Clothes Rack

From J:

A's long nightmare is over. I finally completed a clothes rack for the bedroom. My first time using splined miters and pegs - this was a fun build.

Basic idea: make a mitered picture frame out of hard maple, then make an inset for that frame out of some tiger maple that you scored a super sweet deal on because it was in the regular hard maple pile at the lumber yard. I resawed the tiger maple to recess it in the frame and give the piece some dimension. The tiger maple is captured in the frame by some 1/4" dado slots. No glue on the inset, only around the miters, to let the tiger maple float and expand/contract with the seasons without busting up the frame. I added some v-grooves to the tiger maple at the router table for visual interest.

Plenty of clamps for this glueup.

Now for the fun part: splines. Splines are thin pieces of wood that bridge the two halves of a miter joint to add strength. Miter joints are just end grain glued to end grain, which is inherently weak. A spline adds a continuous long grain-long grain glue joint across the gap - much stronger. To cut my splines, I made a little jig that fits on my crosscut sled. It holds the piece at a 45 degree angle to the saw blade. You slide just the corner of the piece across the blade to make a slot that's 1/8" wide (the width of the blade) and a 1/2" or so deep. Repeat on all four corners.

It might not look very safe, but trust me: it is.

 Now, add the splines. I used the leftover thin pieces of tiger maple from resawing cut roughly to size. Glue liberally and slide into place. After the glue sets, use a flush trim saw to cut off the excess, then plane everything flat.

I found some maple shaker pegs at my local lumber supplier. Drill some holes, add glue, coerce them into place with a mallet. Drill two holes for mounting to the wall. Sand everything to 220 and finish with Arm-R-Seal semi gloss. The screw holes are covered with some maple buttons that were also finished with Arm-R-Seal. They're just tapped into place and can be removed if necessary for remounting.

Mmm, those stripes on the tiger maple. Delicious.

Project cost: around $10. Not much wood in this one!

Project thoughts: splines went well and building the jig was fun. My miters were pretty good, but not perfect - I'll need to be better about this in the future. Finish turned out well. Overall very pleased, and this was a long overdue project.

Up next: cutting boards and Christmas gifts.