After seeing the shoe rack I made for my partner, my sister asked for one for her apartment as a
Christmas gift. More precisely, I asked her what I could make her and she allowed me to make another
shoe rack.
The major design constraint on this project was that the end result had to be transported from Colorado to Pennsylvania, which as I figured out by looking at shipping costs, would be fairly significant if the piece was fully assembled when shipped. I happened to have some old luggage lying around, and came up with the idea of designing the rack to collapse and fit inside of a suitcase.
Unlike other projects I’ve worked on, this one was fun primarily because of how much went wrong. I mismeasured/miscounted a half a dozen times. I got snowed in and couldn’t go out to get a drill press vice. I ultimately built something that was too dense to put shoes on (until I made some modifications). Despite all of these little hiccups, what I love about woodworking shone through - I was able to overcome most of the hurdles placed by my lack of foresight, and produce something that was still interesting, beautiful and functional.
Finished photo first, obviously.
