Stereo Stand in Action, and another prototype

  I know it seems as though I never actually get anything built here is a photograph of the stereo stand I built early in January.  As you can see the stand was made to fit that space exactly and rather than try and match stain colours the owner painted it black.

 Here is the stand sitting on my bench before heading off to its new home. On January 10th I talked a bit about making this unit. Pieces of furniture this size are a challenge in my shop space.  I have all the tools, but have given away much of my working space to accommodate the tools. As my bigger machines wear out I will seriously look at alternatives like a track saw to replace tools like my table saw and sliding mitre saw. 

  Most everyone recognizes a pant hanger like this, and some of you even remember when they worked well and you didn't have to pick you dress pants up from the floor on a regular basis.

  
 Make no mistake, I am not a fancy Dan who wears special party clothes all the time but I do have some  nice pants that get worn to church and funerals etc and the new pant hangers are CRAP.  

  The spring mechanism is too weak to hold the pants, or the wood falls off or the little crap plastic thing breaks and....my pants are on the floor.

 As a wood worker I decided it was time to address this problem.

  This is the very rough prototype.  I used my dowel threading kit to make wooden nuts and bolts so that I can fasten the pant legs firmly in the hanger.  This version is designed to hold nice light weight dress pants, or...heavy chinos without either falling to the floor.

 I know that this will be a bit fussy to put my pants into, but having it work first time, every time is worth a bit of fussing.

  I have yet to decide what to do about the hanger part, I am going bend my own hooks from heavy wire probably.

  If you want to thread dowel I suggest that you use high quality hardwood dowel, maple has worked well and soak the dowel in something like tung or linseed oil or to make sure the fibres are fully swollen before you cut the threads. When I tapped the nuts I put oil on the tap just like I would if I were taping metal. 

 I'll keep you posted on the success of this prototype.

cheers, ianw