Making a coat stand for a child

So I thought it was about time I finally wrote up the build of a coat stand that I made, (about 2 years ago).

The idea for this coat stand was sent to me by my friend who said I should make one for my daughter. I forget the exact link to the inspiration, but I do remember it was on Ana Whites website called "Knock off Wood, free woodworking plans for furniture http://ana-white.com/"

If you have a few days you should definitely check out that site, it's chock full of amazing furniture, includes plans.

You don't have to follow the plans, you can be like me and decide to make your own plans up in your head to build approximate versions of stuff on the site.

Anyway, now that I've covered where the idea came from it seems only right to give a little background.

Design
At the time I made this coat stand my daughter was about 3, she was getting to an age when you should care about your stuff, and start hanging up your coat etc, but not yet at an age where she could reach regular height coat hooks.

So the solution was obviously to build her a coat stand more suited for her.

This means that it should have pegs reachable by a 3 year old who stands about 3 feet tall, (so the height of the stand is about 4 feet, so she'd have to reach up at the start, but would not immediatly outgrown the stand.

I decided that the coat stand would need four pegs that would be at her current arm height that she could hand coats on, and a further 4 hat stand type pegs, to put hats on of course. As she grew the hat stand pegs would eventually become coat pegs.

So the parameters for design are:
four coat pegs, at about 3 feet from the ground, four hat pegs about 1 foot above the coat pegs, a stable base is a must.






Materials,
I decided that I'd use softwood to make this coat stand, it's easy to work with, and has a variety of finishing options from plain no finish, or varnish, to any colour as it's easy to paint.

The pegs I decided would be made of dowel. (12mm dowel so that they would not easily snap)

To build with nice proportions of 12mm diameter dowel pegs I decided that 48mm square pine was the best wood to use.



Onto the build
So the biggest gripe I had with the materials was the condition that it was in. I bought square planed timber from Wickes, this should be ready to go. if I'd bought rough sawn wood I'd agree that imperfections were ok.

So the first job was to inspect your materials and work out what I could do to cut out imperfections. like this:

Once I'd decided the best cuts for the wood (and there is no exact science for this that I'm aware of) I started cutting, setting the blade of my saw to 45 degrees I made a cut around 14 inches down the length of the wood.
then set the blade back to 90 degrees to make the next cut again about 14 inches down the length of wood.
This will gave me two bits of wood, with one square cut end, and the other end cut at 45 degrees.

Repeating the above gave me four of these. these will be the legs of the coat stand.

Next I made a 45 degree cut in the remaining (approximately 1 meter) length of wood.
Then flipped it over and made another 45 degree cut, then 2 more cuts and I had a square point.

I did this at the top and the bottom

Next I marked a ring about 1.5 inches from the bottom of the base of the point, this is where the legs will attach.

And a further ring about a half inch above that, (and another about an inch after that)

The centre of these lines are drilled with a 6mm drill bit, (ready to recieve a dowel peg to make a strong joint)

 Back to the legs.

Clearly the 45 degree cut is what will butt against the centre poll that I've been busy marking and drilling and making pointy.

But the legs do need some further work, and the moment the base will be the corner of the block of wood.

so I set my saw back to 45 degrees and cut an angle in the opposing direction to the mitre that will face the centre poll, then I cut again to smooth off the top of the leg.

I now marked and drilled the long mitred face of the leg, to recieve dowel pegs and glue.

Now I did a dry test of matching the joints (A dry test is where you put it all together without glue, this allows you to make any final adjustments before it's too late!!)

Finally I put dowel pegs and glue on the joint.
I set the first two joints against a table using wooden blocks screwed to the top to clamp it in position.
The final two legs were arranged with the blocks clamped to the centre stand, then the leg clamped to the blocks, (allowing the odd angled leg to be clamped to the stand)

Finally I drilled 12mm holes in the stand at about 4 feet from the floor. a hole going straight through, and another hole about an inch higher going through the other way.

Then I glued an 8 inch length of dowel into the holes, (with 3" sticking out of either side")

The hat pegs were drilled into the top of the stand, (about an inch and a half from the top, so the pegs are about as far along the centre poll as the legs are up it).

I don't have a drill press with a moveable table so I used a set square, and roughly lined the drill up to drill coat pegs at an angle into the top of the stand.

Lengths of 12mm dowel we then glued into these holes.

Finally the coat stand was painted a pastle pink colour.

Craft Lessons: Jointing wood

My interests are quite varied, if you're here then I assume that yours are too.
I'm running a series of Electronics tutorials, these are tagged electronics lessons, to compliment these I'm also going to run a series of tutorials called craft lessons, I'm calling them craft lessons as they will deal with a rather broad subject area, not just working with wood, but also metal, and other materials.

