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Fine Hardwood Furniture

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Andrew Pitts ~ FurnitureMaker

Work in Progress
Hallway Coat Rack

Article Started 26 March 2010


Disclaimer: This discussion chronicles the design and making of a hallway coat rack in my workshop. My intention is to bring the reader virtually into my shop to generally see how I do the work and share in my thought processes. Although I try to point out how the tools work and the applicable safety considerations, this discussion is not intended to be a text on how to work with tools, nor how to execute operations with the tools shown. I am not providing instruction in woodworking methods. Woodworkers attempting to imitate my methods do so at their own risk.
Hallway Cherry and Tulip Poplar Coat Rack
Click on images below to enlarge

                    My client was a local couple I had know for several years. They wanted a piece of my work in their home, which is the highest form of compliment to me, and asked me to come over and help them decide what I would design and make. I was honored. So I went to their home and we talked a great deal and finally settled on a hallway coat rack, the kind with a bench and a place to store umbrellas as well as coats and hats. We could see that this would be a piece that would be very useful, as well as beautiful. I then started to design, coming up with several very different design ideas, and what was eventually settled on was a fairly traditional design as seen in the rendering above. Wood selection was up to me, so I decided on cherry for the basic frame and some unusual tulip poplar I had saw milled that had a lot of brownish heart figure. The hooks would be some contemporary weathered bronze models that I would order from my supplier (Lee Valley).


            The first thing I did was to select the rough planks of cherry and tulip poplar. I cut all my own lumber with my WoodMizer LT15 Flattening board on jointersaw mill, so I had quite a selection from which to choose. I rough milled the pieces I needed from the planks and set them aside to settle a bit. When ever a plank of wood is cut open, there are internal stresses that can pull the wood this way and that. It is best to let this struggle quite down for a few days or weeks, depending on how unruly the planks may be. However, I would need to edge glue two Edge jointing cherry boardpieces of cherry for the seat, and the same for the lower bench, so I did this before setting those pieces aside. In the photo at right I am flattening one half of the bench, using my 8-inch jointer. After flattening one side of the board, I thickness planed the board to uniform thickness in the thickness planer (sorry, I didn't take photo, but there are lots of examples of planing in my other "Work in Progress" articles), and repeated the operation on all the other boards for the seat and shelf. Then, I edged jointed the boards, as seen at left, so that the edges would mate for a perfect glue joint. There is a Clamping edge glued cherry woodmethod of this jointing worth mentioning. You can see on the jointer a fence that allows me to keep the board upright. That fence is supposed to be 90-degrees to the jointer bed, but no matter how carefully I set the angle it is never exactly 90-degrees. An error of 1/4 degree will make the glue up less than flat -- think of a table top where the boards are not glued so the top is perfectly flat. So, when jointing the edges of the boards, run the top face of the board against the fence, and on the next board run the bottom face against the fence. Then, any error will be canceled! After jointing edges, I usually use a hand plane to get the edges as smooth as I can with the goal of making the glue line invisible. By the way, I don't usually use biscuits or tenons for an edge glue, unless I need them to provide alignment. Biscuits and tenons provide little extra strength to an edge joint, and I've found that a plain butt glue joint is stronger than the wood, itself. Using some Franklin's Titebond glue I did the clamp up, as seen at right.
to be continued ...