We found ourselves in need of several racks on which to hang a variety of items. Having learned some lessons from 3+ years of reno work, we decided to test our design before launching into full-scale production.
We scrounged up some scrap wood. This turned out to be oak because that matched the dowel rods we had on hand.
A few cuts and we had all the parts we'd need for this mock-up.
Next we needed to drill holes for the dowels. We knew these had to be more precise than usual (we also didn't have much margin for error with these narrow strips of wood), so we used the guide to give us a guaranteed vertical hole.
Eight holes and three dowels later we had our demo model. The tape is standing in for a more attractive brace to keep the legs from sliding out. Everything worked perfectly, so we were emboldened to scale up.
This required a little more wood because we planned to make five racks. A quick trip to Home Depot and we had all the requisite pine. That was our only choice of material because we needed 4-foot dowels and they only came in pine.
Because the dowels are an inch thick we also needed spade drill bits to make big enough holes.
We ripped the 1x10 boards into 2.25-inch sections because we figured this would give the legs sufficient strength while being as light as possible.
We got a tad fancy by adding a little detail to the tops of the legs. Simple 45-degree cuts that we applied to all the legs.
Making the holes was also pretty straightforward. We marked the height, found the center of the board, and drilled the holes. The only wrinkle here was learning that a cordless drill doesn't have nearly enough power for a spade bit, so we pulled out the corded version and it made quick work.
We installed the dowels and voila! We were on our way...right? Not so fast, whippersnapper. We had first tried to drill one-inch holes to match the dowels but they were too tight. That wouldn't suit our purposes of quick and easy set up/take down. So we moved to the next size bit--1.125 inches. Unfortunately, this made the holes too large. We tried several things to narrow the gap but none worked. This left the whole contraption too unstable (both side-to-side and front-to-back), and just wouldn't do. Back to the drawing board.
We considered a number of different designs but fell back on something that worked well before when we built a small bench. The crucial element of the design are 5-degree bevels on the bottoms of the legs that produce a double-inward slant. This way we could pin an unattached dowel in place just by angling the legs outward. Here's our remake of the rack in the photo above.
It has a new cross piece for the hole.
This proved remarkably steady so this time we really did move into full-scale production. Here's a much taller model:
And here it is with three more cousins. Combined with the little one we have our five. To give these tall ones a little more stability we added a cross piece about six inches from the ground. These easily break down into three pieces (two sets of legs and the dowel) that are light and very portable.
No comments:
Post a Comment