In this instructable I'm going to show you how to make a candle holder for tealights, that looks like a dynamite stick.

Just in case you are wondering, dynamite and TNT are not the same thing. It's a common misconception, that is just plain wrong. Dynamite was invented in 1867 by the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, while TNT was invented in 1863 by the German chemist Joseph Wilbrand. Whilst Dynamite is simply nitroglycerin in a more convenient form, TNT is Trinitrotoluene, so the two are two totally different chemical compounds. The stuff formed into short sticks and wrapped in paper is actually dynamit, not TNT... From now on should somebody sing "Cause I'm T.N.T., I'm dynamite" or should you see a TNT stick shown in a cartoon, you will know better.

Now that I got that off my chest ;-) let's go back to the project. The idea is not new, I've seen a "TNT" candle as part of the Red Dead Redemption merchandise and after searching a bit I found a version very similar to the one I had in mind at Meninos. What bothered me about it though, other than of course it saying "TNT" on it was the shiny finish. So I decided to make my own version.

Step 1: Stuff You Need

Material

Wooden pole (Ø 42 mm; at least 60 cm long)
Tea lights (preferably black)
Red and black paint, paint brush
(Primer)
Sanding Paper
Black tape
Masking tape

Tools

Drill (a vice is certainly helpful)
Forstner drill bit (38mm)
Saw

Step 2:

Start by cutting the pole to the length you would like your sticks to be. Mine are 21 cm. I taped them together to make sure that they were all the same length and sanded them that way.

To make sure that your holes are perfectly centred, you will have to find the middle of each stick. Make sure to be thorough, since there is not much clearance. Start by drawing a line across the circle, as shown in the second picture of this step. Find its centre and draw a second line perpendicular to the first one, as shown in the third picture. Repeat this process, to get a better result. If you did get what I was trying to explain, here is a whole instructable on how to find the centre of a circle.

Since I my drill press wasn't strong enough to drill into the pole, I had to use a vice and my normal drill. Thankfully this worked rather well. The 38 mm hole will be a very tight fit, because the tea lights have a diameter of 38 mm. So you will probably have to widen it a bit with sanding paper, or a Dremel, should you have one.

Step 3:

Though priming the pieces is optional, you should do so to get a better result. As you can see, I started with spraying the top black. I didn't bother using masking tape, because I didn't wanted the end result to look perfect.
Afterwards I painted the sticks red and tried not to cover the black entirely, to give them a kind of a dirty look.

I chose this font to write "Dynamit" (which is Swedish and German for dynamite), and cut the letters out of masking tape. Then I spray painted them black.

Before using the black tape, I used the masking tape to hold the sticks together, as shown in the last picture. This will allow you, to work more precise.