Industrial Style Christmas Tree

 When you ask the man of your dreams to make you a Christmas tree with a difference, you have to be able to be open-minded - you never know what awesome creativity you may unleash! Here is the story (and his very FIRST post!!!) from his perspective...

When the wife says "Can you make me a quirky christmas tree?" it can be roughly interpreted as go to the shed and tinker - Awesome!

Mrs S  likes to find inspiration from blogs, magazines, realestate pics, etc.  I on the other hand went to the shed and started rummaging through the materials stash.  Can I make a christmas tree from.... ply - boring, bamboo - probably, fencing wire - interesting but not enough, cardboard - did that one other year, storm water pipe - bingo!

It met all my design criteria: cheap, recycled, not too big, and creative.

Mrs S was not so impressed with the storm water pipe concept, but probably because a few doodle circles on a page looked nothing like a christmas tree, and gesturing with a dirty piece of PVC pipe triggered the "that dirty piece of junk is not going inside my lounge room" response.

Undeterred, I retreated to the man cave, and fired up the power tools.  

If you're having a crack at it yourself, cutting it on the angle (I used 45 degrees) will make the finished tree taller and skinnier rather than short and fat if you just cut straight circles, but it does make it harder to stick together.

The PVC glue I had was starting to go hard..  It turns out that this is perfect for making christmas trees!  Place the pieces together. Mark where they touch.  Draw pencil lines down the side of pipe from the marks.  Then all you have to do is line up the big glue string dangling off the brush with the line, and hey presto! Glue just where it is needed, and no blue glue over everything.  I put little spring clamps on them to hold it still while I put glue on the next piece.  They were pretty much stuck by the time the next one was ready to add.

The trunk is a treated pine pole that was left over from another project.  It was a little tricky lining up the curve of the pipe, plus the 45 angle, and then free handing it through the table saw.  Decided it would have been much easier with a band saw.  Cutting the pipe would have been easier on a band saw, as my table saw lacked the height to get through in 1 pass.  Going to put the tree up on top of the bookshelf so a bandsaw will fit under it, and see if santa gets the hint :)

Half an old cupboard door for the base, a few screws to hold it together, some small holes in the top of each pipe section so the ornaments have somewhere to hang from, and you're done.

 

Pretty easy really.

Mrs S seemed to be pretty pleased with the result, and the kids were super keen to hang ornaments on it.  

Not sure it is finished yet, Maybe some lights in the holes between the sections, if I can hide the wires somewhere.  Perhaps next year.