Our wooden Christmas tree stand: a quick project, built in a few hours before decorating the Christmas tree. Last year we promised our kids that in 2020 we will have a natural Christmas tree. For years we decorated an 240 cm high artificial Christmas tree, so we were not prepared with a stand for this one. We only had a few hours to build it because they were very impatient.

If you prefer a video, you can watch the entire process on our YouTube channel:

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We quickly established the most important requirements:

• the Christmas tree stand should be built out of hardwood: it had to be heavy and strong
• we wanted to use wood scraps left from various other older projects. We didn’t want to waste good wood for such a small project
• it had to have a special design, to somehow stand out

Starting from all these things, we decided to build our new Christmas tree stand out of 5 cm thick oak scraps. We searched and we found some long enough scraps for such a project:

1. I drew the two elements of the stand on a piece of plywood: the shape of the legs and circle for the cylindrical frame.

2. I cut the two templates using the bandsaw. We were going to use them as templates for repetitive cuts: four legs and 8 quarters of a circle (for the cylindrical frame).

For cutting the outer circle of the round template, I used the method described in this post where we show you how to build a bandsaw circle cutting jig to cut a perfect circle . I will not insist here too much, you can find more details there.

We cut the inner circle of the template using the bandsaw using the same jig, just a new hole, closer to the blade. The most important thing was for the outer surface to look as good as possible. But we tried to make the inner surface as clean as possible, too.

I cut the new circle into four pieces. Basically I used a quarter circle as a template.

3. After building the template for the legs, I realized that the shape didn’t look that good. I decided to make some adjustments: I made one more cutout and got the final shape of the legs.

4. We used the same method to cut both the legs and the pieces of the cylindrical frame. I cut them using the bandsaw after drawing the shape on the oak wood boards:

• I planned the oak wood scraps on all the sides, using only the thicknesser machine. It was not important for the faces to be perpendicular to each other, I just needed two paralel faces.
• I drew the shapes I needed using the templates
• I cut them on the bandsaw

These are the four legs for the Christmas tree stand, before routing, sanding and finishing them:

I arranged the 8 pieces building the cylindrical frame, before gluing them with water based adhesive. I took care to stagger them in a brick pattern to get the required strength:

5. I glued the cylindrical stand using water based adhesive, power tape and many F clamps. After the adhesive dried, I filled the small spaces and other imperfections with two parts putty.

6. In the meantime, I have planed a narrower and thinner oak board that will have a double role:

• to increase the strength of the cylindrical frame
• to facilitate my work while installing the Christmas tree in the stand

7. I secured two MDF scraps with screws to be able to make some cutouts on the bottom edge of the cylinder frame. For these cuts, I used a bearing copy straight router bit. After routing, I removed the MDF scraps used as a template and I screwed the narrow board in the cutout.

I rounded the sharp edges of the legs and the edges of the cylindrical frame, using a round over router bit with medium radius.

After rounding all the edges, the legs and the frame looked way better and closer to their final look:

• the legs of the tree stand

• the frame of the tree stand

9. I wanted to fasten the legs to the cylindrical frame using screws, from the inside to the outside. In order to do that, the contact surface had to be as large as possible. So, we drew a rounded line on one end of the legs (using the cylindrical frame as template), in order to be able to cut them using the bandsaw.

10. I sanded all the parts of the stand with 80 grit sandpaper using the belt sander and then with 120 on the orbital sander. I did a test assembly before the final finish.

11. When I was sure everything fitted as it should:

• I applied oil to the legs

• I applied two layers of white water based paint to the cylindrical frame

We assembled the stand again, and this is what we got:

Regarding the installation of the Christmas tree in the wooden stand, we recommend you to watch the video posted on our YouTube channel, because it is more difficult to explain in words. And when you do it, don’t forget to subscribe to our channel to see the latest movies and even the oldest ones!

Merry Christmas everyone!