Towel Rack in My Mother's Bathroom

Towel Rack

   About thirty years ago I built a workshop in my parents back yard, and began my wood working odyssey.  There were many projects made from reclaimed lumber and nearly all of them have thankfully disappeared into fire places through out the land. There were a few things that I built using good materials and simple designs.  

The towel rack in the photo was one of those projects.

   The rack is oak and I suspect that you could hang a side of beef from it.  It was over engineered in the extreme, over engineering is something of a trade mark with me.   I remember making this towel rack with a jig saw, a belt sander and a couple of hand tools and spending lots of time trying to get a good varnish finish on it.

     I decided that I wanted a bit of shape to the design and so cut out the supports for the dowel with a jig saw.  This was long long before I had a band saw but jig saw worked fine, I only had a belt sander (which I still have)  to do the final sanding and again it seems to have worked out fine.

    A couple of years ago my Mom had the bathroom redone and probably out of kindness she kept the crazy on towel rack and had me make another one

   The newer version a couple of years old and just a clunky, but it does match, more or less. 
   Are these towel racks great art? No.
   Do they hold up towels and not fall down? Yes.
      Do I feel a sort of misguided pride in having made them and having them still in my families bathroom? Yes.

   Building something in wood is building for posterity. So..I feel that good materials should be used to build a quality design, care  given to the finishing process and when it is all done a craftsman can take pride in their work.


Cheers, Ian W

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