Bent Wood Coat Rack

Back in my college days, I discovered the woodworking technique of bent-wood lamination.  Being the typical college student on the lookout for extra cash, my lovely then wife-to-be worked at a bank.  They happened to be in need of a coat rack for their conference rooms, and she commissioned me to build one.  However, I didn't want to make a plain old coat rack.  So, after some surfing, I found exactly what I wanted to make.

My inspiration for this coat rack came from famous woodworker David Marks.  Besides making many unique furniture pieces, he has also made a few projects with the bent wood technique, one of which was a coat rack.

So, I set out to make my own bent wood coat rack based on this same design.  David's utilized walnut, but I chose white oak to match the finishes inside the bank.

 

The hardest part of the entire project was creating a curve which was attractive and pleasing to the eye.  After some help from my cute assistant, I came up with a flowing curve.  The four pieces are identical except that two are longer than the others.

After creating the curve, I traced it to a piece of plywood and added blocks which followed the curve line.  Next, I cut thin 1/8" strips of wood on the band saw.  To get them smooth, I ran them through the wide belt sander (which was a luxury to have, as they are very expensive).  Next, I applied glue to the strips and started clamping.  For those of you non-woodworkers out there, this is a good example of why you can never have too many clamps.  After the piece sat for 24 hours, it was ready to come out of the mold.  A quick pass through the table saw (which I admit was tricky, as you had to guide the curve through the blade). trued and made the edges parallel.  Three more glue-ups resulted in the four legs.

To assemble the pieces together, I simply made a 2 x 2 and glued the legs together, two at a time.

After that, I sanded, stained and applied a protective polyurethane finish.  The bank actually had some leftover stain from when it was built, and I used that so it matched exactly.

Here is the finished product - I am quite proud of how it turned out for being an amateur woodworker. 

I still have the mold and have always had plans to make one for the house - however just haven't gotten to it yet.

Thanks for checking out this project!