This has nothing to do with the cabin project, but hey.

I recently built a rustic coat stand from local wood as a Christmas gift. The first step was finding the perfect tree. I searched our land for hours, looking for a Ponderosa Pine tree with whorls at a good spacing and branches pointing upwards at a good angle.

I finally found an unbelievably perfect tree: This single pine supplied two great coat stands. I used the upper portion of the tree for this particular stand.

As soon as I got the pine tree into my shop, I stripped the bark off using a drawknife. I let the tree season for a couple months.





I constructed the base of the stand using American elm from East City Park. The finished coat stand is in a house about 100 yards from where this tree grew for nearly a century. Talk about using local wood!



I half-lapped the two elm cross pieces and glued them together.

I cut a 2"x2" tenon on the bottom of the pine. This tenon fits into a mortise in the base of the coat stand. I glued the joinery with a healthy dose of Gorilla glue. In addition, I drove in two 9x3 screws up from the bottom of the base and into the pine tenon.



I finished the whole thing with a liberal amount of Landark penetrating oil.

Fun stuff!