DIY Boot and Glove Dryer

 Another project brought about by my laziness and in this case self preservation. After skinning my knuckles numerous times removing and then re-inserting  five pairs of ski boot liners so that I can put them near our woodstove to dry, I decided that it was time to make a boot and glove dryer. A quick bit of research online and I was off to the races.

 This needed to dry 5 pairs of boots and gloves! Heat or no heat?! What size fan? etc...
I decided on no heat to keep it cheaper and simpler. The fan was the hard part seeing as I had no idea how much air I would need to push to dry everything. You can get any number/type of fan, but a good source of cheap fans that push a lot of air is your local hydroponics store. I found a simple fan that pushes 180 cfm and only cost about $40. The plywood I had laying around, but would cost about $20 (or less)for a 1/2 sheet of plywood. I just made the box big enough to surround the fan, thats it. For  the gloves to rest on I used 6 inch pieces of  pvc piping(3/4 inch i think), drilled 1 inch holes and the pvc just fits perfectly. no glue or anything. For the boot dryers I used old vacuum hose that I bought at a vacuum repair shop for $10. Then drilled holes that allowed me to just push the vacuum hose into (friction fit again) To make my life easier I wired the fan to a one hour timer switch, so I don't have to remember to turn it off. Finally a couple of pieces of plywood to lift it up off the floor so the boots almost slide under and it was done.

This thing will dry five pairs of boots and gloves in an hour or less if they are not excessively wet, and it doesn't matter if you are drying one pair or five, no plugging the unused holes just turn it on. Just this last weekend everything was soaked and it only took two hours for almost everything to dry. The only thing that took longer were my leather gloves that were so wet that I tried to wring them out before I put them on.