Coat hooks and shelf

I previously made these coat hooks in 2010, then this boot nook and these ones in 2014 after Rachel moved in. Rachel then added these mitt hooks, but thanks to baby, we are out of places to hang stuff by the back door again, so I made more coat hooks.

The coat hooks consist of a board with dowels in it, with another board above it as a shelf for baby's shoes. The dowels stick out at an angle. Here I'm eyeballing what angle would look good and setting the bevel gauge to that angle.

I need to drill some angled holes for the dowels. But if I try to drill in at an angle the drill will probably make a mess when entering the wood, so I want to build a drilling guide to help me.

This block of wood will be my drill guide. I started by drilling a hole through it. Now I just need to cut it so it rests against the wood at an angle.

I left a small "hook" on one side to help position it.

Laying out where the dowels will be. I'm spacing them 16 cm apart. I'm using my calculator to work out the positions along the board.

Then drilling the holes, with a hand drill. Ash is a very hard wood and I really had to lean on the drill to make the holes.

The jig worked, leaving very clean holes where the drill entered.

There was some chip-out on the back. I used a scraper to cut off anything that stuck out.

Laying out rounded ends for the shelf using my beam compass...

...then cutting it on the bandsaw. As usual for longer workpieces, I have to pull the bandsaw out from the wall to have room for the cut.

Then cleaning up the cuts on my edge belt sander...

... and adding a round-over on my router table

Unfortunately, the boards were not entirely flat, and too warped to try to plane that out on the jointer. My plan was to force them straight when joining them. To help with that, I reinforced the joint with dowels.

I start by carefully measuring along both boards for where the dowels will be.

Then using a marking gauge to fix the lateral position and making a small divot at the correct location. I then deepened those divots with an awl. I'm whacking the back of my awl with a push stick.

Drilling the dowel holes.

Because I'll be forcing the board straight as I glue them, the dowel holes won't line up very well. So I sanded a taper on the dowels with my strip sander

I wasn't sure how well this would go together, but the taper was enough to force the pieces into alignment as I banged them together.

Then lots of clamps to make sure the glue joint is tight.

After the glue dried, I cut the dowels nearly flush using a dozuki saw (which is on a piece of paper to keep it just above the workpiece), then flush trimed them with a chisel

I rounded the tops of the dowels using my strip sander. It was tempting to use a 1/4" router bit on my pantorouter to do it like we did for these mitt hooks, but for just eight dowels, it wasn't worth setting it up for this.

The dowels are homemade dowels

Gluing in the dowels. I put the board on top of a spacer to allow the dowels to protrude out the back a little.

Flush cutting the dowels on the back.

And a pass over the jointer to make sure the back is really flat.

Drilling mounting holes in the shelf. I put them right behind the pegs to hide them a bit. But this meant I couldn't use a countersinking bit, so I added a countersink using the tip of a larger longer drill.

I varnished it using three coats of three coats of water borne varnish. An oil based varnish would probably be better for this application, but oil based varnishes take much longer to apply.

The hooks are mounted low on the wall. Baby's stuff is all fairly small, and this way baby can reach them. And with the stairs below, towards the right, longer coats can be hung too.