The idea for this project came out of a much simpler idea for trying to mount a baby monitor. Our daughter was just born and we were trying to set up one of the popular baby accessories these days, a video monitor. We couldn't find a place to mount the monitor that would get a full shot of the crib. Finally I said I'll just build a simple pole with a base and we can mount the camera at the top. As I thought more about the idea I was thinking it would be nice if I could turn this into something more than just a pole, something we might be able to use after we stop using the monitor. That's when I thought of a coat rack.
Now I'm certainly not an expert with coat racks but from experience there were two issues I wanted to try to prevent as best as possible:
- Coats/clothes failing off of the coat rack pegs
- The entire coat rack falling over from too much weight on the pegs
The latter is obviously a safety concern with a little one running around, and by far the more important issue. So to try to prevent this, there were three features I built into the design. First, I made the base very wide, roughly a 15" square. Next, I made the pegs short so they wouldn't extend out past the base. Finally, I made the base heavy. The base is made up of three layers of 3/4" plywood with solid maple trim. In addition however, is this:
This 10 lb. barbell plate is embedded in the middle of the base. This was a perfect way to increase the weight. It's much heavier than the wood but it also conveniently has a nice hole through the center. I was able to mount the post deep into the base, going right through the center of the weight. I specifically chose a plate with a 2" hole for that reason, it was a bit more expensive but worth it. Once the base was glued together the weight was completely hidden.
Now, to try to minimize clothes failing off of the pegs I wanted to avoid having the pegs come out exactly 90 degrees from the post. In my experience clothes fall off easily when the peg is completely horizontal. Getting these pegs right was the hardest challenge of this project.
Using round dowels initially seemed like the obvious choice but drilling a half-inch hole on an angle resulted in a messy hole that was always bigger than the dowel.
Then I tried to get fancy.
I tried to steam bend the dowels. The idea was, if I could bend the dowels I'd be able to drill a straight hole into the post but still have the peg end up at an angle. It seemed like a pretty clever idea, and I'm sure there's experienced wood workers that would have no problem doing this. For me, however, no matter what I tried I could not bend those dowels without breaking them.
Finally I found my solution. It was a simpler concept and I could do it using the tools I had. I purchased 3/4" square dowels. I drilled holes in the ends of them and used 3/8" dowel pins to connect them to post. This solved all of my problems. I still had the messy hole problem but now, because the square dowel was bigger than the actual hole, any imperfections would be covered up. Square dowels were key because they're easily to clamp, which made it possible to drill holes in the dowel ends. Clamping a round dowel is very difficult. Looking back on it now, square dowels seem obvious if for no other reason then they match the rest of the design.
The last little touch was to use alphabet blocks as the peg ends. Walmart had an inexpensive set that was perfect for this. I used dowel pins again to attach the blocks to the pegs. I purposely did not glue them together though so that they could be replaced if we eventually move this out of the nursery.
So I'll end with just a few more pictures of the coat rack. This project turned out to be bigger than my original, simple idea, of just a post for a monitor but it's been a great addition to our daughter's room.
 |
| Toddler-level pegs |
No comments:
Post a Comment