New Build

We recently had our office space at the company I work for completely remodeled. It's all very nice and slick and light and airy. You know, the new fad of work "pods" that make you yearn for the solitude of a cube…yeah, those. So, while it's a definite improvement on the years-old shabby office with corpse grey walls, there isn't one single place, in the whole suite, to hang a coat.

I realize it's now spring this week and that's not a huge deal at the moment, but we moved at the end of January and I had to commandeer a chair from the conference room as a place to dump my lunch cooler and my coat.

Anyway, it got me to plotting a coat rack of some sort for the office. In the old one, I just screwed a hook to the wall of my shared office, but there are no walls now. I am close to some windows. I guess I could screw a hook to the window frame, but the building people would probably have heart failure.

Turning to the Internet, that great waster of time, I found something that I liked: Gustav Stickley’s No. 53 Double Costumer. To the right is a photo of an original. It was made between 1910 and 1925 and probably cost like $3. These days an original, when it comes onto the secondary market gets around $3300 at auction. Reproductions from the current owner of the Stickley IP run $1600 when they get around to making a couple, which seems to be rare.

Luckily, I have oak, some measurements and a source for reproduction Stickley coat hooks. Since this is well within my skill set, I don't need to waste bandsaw money (see below) to have one of these babies.

To wit, the other photo is the rough cut of the feet of my reproduction which I started today since the bed crap was finally off my table saw (a.k.a. the finishing table). Happily, my newish (last year) Laguna bandsaw made short work of the nearly 2" thick red oak blanks. It cuts so smoothly and effortlessly, made following these curves really easy. While it cost a bit more than a repro coat rack, it's a lot more versatile.

Update 2019-12-19

I brought my completed Costumer to the office today. First, I shot a few pictures against the only blank wall in the suite and then took a shot of it in situ near my desk (which is to the right of the frame).

Some of my coworkers were suitably impressed and quite complementary, which is very nice of them. One of them is savvy enough to know what custom furniture costs. He's quite intrigued and is still thinking about whether he wants it bad enough to ask. He's right to need to think about it. Even though he isn't interested in oak, it won't be cheap.

It's not a terribly complex project. After all, it's 6 boards. But it rewards care taken in the exposed joinery. I love the Stickley style and will eventually make more items, but I am not interested in producing this one.

I have a stack of medieval chairs I wish to make in a number of different forms. And the basement rehab projects, and, and...