I'm trying to make a coat rack out of a ski and ski poles. I've cut the tips and handles off several poles. The poles are hollow aluminum. The bindings are removed from the ski, so it's completely flat. The plan is to have the ski mounted flat horizontally on the wall with the handles and ski tips projecting out from the face of the ski to be used to hang coats on. I thought I could drill a hole through the ski, have a screw or bolt coming through the hole from the back, and slide the ski pole parts over the screw. The problem is securing the pole to the screw. The diameter of the poles vary from 1/4 to 9/16 inch. I tried filling the pole with construction adhesive hoping it would dry around the screw and hold it, but that's not strong enough. Any ideas of what I could use?

 

Glue a wood dowel in them,

 

I would not use any solvent based glue like construction adhesive. In a long narrow tube it's sort of like leaving the glue in the bottle with the top off. The top will dry but it could take years for the rest to fully dry. Instead I would use something like two part epoxy. Mix it up and fill the ski pole. Then the entire batch of expoxy will cure and be solid in a few hours. Then you could drill a pilot hole and run in your screw. But, manden's ides of gluing in a wood dowel might be even better. I would use epoxy to glue the dowel in.

 

Can you drill the appropriate size hole in the ski making a tight fit and then glue the pole into that?

 

Thank you for your responses. I ended up getting dowels the approximate diameter of the poles and slathering on epoxy before inserting the dowels. It worked great! Thanks again!

 

Good job! On both the results and the perseverance. It's the latter that sometimes gets overlooked, but when you get into something like this, that's what it takes... try, try, try again until you get the result that you want.