Earthquake-proof Wine Rack

I have enough wine to want to have a wine rack, but I live in an earthquake-prone area. It only took one bottle of wine falling off my previous wine rack and smashing on the floor to make it pretty clear that I wanted to have an earthquake-proof wine rack which would be cheap, simple to use and reliable.

I found a nice cedar wooden rack for cheap on eBay from a guy in Oregon called HowardHaroldHelm. They're well-priced and well-made.

But the racks are still not earthquake proof.  So, I looked around for existing solutions. Well.. you could spend $2.50 per bottle of wine on a QuakeGuardian (trademarked and patented, thank you), which seems a bit much to me, and besides, takes a significant amount of time to install.   This one was pretty inspirational - but it requires zip-typing each o-ring to the wood, which is fiddly, and I felt it would look pretty ugly. I think we can do better.  And news articles on the topic aren't much help either.

Here's my solution: it's quick, it's easy, it looks fine, and it's cheap.

Step 1 First, you'll need some large O-rings.

The size doesn't matter so much - which is completely in your interest, since you can just jump on whatever's cheap.  Just search for "O-rings" on eBay and find something reasonably cheap or check your local plumbing supply.  You don't want anything smaller than about 2" or larger than about 3.5".  Your aim is something large enough to slip the neck of wine bottles in without difficulty, but small enough that the body of the bottle won't fall through it. I found 50 2.75" o-rings for $8 shipped.

Comments

[Jayefuu]

This a good idea! Some small P-clips might make it look better and be more long lasting than the staples to hold the O-rings on.

[jofish]

Good point. But it would definitely take longer - the staple gun is *fast*!