter sawn, and plain sawn here, except to say dimensional lumber is generally plain sawn and plain sawn wood is the least stable and most prone to including the pith. which will crack the lumber down the middle.
The easiest way to deal with this is to cut it out. Exactly what I did as I cut each board into strips.
Then it’s a simple manner of figuring out how long everything needed to be, setting up stop blocks and jigs to cut all my parts, and assemble with some wood glue and screws. I’m glossing over the details because I have a build video for you to see how the project went together.
What I Would Improve
One, next time I would buy kiln dried lumber as I had to deal with sap, see my post on how I fixed the sappy mess. Second, I would have pre-sanded all my parts prior to construction. I had a hard time sanding the interior of the pieces after the fact.
Finish
I already wrote about the three part finish process, if you are interested it was in my 2/3/23 Friday Update.
I do want to talk about what I thought of the finish. One, the gel stain was great. Gel stain sits on top of the wood which makes it perfect for staining softwoods which tend to blotch. There is no blotching with a gel stain because it acts like paint, but is not pore filling so the grain comes through.
This was my first time using it and I loved it. It went on easy peasey, I used a paint brush, and wiped it off when dry. Definitely give it time to dry, I found about 45 minutes was the sweet spot, but that was based on the temperature and humidity, so experiment in your conditions. I did wipe too early the first time and it removed too much stain, causing the wood to streak through which made the piece look cheap.
The next new addition to my finish arsenal was spray lacquer. New to me but really a nice finish. It went on smoothly, easily, and dried fast for repeated coats. A much better product than polyurethane in my opinion, but be careful because alcohol will strip it off, so it is not quite as protective as poly. Luckily, lacquer self wets, meaning the alcohol in the lacquer will soften the previous coat and adhere to itself which is awesome when you mess up the project with alcohol as another coat or two and it’s good as new.
Hooks
I had a fantastic idea for the hooks. I made them movable by creating brackets which sat over the tree’s stretchers which the hooks attached to. The problem I faced was I needed to make 18 identical hook brackets. I got smart and realized I could make them all at once by using offcuts from the project to make a center spacer which was the exact same size as the stretchers, then adding two strips on the sides creating a long trough. Then I could cut these into 1 inch increments creating the cradles.
In the video you see me do this, but what I don’t share is that I cut about 30 of these and ended up keeping 18. The other 12 had fractures in the wood or bad glue joints which broke when stressed. That’s okay, I made spares and I would rather break these myself now than have the client break them in use and be out a bracket.
All things considered, this was a successful project with few hiccups and resulted in a video I’m really proud of. It’s not the most complicated project, but I feel like I’m hitting my video editing and voiceover stride. Leave me a comment if you agree or suggestions on things I could do to improve.