If you or someone you know has a lot of shoes, stackable shoe racks make a great gift. An added benefit is that since they are hidden away in a closet, you can use cheaper wood.
Last weekend I started making Rebecca some stack-able shoe racks for her closet. I wanted to make them from materials I had on hand (cherry), so after an hour or so of fiddling in Sketchup I came up with the following design. The design is pretty simple, it’s made from 1″ x 3/4″ stock. Something I strive for in all my projects is a minimization of fasteners, thus I only used Dado-and-Tongue, & Slip joints, to hold the racks together.
I finished Rebecca’s shoe racks a few days ago, And tonight, I could no longer smell the finish, so it was safe to bring them inside. I had originally thought about finishing them with polyurethane, but at the last minute, I decided to finish them with boiled linseed oil cut with 50% mineral spirits. They didn’t turn out as nice as I would of liked, but Rebecca loves them none the less. The main flaw with the design is the dado joints used to join the top cross beams to the sides. Getting all of them cut to just the right length and thickness was tedious. Ultimately, I spent more time with chisels fine tuning the fit than I would have liked. If I had to do it again, I would use through dovetails.