There are some basic joints in wood work, each have different strengths and weaknesses, some are easy to make, others require a little more time and skill.

Before you can really put anything together you really need to know how to put things together.

Butt Joint
In this joint two bits of wood are litereally butted up against each other and glued in place.
due to the fact that one piece of wood will likely be the end grain, the joint is particularly weak.

You can re-enforce this joint, either using wooden dowels, nails, screws, or even metal fixings that are attached across the joint to both bits of wood.

Lap Joint
A lap joint is a little stronger than a butt joint, because there are the edges of the grain glued to each other rather then just the end of the grain joined to an edge.

In a Lap joint the edges of the pieces of wood overlap each other, one on top, and one on the bottom, to create the joint you need to remove material from the underside of the top piece to create a cut out for the bottom piece to fit into, and you need to remove material from the top side of the bottom piece for the top piece to fit into.

To create a lap joint:
First, mark out the material that you wish to remove.

Second make a cut where your cut out will end.

Now you have a choice,
You can either us a chisel to try to remove the whole block at once, and sometimes this will work, other times the chisel will follow the grain of the wood and you'll end up with a pocket that's deeper at one end than the other, or you'll split straight through the wood and it'll all fall apart.

Or you can continue to make a series of cuts down your work piece to the depth of your cut out.

These comb pieces will either just snap off when any pressure is applied, or you can use a chisel to cut these pieces off, since there is a stop in the grain where you've made a cut, it's unlikely, or at least less likely, that the chisel will follow the grain and split the wood or make an uneven pocket.

Finger Joint
A finger joint is a bit like a lap joint, but with many more laps that interweave. You should use the same comb cutting technique to form the fingers, and chisel the fingers to remove the little comb pieces.
there's not a lot of explanation more needed.

Dove Tail Joint
A dovetail joint is a bit like a finger joint, however, rather than interweaving the fingers are shaped in a trapezoid, (or like a doves tail) so that they interlock, and are much much stronger.

Dove tail joints, to my mind, are the nicest looking of all the joints, a lot of other people agree with this point of view which is why the joints are used on furniture the world over.

You can use a router bit that's tapered to cut both sides of the dovetail joint, or you can cut into the wood and create little combs that you can remove with a chisel, dove tail joints are difficult. to make. if you look at the picture below you'll see that they are even difficult to draw!

Tenon Joint
Tenon joints have been used for years, they are incredibly strong. In fact if you're ever able to look in an old barn with an oak frame you're likely to see tenon joints all over the place, with perhaps a few pegs just driven in to hold them in place, but no glue!

The tenon part of the tenon joint is like a peg on the end of your work. to create this you need to cut into your work from all four sides (though you may like to cut only three, or two, or one side away. you might even wish to not cut anything away and just use the whole end of your work as the tenon!).
If you are cutting away use the same technique as for the lap joint above, lots of parallel cuts to form a comb looking thing that just breaks away with your hand.

After you've created your tenon, you need to create a hole for it to poke into. this hole is called a mortise.

To create the mortise:
Firstly, you can use a mortising tool, this is a kind of combination drill bit chisel that you press into the work and it cuts a perfect square. Now, I don't have a mortising tool, and if you're reading the idiots guide to puttin' shit together's simple guide on woodworking joints, then I'm guessing that you don't have a mortising tool either.

So lets go over the tried and tested, centuries old way of creating mortises.

First, As always, mark your work piece to show you where you need to cut.
then drill a series of holes next to each other inside the square that you've marked.

start at one end of the mortise and use a chisel, to cut straight down along the edges to make the corner square.

Now continue along removing all the bits that were left between the holes.
until you're left with a square hole, that should be the same size as your tenon.

Now put glue in the mortice, and put the tenon into the mortice, clamp it up and wait for the glue to dry.

Again, tenon joints can be strengthened by nails, screws dowels, or other metal fasteners.

Biscuit Joint
Biscuit joints are a relatively new thing on the wood working scene.
Basically, to cut a biscuit joint, you cut either use the same process as cutting a mortice, or use a special tool called a biscuit cutter.
You can also get router bits that are used to cut the slots for the biscuits to go into.

Once the slot is cut into both bits of wood, glue is applied into the slots and a piece of wood called a biscuit is inserted into the slots, and the pieces of wood are glues together.

The biscuits are made of a dried compressed wood. This means that when they are inserted into the slots that are filled with glue, they soak up the glue and expand to fit tightly into the slot. This makes the biscuit joint very strong.

There endeth the lesson.