Shoe rack

[Mike G]

We need a shoe rack in the sunroom. So, what's it to be: Krenov-style, or Japanese-style, or mid-century modernist style, or Swedish minimalist..........





..........were questions I never asked myself.

This was to be the first piece of furniture I had made in pine for as long as I can remember. I started by grabbing some freebie wood off Facebook Marketplace. Unfortunately, it had been left out overnight for 2 or 3 nights, and had got superficially damp. I stood it up to dry for a week, and it was soon back to about 12%. It was an old wardrobe:



I picked out the flatter pieces for the top and front, and started cutting things to a rough size. Cutting this poor quality wood required a discipline. I had to score the back of the board with a knife, and then cut alongside the knife line to prevent awful spelching:





Here you can see the knifed side of the board on the left, and the other side on the right:



Even if I had wanted to flatten this lot by machine, I wouldn't have been able. It was too wide. And it certainly wasn't flat:





That helped stock up shavings for the fire.



I've got no space in the design for a frame, so I needed to fix the sides firectly to the top. I chose to do a sliding dovetail because I wasn't confident that these boards were going to stay flat, and locking them in a permanent arm wrestle seems the bast way to keep them as flat as possible. So, here's the female marked out:





Any long saw cut across the grain really needs to start with a little bit of chisel work to a knife line, I reckon:



That makes the sawing very easy. The angle is just random:



The groove was too narrow to fit my router plane blade, so I used my old trick with a sharp screw as a depth marker:



To be honest, being over-deep doesn't matter, other than at the outside edge, so just doing this by hand, riding the bevel of the chisel, was plenty good enough:



The male side of the joint was just knife and chisel work to start with, and a little bit of sawing:



Then I tried for the first time using a side-rebate plane for truing everything up, and it worked like a dream. It moves above a shoulder plane in the pecking order for doing sliding dovetails:





It only took a little adjusting to fit really nicely (and you'll note that I only flattened the underside of the top in the areas which count:



I had a couple of members at the bottom to do to tie everything together, and did some more dovetails for them:





Image limit. I'll be back in a minute.

 

[Mike G]

Here's the bottom front member. I didn't bother tapering this dovetail as it was so short, and the wood so soft:



Here's the back bottom member, oriented the other way (landscape rather than portrait), so a very easy joint:



I set that over-deep so that the cross-piece was spaced off the floor, to allow for adjustment of the length of the sides. Next were some quick diagonal braces dovetailed into the back edges of the top and sides:





Crude as you like. It will never be seen again, and just needs to be effective. Time for some glue:



That looks like one days work, but it took two. The following day I de-clamped and brought it in to try in situ:



The stone flooring is a very long way from flat, so I spent some time to-ing and fro-ing to the workshop shaping the bottom to fit the floor.



I used up all my excess, and that back frame member ended up at floor level.

Right, onto the inside. This isn't going to be an orthodox shoe rack. I'm not going to give you a drawing, or tell you what is what, but you should soon see.

I took some measurement from the carcase, and using a trammel laid out the basics of the internal geometry:



Then cut the first one and made any necessary adjustments:



Here it is in the open position:



Stupidly, I didn't flatten these boards until after I had cut the curve, which made holding the pieces still to plane somewhat challenging:



I don't know how many of you habitually scrub plane (45 degrees to the grain), but I am a huge fan. There is no better way of getting a board flat.

When I say flat........






Yeah, this stuff didn't stay still for a minute. That rather made my mind up for me over the next design decision: through dovetails for the joints between the sides and the front. That should hold everything relatively flat. Anyway, there are three of these pieces:



All I'll say about dovetailing this stuff is that ripping chunks out with the chisel is unimportant, so long as the knife line (scribe) remains intact:





Note the only concession I have made to my new bench. I no longer chisel directly down into it, but use a sacrificial piece. Half-way through from each side, with an incredibly sharp chisel taking off mere slivers at a time......but I still ripped out chunks:



I only tried the joint half-way, because the wood is so soft and fragile that I could destroy it taking joints apart:



See, I told you I took chunks out.

Next I housed out for some shelves. Note the use of a quick home-made router plane (a chisel in a hole in some scrap):





Finally, another sliding dovetail:



And that's the image limit again.

 

[Mike G]

I think this must be after gluing (given that the glue tub is open to the right):



The sliding dovetail (middle curved piece) provided on of THOSE moments. The glue must have swollen the fibres, because the piece got stuck with about an inch left to go. I was left with a split second decision: take it out, or get a bigger hammer. I got a bigger hammer. And whacked it 3 or 4 times to no avail.

Luckily, the fifth whack got it moving, and it went all the way home. Phew!

I glued and screwed a bottom shelf on:



When the glue dried, I tried planing to clean up the dovetails. Planing endgrain in this crappy stuff just never looked like working, so I did something I haven't done for decades on a piece of furniture: picked up a belt sander:





Work-holding became a bit of a challenge. Here I am letting in the hinges:



It didn't take much adjusting, and I forgot to photograph the minor shelves. I brought it in for a quick trial:





The compartment on the right is for some boots. The top shelf is for grandchildren's shoes.

The whole thing is going to be painted, so it might be a few days before I post the final pictures.

 

[NickM]

That's a good design Mike

 

[duke]

Well Mike you certainly did a fantastic job with the salvaged material. Very nice and pleasing to the eye, can't wait to see the colour.

 

[Cabinetman]

Haven’t seen that type of opening for a long time, I did one a very long time ago to hold my LPs.
I thought at first the string was to stop the sections drifting apart, obviously wrong, presumably to stop Grandchildren’s shoes dropping through to the back?
Your rate of work makes me feel so annoyed with myself! I’ve got so much to do but It’s just bone chillingly cold at the moment.

 

[AndyP]

If that’s for your shoes where is the one for MrsG? That can’t possibly be big enough for both of you.
Excellent read as always.

 

[Mike G]

I thought at first the string was to stop the sections drifting apart, obviously wrong, presumably to stop Grandchildren’s shoes dropping through to the back?

It's shock cord (ie elasticated), and yes, it's to stop the little shoes falling off the top/ back of the rack when it's inverted (closed).

 

[Mike G]

If that’s for your shoes where is the one for MrsG? That can’t possibly be big enough for both of you.
Excellent read as always.

This is just for those slip-ons etc used for going out into the garden or doing the chickens. I get the bottom row, my wife gets the middle, and the grandkids get the top. We had collections of shoes on the floor by the door last summer which annoyed everyone.

 

[AndyT]

I really like that. Practical and pragmatic. Effort expended where it's needed, nothing wasted where it's unnecessary.

 

[Woodbloke]

Nice job, but that wood looked vile. More power to yer elbow to cut shovetails in the stuff - Rob

 

[Mike G]

Nice job, but that wood looked vile. More power to yer elbow to cut shovetails in the stuff - Rob

Thanks. And yes it was vile. Easy to plane, though.

 

[AndyP]

This is just for those slip-ons etc used for going out into the garden or doing the chickens. I get the bottom row, my wife gets the middle, and the grandkids get the top. We had collections of shoes on the floor by the door last summer which annoyed everyone.

I have shoe storage by the back door which holds at least 8 pairs but it has not prevented the collection of, often wet and or muddy, shoes being dumped on the mat. I fully expect that your household will be far more disciplined than mine.

 

[Mike G]

It's not that, Andy. We've got multiple other shoe racks dotted around the house.

 

[GaryR]

That is a tidy solution. Any concern about wet shoes not being able to dry out when the box is closed?