Wooden Christmas Tree

These wooden turnable Christmas trees are really nice Christmas decorations and they make great gifts.

I looked around in the attic and found the following leftovers:

1. A piece of wood (to use as a base)
2. Wooden paint stirring sticks (used as branches)
3. A wooden stick (the tree trunk)
4. A metal bar with wire
5. Some nuts

Material you need:

1. Ruler or measuring tape
2. Pencil
3. Saw
4. Drill

First you have to decide how big you want the tree to be.
I drew a triangle on a piece of paper. This helped me when assembling the tree later.
Measure the length of the largest tree branch on the bottom of the tree.
Each following branch needs to be a bit shorter. I made all of them about 3 mm shorter.
How many branches you need will depend on the shape of your tree and how thick your wood is.
Use a ruler and pencil to mark where you want to cut.
My longest branche was 16,5 Cm and my shortest 1,7 Cm long. I used 65 Branches of 3 Mm thick on my tree.

Use a saw to cut each branch to size.

Use the drawing of the tree and lay your branches on it to shape your tree. Maybe you will have to many or not enough branches. By using the paper you can shape it nicely. I provided a shape you can use if you like, or you can just draw your own shape.

Use a ruler and pencil to draw the center on each branch. Drill holes in the centers of the branches. Make the holes just a little bigger then the metal bar, so the branches will fit on the bar.

Decide how long you want the trunk to be. Cut the stick to size using a saw. Next drill a hole through the length of the stick so it can fit over the metal bar.
My trunk was 6 Cm long.

Draw a square of 10 cm on the piece of wood and cut it out with your saw. If your tree is bigger or smaller then mine, your base might have to be bigger or smaller.
Drill a hole through the base.
Use a larger drill to make the hole bigger on the bottom (make sure that you don't drill completely through the base this time.)

Screw a nut on the metal bar. Put the base over the bar and secure it with another nut.
Put the trunk over the metal bar.
Now you can start attaching the branches, starting with the longest one and ending with the shortest one on the top of the tree.
Use another nut to secure the branches on the metal bar.
My metal bar was a perfect length for the size of tree I made. If yours is a lot longer you might have to cut it to size.

Congratulations your tree is now finished.
You can display it as a flat tree or a turned tree.
After I finished the first tree, I made a second one. That one was about half the size.
Look at the pictures for some ideas of the finished trees.

If you want you could paint the tree. You could even use several different colors to paint it. I liked the plain wood, so I left it as it was.