Wooden Branch Trivet

If you live in a wood cottage in the middle of a forest, or maybe it's enough you like country style, you would like this trivet too. It's made cutting some disks from a little wood branch, and linking them together with short cord segments. You can arrange the disks in variuos shapes, in this instructable I show you some choices, but there are infinite, also you can start from a bigger branch, and make a kitchen carpet instead of a trivet ;-)

Step 1: The Slices

As material it's better choose a seasoned wood, so it will not cracks with time, and it will not expel humidity exposed to the heat of the pots. You can also let it seasoning after the end of the making process. I've started from a branch with a regular circular section, but you can obtain good results, and maybe better ones, with a more rough shape (it depends on how much deep you live in the forest...) You have also the opportunity to leave the bark or to remove it, I've left it in some of my trivet, as you can see in the first picture, but I removed it with sand paper in this bigger disks.

Step 2: The RPG Version

You can obtain a nearly circular trivet with an exagonal arrangment, but if you like more chess than role games maybe you would choose a square disposal. I've made both but the square one is in the my mountain house (only near the forest).

Step 3: The Classic One

Look at the reciprocal connection between wood disks to count how many holes you need to drill in any disk side. If you're more lazy than me I've already counted for you and noted on the blueprints.

Step 4: Best Match Search and Drilling

Dispose the disks in the shape you like more, and move them switching one with the others, untill you'll find the arrangment in which you think the distance among them is the shortest. Sign all the connection with a pencil to restore them after drilling the holes in disks borders. To make holes use a column drill with a vice so you can be sure to keep them aligned with the flat sides. The more the disks are thin, the bigger is the chance to break the wood between hole and surface. The holes need to be at least 1-2 cm long, but try not to reach the center of the disk, it's better the'll be separate one each other.

Step 5: Cord and Glue

It's time to decide the cord type to link them. I've opted for a thick rough string, wich is also resistant to heat. For this reason you can't use nylon cord or something else which melts in contact with an hot object. As glue I thought that transparent silicon would also resist to heat, on the contrary some glues could catch fire or at least produce dangerous fumes.

Step 6: The Funny Part

Cut some segments of the right lenght, try some of them to see if you can make two adiacent disks contact with cord in place. Then begin to insert them in external disks holes, after filled the holes with some silicon. To decide the silicon quantity, try to not let it comes out after pushing the cord inside the hole. Move the cord backwards and forwards to make it linking better with silicon.

Step 7: Closing the Circle

After inserted all the cords in all the external disks, fill with silicon the holes of the center disk, and the side hole of the disk next to one you want put in place. You should be able to insert all the two cords of an external disk before passing to the adiacent one. The process should be much complicated in case of wider trivet with a bigger number of disks, this is the reason I suggest to begin with a simple 7 disks exagon.

Step 8: Some Variants

Indeed this trivet is simple but also suitable for big pots. In this pictures you see other trivets you can make. I've not yet linked them but you can see them already drilled and disposed in the right shapes. Maybe at the end the disks will keep a little space among them, don't worry about that, it will give more flexibility to the trivet and it will let looking at the connection method, which is always interesting. You won't see the glue/silicon anyway, especially if it's transparent.

Step 9: Polishing

You'll obtain a good result polishing the wood with some oil, clear or dark. Although I don't know how these products could react exposed to high temperatures. Anyway I show you some variants based on olive oil (on the bigger 7 disks trivet) and on a product appropriate to darken the wood. The dark trivet is then linked linked with white cotton cord, which I thought should be nice contrasting with the wood.

Step 10: Cooking!

It's time to make a good coffee or some polenta ;-)