My Lumber rack

[LCHIEN]

Well tonight I finally finished my lumber rack, been working on plans since mid 2006...

Decided not to skimp on casters, ordered some 500 lb rated 5" polyurethane wheels.

The racks are canted 8.5° and drilled with the drill press to maintain alignment, wanted some extra holes to be able to flexibly arrange things. The rods are 1/2" EMT conduit with a 4" 5/8" wood dowel driven into the end to give it more stiffness. Use my custom dia. spade bit discussed earlier. I covered them with PVC pipe just in case the galvanizing or rust might mark the wood.

The frame is 6' 4x4s, used a bunch of partial lap joints, and a lot of 5/16th lag bolts, many of them countersunk.
Everything loads on the vertical 2x4, hope I didn't miscalculate there!
Except the sheet goods which stack along the back on the side just partway covered with rods.
8-foot items will hang off the ends about 10 inches.

Going to load it up tomorrow - hope I can get it over the 1" lip just inside the garage door. If not I'll have to build a little ramp.

My objective was to make the footprint small (under 2' wide) and movable and hold the long lumber horizontally (to keep it flat) and get it off leaning against the walls and use my space vertically better. The space between the diagonal braces will be used for some boxes for short cutoffs. And keep the cost down.

My drill driver and impact driver got a real workout on this baby, so did the dado blade, miter saw and drill press.

And there's a major screw up... anyone spot it?

Costs:
casters - $85
Conduit, dowel and PVC pipe - $30
Drill bit - $5
Wood around $45?
Bolts probably around $30-40
so, close to $200 total - surprised me when I added it up. Darn bolts in the $0.30 range, counted 88.

[iceman61]

Thats a very nice lumber rack you built. Looks top notch in my book.

[Uncle Cracker]

Nice job, Loring!

[bigstick509]

[cabinetman]

Loring

I must say you had some afternoon. Very creative rack. As for what could be a screw up, I suspect there maybe two. The first might be that it's way too tall for the footprint, could be a little tipsy on the lumber side when loaded up. Second, the area under the first set of supports, where the 2 x 4 gussets are doesn't look conducive to lumber storage, if that's what you intended. Kinda wondering what that area is for...small cut offs?
.

[mater]

That is very nice work. I like the way it is built.

[nickg]

Wood Rack

Nice job! Looks like it will hold a lot of wood.

It is amazing how the cost of materials adds up so quickly!

[jackellis]

Nice job. Nice looking piece of work. Not sure why you used pressure treated lumber for the base - termites need moisture and contact with the ground to survive, and typically don't bother wood that is not in contact with the ground.

Agree with Cabinetman that it might be a bit tall. Load from the bottom up or else...

Could it be that you should have used two bolts for all of the connections instead of four?

[LCHIEN]

PT was the only reasonable 4x4 material I could find, the crosses were actually pieces of salvaged fence posts when some fences were redone nearby recently.

Yeah I used four bolts because I calculated over 1000 #s total weight. Didn't want to use 2 and find i needed four.

[footprintsinconc]

cool! nice rack. i must say, that i cant really see the screw up. except like what cman said about it being tall with loading at the top and bottom too narrow.

[SARGE..g-47]

Very nice, Loring... as stated, careful if you load high with heavy stock as the foot-print is narrow for that height.

Can't tell from the picture.. but it appears the back area for sheet goods is flat? I would put a base-board on the bottom that cants in about 5* degrees toward the center support to keep the sheet goods stored on edge leaning toward center. The slightest bump could tip them toward the outer pipe restraining rails. That could be a major problem with the foot-print being as narrow.

I do believe in this case I might go more than my standard 5* degrees considering and re-make the pipe attachments to tilt them slightly in toward center instead of straigh up or outward as would be standard on a rack built with a wider base.

BTW.. the space for cut-offs at the bottom between the vertical rails might use a floor as the rear side will hold sheet goods. That gives nothing to support the shorts if sheets are in place. Unless of course... you have solved the mystery of how to defeat gravity. And that wouldn't suprise me either. he........

Again.. hard to see the minute details in the picture. I might be decieved by what I see. Certainly wouldn't be a first for me.

Again.. nice idea and the brick really looks great. Just thought I would throw that in. ha.. ha...

[paintandbodtman]

Loring

Nice lumber rack, could the screwup be that one of the 4 uprights is not perfectly verticle like the other three or is that just an illusion, in the picture it looks like one of the end uprights is angled as opposed too the other three.In hind sight do you think maybe should have been about 3/4 the height. Still a nice storage rack though.

Wayne

[LCHIEN]

well, actually there's 2 screwups.

The first is, the third cross bar and vertical, I goofed and put the right side of the dado to the line instead of the left side. So its about 3.5" to the left of where it supposed to be and makes it a bit assymetrical. you can see the third opening is wider than the first two.

The second screwup is, I orignally was going to put the top bar on the back side of the uprights, bit it seemed plenty stiff so I thought it would look better on the top. One of those "on-the-fly" changes you make.
Well way back last year when I first started sketching this thing, I made the verticals so it would just clear the garage door. Now, with the bar on top, its 3/4" taller then plan and scrapes the bottom of the overhead door. One of those things you forget when extemporanizing.

[footprintsinconc]

well, now that you point out the dado, i can see what you are talking about. but it is still functional.

we never would have realized the 2nd one. i guess you could just trim of the bottom of the garage door

[LCHIEN]

yeah, or grind down the floor.