Drying Rack

If you finish small pieces (such as lathe turnings), you almost certainly use something like this.

I got sick of the bottoms of my bowls sticking to the heads of the nails, some nails falling out when I take the bowls off, the bowls being unstable because the tops of the nails are at differing heights, etc, so I decided to make myself a good drying rack.  I did some thinking and came up with a design I thought would work well.  Here's what I came up with.

I started with a piece of scrap 3/4" wood and ran it through the jointer until the face was flat.  I then repeated for the other side.  I don't own a surfacer and in this application, it really doesn't matter if the top and bottom are parallel or not; the only purpose for the wood is to hold the nails upright.  I squared up both sides on the table saw, then returned to the jointer to make each smooth.  Trimmed the splits and paint off the ends and it was ready for the next stage.  While I was sizing the board, I also trimmed a scrap piece of paneling to the same exact size.  I ran it through the jointer taking off only 1/128" on each pass, just to flatten the top  (It had staple holes and divots in it; it needed to be flat.)  The underside was fine as-is.

I didn't want to have the heads of the nails sticking up, as that would simply lead to the projects sticking to the nails again - one of the things that was pissing me off at the originals.  I measured and drew 4 lines 3/4" apart lengthwise down the board and using a scrap piece of wood with two holes drilled 3/4" apart, used it to space the rest of the holes out.  (I used a smaller nail to line up one hole with the one drilled, then simply rotated the piece until the line appeared centered in the second hole and drilled it using the scrap as a locating jig.)

Grabbing the jar of nails, I quickly realized two very important things.  First, we had more than one brand nail in the jar of nails labeled 2.5" because some were over twice the diameter of others.  Second, nails really aren't what anybody can call a precision item - nails that were supposedly ALL 2.5" long varied by as much as 1/8" - certainly enough to make a bowl unbalanced and unstable.  Hmm - time to do some thinking...

Solution - use the sanding disk on my belt sander and a miter gauge with a stop block.  That will allow me to grind the nails to all the same length!  I set it up and ground every one of the 60 nails to the same length.  However, I foresaw a new problem.  Some of the nails were so long that they were flat on the ends, meaning the bottoms of the bowls would again stick to the end of the nails.  Not a big deal - I set the miter gauge to about 53 degrees and reset the stop block.  (I picked 53 degrees because I wanted as much of an angle as possible, but any farther and I wouldn't be able to hold the nails very well.)  So, I re-ground every one of the 60 nails again, this time rolling them to make a nice cone on the tips.

OK, at this point, the project has already taken about 2 hours longer than I anticipated, most of it spent hunched over the sander, and my back was killing me.  Almost done though...

Each nail was hammered in flush with the bottom of the board.  However, there was a problem - the tips of the nails were of different heights!  How in the...  Couldn't figure out how that was possible until I discovered two things.  First, the stop block had worn about a 32nd.  Second, the disk on my belt sander is anything but true - varies by almost 3/8" from one side of the wheel to the other!  WTF - I guess this is why I've never used the disk part of the sander!

I actually ground a few extra nails and there were only a few that were really, really bad, so I tapped these out and replaced them with different ones.  The tips are in different planes by small amounts, but nothing that should affect functionality.

For the finishing touch, I lined up the paneling with the bottom of the board and drilled 6 pilot holes, being careful to avoid the nail heads.  Then I counter-sunk the paneling and drove in 6 flat headed wood screws so the heads are just below the surface.  I originally used short drywall screws, but the 3/4" screws I have are fine threaded and they didn't hold in the soft pine board, so I replaced them easy enough.  Coarser threaded screw worked perfectly.

The reasoning for the paneling is two-fold.  First, the heads of the nails won't scratch anything I put it on like they would have I not had anything.  Second, the nails are not able to 'pop', or move out at all.  I have yet to use it, but feel that it will be much better than my previous blocks.