PT Rack 1

This project will be for myself and will help me keep my rubber bands organized. Let me explain: these rubber bands are for exercising, or more precisely, for physical therapy. You see, I've had problems with my back for several years and after I had back surgery in 2017, I felt much better at the time. But that only lasted for about one year and I was hurting again.

Fast-forward to November of 2023 which is when I started physical therapy (PT) for strengthening my core. This was setup by my surgeon that told me there was nothing he could do for me, so he sent me to PT for 10 sessions.

While I was at PT, the instructor had me working with elastic bands, which are numbered. And the larger the number, the harder it is to stretch it. After the 10 weeks of going to physical therapy, I acquired the knowledge that I needed to exercise at home using these rubber bands three times a week. And to keep these exercising bands in some kind of order, I'll be making a rack to hold them with.

Working With Wood

I'll be making this rack out of black walnut, alder and maple, which should look nice together. One of the first things I did was glue and clamp some pieces together.

Next I used my table saw to square up my pieces. Notice I have two sizes below. The larger block will used to hang the rubber bands from and the smaller block will connect to the larger pieces together.

Now that my work pieces are square, I cut a few pieces one inch long using my miter saw, which will hold the bands.

I used wood dowels to align all my pieces with.

This will give you a better idea of what I'm doing.

Here I'm machining the cutouts for the rubber bands to rest on.

Next I used a 1/4" corner rounding end mill to produce a full radius on one end.

Here I'm setting up to cut an angle that will tangent out to the radius above. The arrows are my work stops: the bottom one is for my angle block to rest against, and the top one is for my work piece.

I used a 3/4" end mill to cut the angles with. This went fast and was easy to do.

A before and after picture of the angle. A keen eye will notice that the dowel holes don't go through because these are the end pieces, but the middle pieces do have through holes.

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