Guitar Hook

I have a few woodworking tools in my garage which are used sporadically. One power tool I haven't made much use of is my router and after being inspired by a few YouTube videos I figured I could put it to good use for a project or two around the house.

First up is a Guitar Hook for 4 guitars. I don't have any training in woodwork so there are probably easier ways to approach it but nevertheless, it has been a satisfying and practical exercise.

The Problem

Since my young daughter has taken up guitar, the living room has become a bit crowded with guitars and stands. Given a convenient spot in one corner, I figured I could hang 4 guitars without too much trouble. There are only two suitably placed studs and I don't feel like hanging my Jackson Professional from a hook anchored in plaster. After deciding I first need to attach some timber to the wall on which the hooks could be fixed, the problem became what did I want it to look like and how to fix it to the wall. Ok so the real problem was that I had decided try some stuff with my router and I needed an excuse.

The Story

I had some pine kicking around and had a bit of a play routing a rounded over edge (actually that probably isn't exactly the right term, there is a step down to the rounded over part). Getting that to work wasn't so hard but the pine had a bit of a warp in it so off to the local timber yard to pick out something that wouldn't need painting. Mathews Timber in Nunawading have a great selection of boutique timbers and I picked out a length of blackwood, undressed.

Given that I wasn't going to paint the timber, I decided to make some keyhole cuts in the back of the board so there would be no visible fixings. This creates its own challenges because not only do the screws in the wall have to line up with the end of the keyhole cuts, the cuts themselves have to match up at both ends. If they don't then one or more of the screws won't line up with the entry holes leading to serious cursing. If the other end of the cuts don't line up then not all the screws will be sharing the load.

Before getting to that I "dressed" the timber with an electric plane, trimmed it to size, profiled the edges and rough sanded a few ridges cause by electric plane (operator). An intriguing side line is how wide to make the timber given the hooks that are going on it. What are the rules that govern: too wide, too narrow, just right? For me I just ripped the plank to a width that I felt was aesthetically pleasing.

After deciding to make the holes in the wall first and then mark the back of the timber, I made a couple of the jigs shown above. They screw to the wall and then those centre punch plugs go into the holes. These are little steel plugs (in this case 8 mm) with a flange and sharp point in the centre. First task is to align the jigs so the horizontal bar is level and both line up. Once they are screwed to the wall and the plugs are in, the timber sits on the rails and a few taps with a rubber mallet leaves some perfectly located marks on the back of the board.

Once the locations were marked the next trick was to locate the keyhole slots with the narrow end lining up with the marks I just made. In the pic above, the shiny brass cylinder happens to be exactly the diameter of the template guide on my router and it also has its own little point in the centre (only took a few minutes to make on a lathe). The locator goes in the punch mark and then the template slides over firmly against the locator then clamped. Note that if the template guide mounted on the router is not exactly centred it doesn't matter for this application, since all keyholes will be out by the same offset.

At this point I tried hanging it on the wall - after a bit of tweaking of the screw head height, it went on very snugly. After that I used some Organoil Hard Burnishing Oil as per the "satin look" instructions.

This is two of keyholes on the reverse side. The timber is oiled here and being the hidden side didn't get much attention as far as finish was concerned.

Finishing Up

This is what the front looks like without the hooks. One of the things I didn't get so good was the finish on the profile edge. I had a bit of a go at hand sanding it but it is still pretty rough, especially in places where the router bit was lifting/tearing the grain.

I was pondering how to make hooks from timber - in the meantime these ones come from your friendly music store.

And no I didn't make the guitars but I do occasionally crank up the Jackson or jam along with my daughter on the acoustic.