Champagne Cork Peg Board (Practical Recycling)

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

In my opinion, but then most of your regular readers will know that already, practical recycling, that is to say, turning items of “trash”, whether discarded by yourself or by others, into usable goods, must come well before the commercial recycling.

Then again this kind of recycling also can make for the creation of, hopefully, saleable items, thereby becoming commercial, but not in the way of the commercial grand scale recycling of the reclaiming secondary raw materials is.

Champagne Cork Peg Board (Coat Rack).

This is a project that happened to result out of the fact that I once worked in a catering establishment where such corks were in abundance and they ended up thrown away after events and functions and, thinking that there might be a use for them though which I did not know at the particular time, I took a number of them with me to see what might come to mind some day.

One day then, without much thinking about it, a peg board come coat rack came to mind as I wanted to make one for some reason and I remembered the champagne corks. Having a board to hand it took but a few minutes, literally, to have a working peg board/coat rack to go onto the wall.

Ingredients:

• A number of champagne corks (real cork or pressed cork)
• Equal number of long wood screws (normal slot is better than Phillips)
• A nice wooden plank as a back board (this could be salvaged skirting, floorboard or from a pallet)

First of prepare the back board. This may mean, if need and you wish to do so, sanding and oiling (using vegetable oil), after having drilled the two holes that will be used as to wherewith to affix the board to the wall by means of screws. The rest, then, is a simple as ABC. Screw screw into cork slowly and precise into the previously marked peg locations and once they have all been screwed in – voila – one peg board or coat rack.

Apart from the screws (unless they be salvaged too – and this is possible) there should be no financial layout for this project. However, properly promoted, this could be something that a livelihood project could make.

Idea & Design © Michael Smith (Veshengro), 2001-2008