A Few Bottle Stoppers

Vaughn McMillan

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Here are a few the the recent bottle stoppers I've done. I've been doing more small (lower-priced) things in preparation for a show next month.

These are, from left to right, black and white ebony, acrylic with a ceramic rose, and cocobolo. The two wooden ones were dry sanded through 600 grit, then straight to the tripoli, white diamond, and carnauba wax buffs. The acrylic was done the same, except wet sanded instead of dry.

Bottle Stopper3397T - 800.jpg Bottle Stopper3395T - 800.jpg

Comments and suggestions are welcome as usual -
 
Looking good there also. An idea, in the FWIW category. A friend of mine, who sells bowls and things in the same art gallery where my pens are, has started placing bottle stoppers there also. He didn't sell many. Then he started making them with just simple corks instead of the fancy chrome thingys. That reduced the price considerably and they started selling. I make stoppers only for gifts to stay with the higher quality parts.
 
Those look great! I still haven't made any stoppers, but I know a guy here in town that sells them to wine shops and the ones with cork or the plastic stoppers sell better than the chrome ones. But then at shows he attends the chrome ones sell better.:dunno:
 
Thanks for the comments, you guys.

I have a few of the wooden dowel/silicone stopper kits coming soon (bought them from Barbara Gill in a want-ad on the AAW forums), but I figured I'd try selling them more for kitchen use than wine bottle use.

Like the pens, I'm not planning to have a lot of stoppers in stock...just a few to have some lower-priced items. I'm still mainly interested in selling hollow forms and bowls, and even if I don't sell many, I don't intend to change what I'm making just for the sake of sales. (Especially little $10 to $20 craft items.) I realize this is a backwards business model, but I'm selling things so I can make more of what I like, as opposed to making things I don't like so I can sell more. ;)
 
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