Do you have a cornettist in your life, and you can't figure out what to get them for their birthday? Then I have the perfect small woodworking project for you.

In terms of design I tried to make base of the cornetti rest at an angle, so that they end up with mouthpeice end nearer vertical. I also thought that it might be nice for it to be able to hold multiple instruments.

So with this in mind, I decided that an offcut from a newel post (4x4 pine) would work nicely. I started by marking out the angles on the wood. I decided that an 25° angle would likely work well and that I wanted to have the grain running parallel to the top surface for a nicer appearance.

First I bored holes for the dowels that would hold the cornetti, I went about an inch deep as I hope that will be more than strong enough and I didn't want to go deeper as it would risk the snail breaking through to the other side. I did the boring bit first as it meant I could have a nice bit of square wood to go straight into and there was no reason not to.

Making the two angle cuts wasn't too bad, I did my best to carefully establish kerfs with my tenon saw and then cut through with a panel saw since it cuts slightly quicker and the tenon saw can't cut deep enough. I didn't end up needing too much clean up with the plane to make everything fairly smooth and square-ish. I decided it wasn't essential to make things square as by eye it looked close enough.

Then I moved onto the dowels themselves, I have a whole load of 15mm dowel so that I what I used. Now the 15mm dowel is actually a hair(~0.3mm or so) over the diameter of my 15mm auger, so I had to shave down the dowels and make a small shoulder on them. I also rounded over the ends of the dowels that were sticking out as it looks nicer and it will keep them from damaging the bore of the instruments.

I wanted to add some kind of decorative detail around the top of it. Chamfers are a bit boring and I didn't want to deal with the noise and dust of my power router, so in the end I decided to take inspiration from a common decorative element on cornetti. To make the scallops I used a knife and a chisel, it was quite easily actually. I refined them a little with a file and then I scraped the pencil markings and the filing marks off.

All there was left to do after this was glue the dowels in place and apply finish. Before the glue up I decided to add small wedges to the base of the dowels to help keep them solid. In the end I decided on just some boiled linseed oil for the finish since I prefer natural and traditional finishes where possible. Although shellac could have been nice it will likely see some moisture coming out of the bore of the cornetti so I hope the linseed oil will be slightly more resistant to that. It was for the same reason that I also decided on using titebond II instead of my preferred bone glue, since it is more water resistant.

EDIT: I have found that the cornetti have a bit of a tendancy to rotate and I think this can be solved with something like leather to go around the base of the dowels. However since the stand still stays balanced it isn't a pressing issue to fix I think.