Homemade Boot Brush

Why would anyone ever want to make their own boot brush you ask? Well, for one they can be quite expensive if you don't shop around. Another reason is that many of the so called boot brushes don't work very well, such as the cutesy animal with bristles on it's back, or the brushes don't make good contact over the whole boot or shoe.

I had been searching for cheap brushes for a few months to complete this project, but I hadn't found any reasonably priced broom heads or scrub brushed until last week. I spotted some cheap scrub brushes at Target that I thought would work perfectly.

So this project cost me a grand total of $4, with a few scrap materials thrown in.

Tools:
- Flat screwdriver
- #2 Phillips screwdriver bit
- 5/32" twist bit
- 1/8" twist bit
- Drill
- Circular saw (table saw, miter saw, jig saw, whatever your favorite tool is for cutting plywood)

Materials
- #12 x 3/4" pan head sheet metal screws
- 2" construction screws
- 4 cheap scrub brushes
- 6 x 30" piece of 3/4" plywood. (or scrapsin the range of 3 - 4x6" and 1- 6x15")

- Shove a flat bladed screwdriver into one of the slots on the bottom of the brush.

- Pry the brush from the handle

- When you pry the brush and handle far enough apart, grab the brush part in one hand, the handle part in the other, and pull to separate

Cut the plywood into the following pieces with you favorite type of saw
2 - 4 x 4" Triangle supports
2 - 4 x 6" side brush holders
1 - 6 x 15" base

At this point you should dry fit all the pieces to see where the brushes should be mounted. By choosing the dimensions the way I did, the brushes pretty much position themselves.

Then take a pencil and mark where the brushes should be attached. I decided that the side brushes should just rest on top of the bottom brushes. Then remove the side pieces, supports, and brushes and mark the location of the bottom brushes.

Holding the brush against the plywood, use the 5/32" bit to drill through the brush and the plywood. On the bushes I used there were 4 small alignment holes already drilled, I enlarged these. If you don't have any predilled holes make sure you drill in between the bristles.

Next use the #12 screws to fasten the brushes to the plywood.

A tip: Drill one hole first and attach the brush to the plywood with a screw before drilling the other holes. This will make it easier to align the pieces.

Using the 1/8" bit I predrilled the holes through both the brush sides and the supports.
Then I attached the supports to the brush sides with 2" wood screws

Now you want to customize your boot brush your boot size ( or the boot size of the biggest person you know that is going to use it. I placed the sides so they just touched the boot.

Notice in the picture that the side supports actually extend over the edge of the base. I marked the support with a pencil and cut off the excess to make it easy to align for the final assembly

Flip the assembly upside down and drill 1/8" pilot holes through the base into each side piece. Then drive 2" wood screws to attach the base to the sides. I used 4 screws per side, 1 in the support and 3 in the side itself.

There you have your new boot brush.

After I built this boot brush, I reasoned that plywood would not hold up very well outside, so I built a second boot brush out of 7/16" HDPE plastic.

The changes I made were:
- I used 1" wood screws (3/32" pilot hole) instead of 2"
- I ended up counter sinking the wood screws because the plastic started splitting as the head drove into the plastic. See second picture in this step.