Built From Coat Hangers
By Eric Munsinger. From Popular Science September 1933. Found at modernmechanix.com
A unique, light, and handy stool can be made from ordinary wooden coat hangers. As its weight is only a little more than a pound, it makes an ideal playroom or nursery stool for a child.
The only materials needed are: Twenty coat hangers, some plastic wood putty, a 2-ft. length of brass rod 3/16 in. in diameter with nuts and washers, and two contrasting colours of enamel or lacquer (such as light oak and dark mahogany).
Select the coat hangers for quality of wood and symmetry. Remove the hooks and fill the holes with the composition wood. From two of these cut twenty-eight 1-in. pieces and sandpaper them. Glue these in place on eight of the hangers as shown in the drawings at A and B. Cut four hangers as shown at C and glue these onto four others to form the legs. Cross and glue these together in pairs to form the double legs D. Then drill all the holes.
Now enamel four of the type A staves with the lighter of the two colours, and the legs and remaining staves with the darker colour. Place all parts next to each other as in the finished stool, and measure the width. Cut two lengths of brass rod 1/2 in. longer than this measurement, and thread the ends.
Assemble all parts, slide the brass rods through the holes, place washers on the ends, and tighten up with small nuts. Mold the plastic wood composition into neat hemispheres about the projecting ends of the rods and colour them dark.
Leave a comment