A Ladies Undies Rack

This project was a special request from a local; just a small rack or hanger for hanging bras, slips and other delicates on the wall behind her door.  It is to consist of a board with three pinkish glass knobs – which she supplied. She wants it painted off-white so it blends well in her closet.

Because this rack will be painted, I chose to build it out of poplar, a wood that sands smooth to show very little grain, and holds paint well. I start by laying out the rough length blank on a board.

And cut the blank on the chop saw.

A couple of passes on the jointer smooths and flattens one wide face of the blank.

Then I flip it up and run the jointed face along the fence to smooth one edge and square it to the jointed wide face.  Because this wood is rough, it’s not hard at all to tell when I’ve succeeded in flattening the entire surface.  If the wood had been surfaced before I’d draw wavy pencil lines across each surface; when the pencil lines are gone, the surface is flat.

Next I set up the surface planer and run the blank through a few times, with the jointed face down on the cast iron bed, so the cutters above will smooth the upper face.  This also makes the upper face parallel to the jointed face, which should also mean you now have two square corners and three flat faces.

I continue surfacing the blank until I get it to the desired finished thickness. The final pass is done light and slow to reduce the amount of sanding I’ll need to do to remove cutter marks. (NOTE: not all surface planers offer different speeds for roughing and for finishing, mine does.)

The final edge is squared by cutting away the excess width on a table saw by running the jointed edge against the fence. Now all long corners should be square, the two long faces should be parallel and the two long edges should be parallel.

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