Having made a handful of cuts with my circular saw both by hand and using makeshift fences, I decided that I wasn’t quite satisfied with the accuracy that I was able to achieve.

I looked into a handful of options for making more precise cuts and settled on trying to make a track saw conversion for it. After watching several “DIY Track Saw” videos on YouTube that involved varying levels of complexity and hardware, I picked one to follow and build. I wanted one that would be reversible so that I could still use the circular saw on its own if I desired. I altered the design slightly by using ¹⁄₄″ plywood throughout instead of a combination of ¹⁄₄″ MDF panel and a ¹⁄₂″ MDF board in order to keep it a bit lighter.

I had just moved into a new place and needed some living room furniture. I planned a set of three matching items – an entry table, a coffee table, and a set of shelves. The tables were simpler so I started with those. I staggered the steps, building one part of the entry table first and then afterwards doing the same for the coffee table. Because the two were so similar, I was often able to immediately apply lessons learned from one to the other.

I spent quite a while searching around for different potential designs online and ended up settling on something like this A-Frame Table for the entry table. The same basic design squashed down shorter and wider would serve for the coffee table.

This was the first of my quarantine projects, and I wanted something relatively simple to get into woodworking. It had been several years since I built anything, and hadn’t ever really worked with hardwoods. I was already planning some living room furniture but wanted a small project to start off with.

I have a few wine bottles but didn’t have any dedicated storage for them. I didn’t need a particularly high capacity rack and was planning to store it on a small shelf within a cupboard. I also had an irregular piece of leftover hardwood to use for the project. The width of the shelf that I intended to put the rack on and the dimensions of the board provided some initial size constraints for the project.