Christmas Tree Emergency

Christmas Tree Emergency

Solving a Tree-Mounting Crisis

Just got the Christmas Tree inside and started to put it into the tree stand and I quickly found that I had a problem on my hands. My tree was too short. The lowest branches hit the side of my tree stand before the bottom of the tree trunk was low enough in the stand to mount properly.

There was not enough length on the trunk to fit it onto the spike in the bottom of my tree stand. This made the tree wobbly even with the set screws tightened.

You can see in the diagram that I was in a predicament.

The straightforward approach would be to cut off the lowest branches and that would take care of the problem - the trunk would slip far enough down into the stand. But with this tree cutting off the lower branches would disfigure the tree. It would substantially reduce the size of the tree and make it look ugly.

I was stuck.

I came to the conclusion that if only I had a longer trunk, things would work out OK.

I could not go back in time and prevent my problem from happening. So I decided to lengthen my Christmas Tree's trunk!

I decided to lengthen the trunk by adding a block of wood onto it.

I cut out a "Trunk Extension" disk from exterior rated plywood thick enough to give my tree the height (length) I needed to get it to the spike in the bottom of the tree stand. The disk needed to be smaller in diameter than the tree trunk so that it would not cover the perimeter of the trunk where a good portion of water uptake happens. If I had it to do over I would put large holes around the disk to give the tree trunk greater exposure to water.

I drilled pilot holes in the Trunk Extension and then used screws to mount it to the bottom of the trunk.

Next I drilled the center hole for the spike so that the tree will be properly seated.

The trunk extension added the right amount of length to make the tree fit in the stand and be securely mounted.

Place the tree in the stand and tighten the set screws. As shown, the lowest branches cleared the tree stand and the tree was seated properly in the stand!

I hope you don't face the same problem I did, but if you do I hope this is helpful!

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy!