Catching Up - Spice Rack

In my goal to get caught up with posting projects, today I'm focusing on a little spice rack that I built and installed in a narrow kitchen cabinet after we remodeled our kitchen about five years ago.  The wood for this project came from a pallet that the kitchen cabinets were delivered on.  I basically built two racks.  One for wider jars and one that was thinner sized to fit standard spice canisters.  I used cabinet rollers to mount the racks, allowing them to slide out.  The thinner rack is mounted to the larger rack, allowing it to extend out farther.  I had a hard time finding the right rollers that I wanted and in the end the racks don't extend out as far as I would like (especially with the microwave extending out).

The larger rack used wood slats to keep the jars in place, while on the smaller rack I experimented with steel rods.  The rods were about 1/16" diameter and I bent them near the ends to fit them into holes that I drilled on the rack.  I rubbed the rods with steel wool to shine them up and then sprayed them with lacquer for protection.  I really like the look of the steel rods on the wooden frame  and they allow for maximum visibility of the spices.

Finally the rack was finished with boiled linseed oil.

A few things I learned from this project:
1. Dovetail joints don't work so well when arranged with the grain on the side of a board.  They are really best for use on the end grain.  Lining them up along the grain just invites them to split.
2. We use a lot of spices.  It would have been good to have a wider cabinet with a third rack.
3. Cabinet rollers are good for cabinets.  The ones I used are very stiff as they are rated for quite a bit more weight than we have on the spice rack.  If I ever do this again I will try to come up with a better system that extends the racks more.

The was a fun and very practical project that we get to enjoy every day.