Wooden Christmas Tree! 🎄

by Ryan Turek · Published December 4, 2016 · Updated March 31, 2017

I recently saw a really neat little table/desk accessory that I thought I’d recreate in my own way, and here it is! I used some scrap 1×1 cutoffs that I’ve been holding onto for a few years (you can never have too much scrap) and they were perfect for this project. Future trees may get some stain treatment instead of just oil, or these may even be nice with some brown or green paint. I like how it turned out! Mine sits on my desk at work and I reposition it every morning when I get to my desk. 🙂

First I milled these scrap pieces into four .5″x.5″ pieces per length of 1×1 and picked out the nicest ones to use for the tree.

I then used a triangle to trace an outline of my tree in pencil.

I chopped off the extra pieces freehand on my band saw, but you can do this with a hand saw or a table saw almost as easy. You can even leave the ends square and just cut them as close to your lines as possible if you like, but I wanted the angled ends for mine so I cut along the lines I drew.

Next, I sized a dowel to approximately the right height for my tree, and found a base that would support it (the 2x4x4 block on the bottom)

Using a drill press, I drilled a hole in each of the branches as close to the middle as possible (you may want to measure carefully to find the exact middle – I just eyed the measurements because I didn’t think it would matter much if they were a tiny bit off.

I then slid all the branches on the dowel, drilled a hole for the base and the top, glued the dowel into the base and the dowel into the top as well to keep it from falling apart!