Marco's Belt Rack - Designed and Built by Dad and Son

My 7.8-year-old son and I have been wrestling with belts all over the floor at home. We've been hanging them on doorknobs, and it just has NOT been working well.

So, in order to get him more familiar with CorelDraw so he can do more of his own designing, I proposed that we design a Belt Rack together to get him more and more familiar with the design and production and prototyping and building and perfecting and using processes.

I have CorelDraw 5 on my home laptop - I found a legal copy on ebay for around $50 a few months ago. That made it easy for us to measure and draw at home.

Once we designed it, we went toTechShop in San Jose to cut it.

Step 1: Address the Design Needs and Limitations

The goal was to mount the Belt Rack on the back of the bedroom door. Here are some concerns:

1. The door is hollow-core, so mounting at the edges, where there is more real-wood, would be desired. The door width is 30".

2. The doorknob extends around 2" from the door. I felt it would be best if we did not have the Belt Rack stick out any more than that.

3. There are belts with buckles that have loops andbelts that do not have buckles with loops. His Cub Scout belt does not have a loop on it, so a place to slide-in this type of belt would be helpful.

4. MDF was to be the material of choice. It's cheap. It's easy. I have worked with it a lot.

Step 2: We Designed a Hook

The hook had to meet the following criteria:

1. Belts would stay on thanks to gravity only.

2. The hook would need to be inserted into a wallplate and be glued-in. Once in place, the hook could not protrude more than 2" from the door.

3. Hooks must be mounted close to one-another to allow for the belts that do not have round buckles to hang.

Step 3: We Designed a Wallplate

And here's what we came up with.

1. Marco wanted to round the corners to keep them more friendly.

2. We wanted to have plenty of belt hooks for some of Dad's belts, too.

3. Marco wanted to include the holes for mounting in all four corners.

4. We wanted his name to be on the Belt Rack.

5. The holes for inserting the hooks needed to be the same width as the MDF thickness. The quarter-inch MDF is actually .236".

6. The holes for inserting the hooks needed to be the same height as the tab we added to the hook.

Step 4: We Recognized a Problem With the Design.

Since the Laser Engraver has an 18" x 24" bed, we could not cut the entire 30" wallplate on its bed.

SO. I cheated...

I decided to add some interlacing fingers at the mid-point of the wallplate. This allowed us to cut half of the wallplate at a time on the laser.

I added a couple of additional mounting holes at the center point of the wallplate.