Thread and Scissor Rack -- A Tutorial

While my husband was busy at Lowe's buying tie rack supplies, I found a piece of pegboard for $5.50. An idea popped in my head -- a rack to hold my threads and scissors. So I had the hardware man cut a piece 2-ft.x1.5ft. I'm not woodworker, but with a few inexpensive supplies and a little elbow grease, I came up with this:

And here's how to make it:

Materials:

• 1 piece of peg board, cut to a size you prefer
• 2 long wooden dowels, the thickness to fit snugly inside the holes in the peg board
• 2 pieces of 1.5x.5-inch wood, the length of your peg board
• 6 short screws
• 2 big nails or a way to hang the board like a picture frame
• spray paint
• Metal hooks to fit in a pegboard (in the pegs section of Lowe's)

Tools:

• Piece of sandpaper, about 120 grit
• A Saw
• Drill
• Wood glue
• wet rag
• Newspaper or big plastic bag
• 2 pieces of scrap wood
• pencil

Have your pegboard cut to your specifications. Mine is 1.5 ft x 2 ft. Lay out some newspaper in a ventilated area and rest the peg board on two pieces of scrap wood. Spray paint one layer onto the peg board. Let it dry and do one more coat.

Meanwhile, figure out how long you want your pegs to be. I took my longest spool of thread and added the thickness of the board plus a little sticking out the end -- about 3 inches? I didn't measure. I sawed off that length from a dowel and then with a pencil marked that length all the way down the dowel. Saw as many pegs as you see fit. I made 28. It's OK if they splinter a little bit on the edges.

Lay your sandpaper on a table, grit side up, and sand one end of each dowel so the edges and corners are all smooth. It doesn't have to look perfect -- no one is going to be inspecting them.

When the paint is dry, drill the 1.5x.5 pieces of wood to the top and bottom of your board, on the back. For each board, I drilled three screws from the front to the back through the holes in the peg board. Drill one on either end of the wood and one in the center. Here's a picture of the back of my peg board, since I'm absolutely terrible at describing this:

My screws were slightly too long, but that's because I didn't bother to buy screws for this project. I just found some lying around my garage. I'm not a perfectionist so I was fine with it.

Now place the pegs on the board and figure out how you would like the layout to be. I knew I wanted to hang scissors on one side and I wanted room at the bottom for a possible shelf in the future, so I arranged my pegs off-center.

One at a time, remove a peg, add a little wood glue to the rough end, add a little glue in the hole the peg is going into and insert the peg, feeling in the back for the end. Make sure the rough end is as flush as you can get it with the back of the peg board. Make sure the peg is straight and wipe off any excess glue with a wet rag.

Do this for each peg and let dry a couple of hours. When everything is dry, hang up your board like you would a picture frame, if you have the hardware. I just put two fat nails in the wall and hung it up that way. Arrange the metal hooks how you like them. Enjoy an organized craft space!