RG's Workshop: The 90-minute glove rack

(note: I have added the label "Workshop" to the previous posts about stuff I've built, in addition to the "Treasure" label for discarded stuff I've found)

Last night, I got creative again. Like the pieces that became the "Three Hole Punch" that I talked about last December, gloves have outgrown my little basket for them and are in overabundance on my kitchen table. They could use a proper nesting place. At 10pm, it was already a bit late for woodworking projects, but I figured I could manage a quickie.

I'd already worked out roughly how I wanted to arrange them, and like the Three Hole Punch, it would be vertically, on the wall. I didn't have any spare dowelling (or broomstick, the trusty dowel substitute) handy, but I did have a bunch of narrow pieces of wood, which would actually work better for gloves, since they'd hold the gloves in the right orientation.

The first step was seeing how much wood I'd need. To do this, mount various gloves onto a scrap piece of similarly-sized wood and mark how far in it goes. This leather one didn't go in very far, but a couple others went further down on it.

The wood I use is from a the slats of a popular IKEA bedframe called "Lade", which I presume is pronounced "Lay-deh". This Lade is a queen. You can find these Lade slats on the curb often enough because the frames that hold them break, or the owner upgrades their bed.

As shown in the diagram on the label above, and in the photo below, the slats come strung together on a ribbon. It's not very difficult to remove the ribbon if you have the right tools. You might want to do it gently and slowly, but I prefer a more rough and vigorous approach, because it's faster and more satisfying.

Once the ribbon is removed, you can put the Lade slats on a rack and arrange them nice and tidily. Lade slats come in a variety of sizes, though the slats are the same size within each set. This stack has slats from two different size Lade sets, and the one in the previous picture was a third size somewhere between these two.

Finally at 10:25pm I began cutting. I ended up being able to get six 5" handles out of each 30" Lade board. Fitting the wood snugly in a mitre box, I first cut it into three 10" pieces with a 90 degree cut, then cut each of those into two with a 22.5 degree cut so that they would stick up slightly.

I next gauged the screws I would be using, by lining up the backboard and the handles to see how I should arrange the pieces to safely penetrate the Lade bits.

I used the wider Lade for the backboard and mounted pieces from the smaller Lade on top. I started with two in order to test the angle and separation with gloves on, and got them on at 10:40. I pre-drilled the holes through the backboard to avoid splitting, but just pushed into the bare wood for the handles with brute force.

The wider Lade was long enough to allow eight glove mounts, each three inches apart. Since I could only get six mounts from the smaller Lade, I had to get a second one to finish the job. I got all the pieces ready for screwing at 11:00pm. The square ends needed to be sanded vigorously to ensure a smooth insertion into the glove.

Finally, at 11:23pm, I got all the pieces assembled. The angle in this photo makes some of the slats look a bit crooked. (Yes, the camera angle...) I intentionally used a warped piece of wood for the mounts because I knew with the gloves on, nobody would be able to see how warped it is.

I have yet to decide on a mounting mechanism to get this glove rack on the wall (hence one hand in this picture), but that's a job for another day. I also have to stain it, but I need to be careful not to use a cheap stain--that's no way to treat a Lade.

Anyway, here it is, with the gloves on. Wave hello!

This rack only carries four pairs of gloves/mitts. I have many more for various purposes. I also carry a couple spare pairs in my bike bags to prepare for changes in weather when I'm out on the road, and I have a couple of backup pairs of gloves (like the lobster winter cycling gloves) at home for when my primary pair is misplaced, dirty, or wet. And of course I keep different sets of gloves handy for different seasons. Considering how easy it was to build this one, I think I'll build a second rack for my off-season gloves, too.

- RG>