A Christmas tree stand that just might work
... if you've got wood, a hammer and some nails
In 1962, a store-bought tree stand that actually worked was apparently still an evolving invention.
CBC's Mr. Fix-It had the sturdy answer to the problem of an unsteady tree well before the era of the instructive YouTube video.
The result was a tree stand similar to what you might see in Charles Schulz's A Charlie Brown Christmas.
Here's what you needed:
- tape measure
- four 1x4 boards, each 2' long
- hammer
- nails
- the Christmas tree itself
- a workshop
- at least four square feet of empty floor space in the room the tree would occupy
Mr. Fix-It was the TV name of Peter Whittall, CBC's resident handyman in the 1960s.
His weekly program showed viewers his DIY method for building things like a portable picnic table and a plywood wading pool. (He also offered tips for carving a turkey at Christmas.)
Step by step
"The problem is to make the tree stand," said Whittall, emphasizing "stand."
He used a section of trunk, not an entire tree, to demonstrate. And the first step was to measure the diameter of the trunk base.
"Then you start off with four pieces of board, or wood, or lumber," he said. He was using pine 1x4s, but 2x4s were OK too.
Fortunately, Whittall had already nailed together the four sections of wood into two perpendicular pieces, each with a tab at one end.
"The most critical measurement is this part right here," he said, indicating the short tab of wood where one board was nailed partway along the other.
Putting it all together
Then the task was to fit the two pieces together, so that a perfectly sized square would trap the tree trunk with four spokes extending outwards to sit on the floor.
"And you've got it four ways from Sunday," said Whittall, showing how the four sides of the square were nailed to the trunk itself.
In under two TV minutes, he was almost done.
"Keep it long, two feet, and that will stop the tree from over-balancing," he added. "And there's room for presents all the way around."
The method would accommodate a tree up to eight feet tall, he said.
How one might water a tree set up in this way, and the work involved in deconstructing it after the holiday period, went unaddressed.
