Shop Redesign: Lumber Rack

It has been several months since my last post, and I feel pretty bad about not providing any updates, much less videos, in the last few months.  Life, and then weather, unfortunately happened.

As some of you may have seen, my new video went up today!

 

While there's not much going on in the video, it represents the first major step in my shop redesign!

I work in an uninsulated one-car garage here in the Phoenix valley, and as the summers keep getting hotter, it's more important than ever for me to find ways to maximize my efficiency, as my available working time gets shorter.  The layout I had previously was crowded, and required a lot of moving things around in order to change work functions.  I just don't have time for that!  I've been looking through articles, blog posts, videos, and more just to try to garner some ideas of how to work effectively within the confines of my shop.

About a year ago, I stumbled across this article from Fine Woodworking about the Smart Shop in a One-Car Garage.  It's an older post, but it happens that this just about perfectly matches the dimensions of my work space.  There are some changes that I needed to make, as I don't have the resources to drop new electrical lines into the garage, nor do I have an open ceiling allowing for overhead lumber storage.

Also around this time, Wood Magazine was finishing up their Idea Shop 6 series.  Between these two resources, I was able to piece together a good plan of attack for my place!

I've started by replacing my old lumber rack.  This beast was fantastic, but really took up all the best real-estate on that wall.

The Behemoth!

By moving to this new design, I've freed up a lot of floor and wall space.

Loaded up!

Wall detail

It's not really clear, but I now have about five feet of usable wall space below the new racks.  The downside is that I don't have dedicated storage for sheet goods in the shop any more.  However, I happen to have an amazing wife who allowed me to move the old rack into our two-car garage (that we actually use to park the cars in!).  This lets me store sheet goods, and lumber for upcoming projects that still needs to reach equilibrium.  Ideally, I will have material for active and next project on the rack in the shop, and material for the next two to three projects in the garage.  We'll see if I can stick to that!

That's about all for this post.  The next major project is going to be a table system for my radial arm saw.  With luck, that'll be done in a couple of weeks!

Continue

Dr. Lumber Rack:Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Keep Some Stuff Off of the Floor!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I was working on a lumber rack.  I found the plans over at OneProjectCloser.  It was, in fact, my first real project made largely with my ShopSmith.  It's a simple design made from roughly one-and-a-half sheets of 3/4" plywood; I scored a good deal on some cabinet-grade plywood, and used that.

The rack uses two French cleats mounted on the wall, on which hang a series of joists with horizontal arms at three levels for holding lumber and sheet goods.  This set-up is incredibly strong!

One yeti per upright!

I am not a small guy, and there wasn't any creaking or flexing.  As you can see, the floor looks nice and clean.  Fortunately, you cannot see my driveway, where everything got moved to so I could mount the rack to the wall!

Loaded up!

Here's just about everything moved back in.  Yeah, that had all been on the floor!  What a mess!

Next up: The workbench!

I did learn some very valuable lessons on this project!

• Since I don't have any outfeed support, the long rip cuts were done with a guide and a circular saw.
• When making beveled rip cuts (the wall cleats for this project), it's important to pay attention to which face of the board the width measurement is made on.  I originally had the measurement on the back (wall-facing) side, and ended up with cleats about 2-inches to wide.  A simple fix, but time lost nonetheless.
• A jig-saw is a useful tool!  I did not have one for this project, and had to cut the slots in the vertical joists by hand.  Mostly with a coping saw.  That was not fun, and there were a lot of irregularities.  Some rasping, filing, and sanding made them pretty much ok, though!
• A tapering jig would have made the arms much easier and more regular.  I used some trigonometry to figure out what the angle should be, and used the miter gauge.  This was not particularly safe, I have learned, and I will not do it again.  Also, the cuts were somewhat irregular, but that was not critical for this project.

Continue