I looked through my ideas books and searched the internet. Not a lot of hat racks out there. Most are similar and not too many out of the ordinary. We talked about this type of standard stuff, not of interest.

They wanted a "pole" type thing and wanted it to have as small of a footprint as possible to function well near their front door without hindering the entrance and hallway. This created a engineering problem. They had previously purchased the hangers (8 of them) from a catalog. Very nice, large brass hooks with porcelin toppings.

After our meeting I sat down with pencil and paper and sketched quite a few ideas. One continued to please me while all others were "OK" at best. With some drawings in hand we met again. They totally agreed. The one concept we setteled on was to "mimic" some of the style of the already completed buffet and mirror. The hat rack would be about twenty feet from the other pieces I made in the hall and visible while in the dining room where the buffet and mirror reside. The style of the buffet and mirror was in harmony with the book shelfs in the hall (that was the original need on that design), thus, coordinating the hat rack also was a good idea.

The design itself was to glue 4 pieces of the very beautiful kimberly pine wood together to make a pole. The feet would be four groupings of angled wood pieces with rounded edge treatment which matched the edge treatments of the buffet and mirror. I intended to make it 5 foot high for stability but the client wanted it 6 foot high so we made it 6 foot high. Worked out great. The feet with multiple depths of wood allowed for a smaller footprint area while still providing stability. I also suggested we bevel the upper edge of the pole - just a nice look and quality detail.

The construction went pretty well. No huge surprises or problems. The feet are attached to the pole by glueing them into the pole. The bottom of the pole has cut out areas to receive the feet. I pre-cut the areas prior to gluing the pole. A little bit of table saw dado's on one side. The other side were router table cuts and all four of them were finished with a chisel.

Angle Cutting Jig

The feet were cut to size and then the edges routed. To get a consitant look and fit to all four of them, two jigs were created. First, to get the angles of all the feet pieces uniform I made a table saw cutting jig (see photo on right). With those 12 pieces all cut, the edges were rounded over on the router table. Each of them was stained and hand satin poly finished.

Angle Cutting Jig

Now, the individual feet pieces could be glued together. To get that fit uniform, I created another jig to position the three elements properly so that they looked the same and the back portion which sticks out to fit into the pole was uniform (see photo on right).

Finishing Pole

While all the feet elements dried and waited, I finished the pole. Hand router cut the 45 degree bevel on the upper portion of the pole and the top of the pole. A bunch of sanding, stain it and hand wiped satin poly finish to complete pole preparation. As all 4 sides and the top of this pole were receiving stain and finish, handling the pole was a problem. I put an eye screw in the bottom of the pole and hung the pole from above to allow complete and uniform finishing (see photo on right). Once the finish was complete - the eye screw was removed.

Now it was time to assemble the feet into the pole. I coated all the contact surfaces with construction adhesive and inserted them into their positions (one at a time - one day at a time). The other legs held the pole in position while glueing took place as the fit was pretty tight.

Finally, it was time to add the hooks into the pole. The holes for the hooks were pre-determined and pre-drilled. Factory provided screws were discarded and I used longer brass screws for greater stability and longer life.

It was done! I arranged delivery and set the hat rack up in it's new home. The client loved it. It sat a little wobbly as the tile floor (and most any floor) was not level. I suggested they purchase some felt self adhesive pads to put under the low point(s). Everyone was fine with that.

But ...

It was not done. I got a call a couple days later. One of the feet had came loose. I went over and picked the hat rack up. The construction adhesive had not made good contact and thus came loose. Upon further examination, another leg was loose. The construction adhesive just had not reached enough mutual contacting surfaces to perform well. Lesson learned, bad idea, won't use this method again in a similar situation. This time I used wood glue (wish I had from the start but I thought the construction adhesive would be better). Now, all the legs were again fixed and I called to re-deliver the hat rack.

It was not done. The client requested that I now add some leveling feet to the bottom. Good idea now that we found the floor was not level. I ordered some feet and when they arrived installed them. This involved drilling holes underneath the wood feet and pounding in T nuts with a hammer, the screwing in the stainless steel leveling pads. When this function was performed another wood foot came loose. So ... glued that one up also. The one raming foot which was still held by construction adhesive did not loosen when pounding in the leveling feet and thus it appears to have been the only leg of the four to get good contact with the construction adhesive - after pounding quite hard to get the leveling foot on, I can not imagine this contact letting go so it was left as is.