Glove Dryer

I recently bought a pair of inexpensive mittens. Even though these mittens look very similar to my more expensive LL Bean mittens, the major difference is they don’t dry. The LL Bean mittens that cost nearly 3x as much dry very quickly when placed near our wood stove. The cheap gloves never dry out. They are essentially insulated plastic bags.

Rather than throwing them away I decided to design a simple glove dryer. The heating system we have is forced hot air with registers in the floor. The 3D printed dryer tubes have a 35mm base diameter. I chose this diameter because it’s a very common size if you happen to use European hinges.

For the base I used a scrap piece of red oak 34.25cm x 14cm x 2.5cm (the size of the heating register I’m using.) I chose to use wood rather than print a base because of its heft and the fact that I couldn’t print something this size on my printer.

I routed out the wood on the underside leaving a 25mm rim to a final thickness of about 10mm in the routed area. Drill 35mm holes at approximately 1/3 the length of the base as shown in the photos. Use a strip of wood to keep the tubes in place. Place a foam gasket around the base. This seals the base to the register and it also eliminates any noise from having the wood base directly on the register.

The dryer works really well. Very fast. I was surprised by the force of the air through the tubes.