Hairy's recent post of a wood storage project has me thinking about my shop. As a resource for inspiration and ideas, please share your storage options.
Right now I have a "rolling cart" (think I used Steve Ramsey plans) plus vertical storage for long boards. Thinking of shifting to horizontal for the latter - thinking that is "better" to avoid bowing.
Current long boards
Rolling cart when first built - it is much more disorganized now!
Petey- that's so neat! Do all of your lower or do you have to use a ladder for the one? My shop is in a pole barn with no ceilings. I'm thinking of how to attach supports for horizontal storage on a interior wall. Not sure of the inner construction as it is there to separate our workout room. 🤔
I looked at Monster Rax and they look like a great solution in the right setting.
Mine is made of 2" X 3" X 8' lumber and 1/2" plywood, nailed together, above what was originally my workbench. That now has storage cabinets on it with a narrow strip left for some kinds of work.
Flat storage is great for the wood and maximizing density, but a bummer to sort through. Storing upright really has little chance of affecting the wood if it is truly vertical. What can cause problems is having shorter boards leaning against the longer boards. I'd store vertically if I had the ceiling height, definitely need some chain and hooks up top to keep the boards from falling over.
definitely need some chain and hooks up top to keep the boards from falling over.
So, I was doing some rearranging of my long boards and thought I should look at adding a bungee or strap to a group of three extra tall boards that aren't behind my other stand (the other boards don't have much area to fall). As I turned to go look for a solution, the one new maple board picked that moment to fall forward. As I startled, looking back, I got knocked on the side of my forehead. 😲 Glad the board wasn't too wide or thick! Rather ironic that exactly what I was trying to avoid had immediately happened. 🙄 Have some temporary "holds" in place now and will need to get a better solution that is secure, but still easy access.
Maybe build a vertical rack? Just black pipe sections on flanges sticking out from the walls at the studs, or whatever spacing you want if you use a ledger board. The pipe sections don’t need to be more than probably 18”-24” long, maybe shorter if you know you aren’t going to store wide pieces of lumber.
That would greatly increase your volume of storage without taking away too much depth, and it’s cheap to trial.
Ryan/// ~sigh~ I blew up another bowl. Moke told me "I made the inside bigger than the outside".
Most of the smaller wood selling places around me have bay like storage. It offers full support, so never any bend, and due to weight of the "stack" it doesn't twist at all. I copied the design most often seen, it will carry great weight, cost little to build. Well it used to, since Covid pricing any wood is expensive now. As you can see I opted to go 3, 4' x 8' bays wide, and I have 12' ceilings, so I went up a bit. Obviously you can make the racks narrower, and just a single bay of them is doable. Much of the load bears on the back wall, and a heavy duty attached bearing beam needs to be attached to a solid/sturdy wall. The legs are 2 x 12, and they need to bear on a solid floor. Concrete is best.
The downside of it is, if you want that last bottom board, well it is a great cardio vascular workout, but if you would rather be woodworking, a large PIA.
This is moved partially in, and during drywall so it's somewhat covered, but it kinda gives you an idea. Now it's so crowded in there you can sometimes catch glimpses of wood. But it's a lot more filled now, than this pic. Probably around 5,000 bd/ft anyhow.
At the place I buy a lot of wood, and they sell millions of bd/ft a week, rather than a thousand or two. They have straight walled bins, and stand up all of their stock pulled for their "Showroom" and walk in wood buying area. I have to say they move inventory, so I am not sure how long any one board may stand there, but in over 30 years of buying from them, I have never had a warped board. In their warehouse all wood is bunked, and bundled just like the huge stack of 2 x 4's at the Borgs, and they move it all around with huge forklifts. I'm not rich enough to pull that off though. Most of their serious biz is bunks of lumber, loaded straight to semis, and sent all over the world.
When I lived in Olympia, Washington, there was a custom door place. Their doors were not going to be found in the orange place.
The door place threw all its scraps and rejects out for the public to grab. Their bins were full of the kind of stuff folks like us slobber just hearing about or seeing. Sadly, most who got there early sucked up a lot of gold for firewood.
If you got there first, you might end up with a 2" x 18" x 24" piece of Koa, mahogany, maple, walnut. . . . I still have a lot of that. My ex's ex after me owed me a lot of favors (no, I didn't bump her off). He'd drop by the door place regularly and grab pieces he thought I might be able to use.
A lot of the stuff is a pen maker's dream. A lot of it makes good edge banding. For example, 3/4" x 3/4" mahogany over the edge of the birch plywood edges. There were and are a lot of thicker pieces too. They are big enough to join for, for example, making walking sticks and other projects.
I ended up with so much it made my little 1/2 ton squat. Enough it justified building a rack to hold it.
I used an approach I took for a firewood storage rack I built for inside the house, just off to the side of the wood stove. It used mortise and tenons so a whole lot would not cause it to come apart.
When done, I used casters off a hospital gurney. They were up to the job, but the wood the pegs went through weren't. The thing filled with wood pushed toward the 1/2 ton mark. It took everything in me to move it.
I jacked it up, checked the casters and it turned out the weight was enough the pegs of the casters elongated/enlarged the holes and allowed the casters to cant in ways they should not have.
I borrowed an idea from the folks who make the little units that go under each of four car tires to allow people to move a car around a shop without assistance, man or mechanical. To that end, ordered 12 heavy duty casters from the HF folk, mounted 3 each on four, roughly, 6" x 6" pieces of 3/4" ply, then mounted them to the 2x's the casters had been in.
Now, I can, literally, move the monster rack one handed, even though there is far more than in the photos, below, show.
PS Note the figured maple in the firewood rack. That was the entire cord. The guy had no glue about what he cut up. I made a lot of nice kitchen utensils (e.g., spoons, spurtles) from some of it.
I wish there were places like that near me! Jim J. likes to taunt us with his local source, he even made a stand for the side of their dumpster to make his pillage even easier.
When I moved out of my former auto shop space many moons ago, I had a huge load of busted up OSB and other unworthy pine scrap. Nothing that could be used for anything but enough to house a Filipino village.
I leaned it all up against the outside wall in the evening when I was done clearing and was thinking about how many trips I'd need to take to haul it all off. Wasn't expecting anything, but put up a small sign with "Free wood". The next morning when I came back it was all gone.
Ran across this version of a rack from Matthew Peech. I like that the wood and plywood is supported rather than just leaning. Anyone have something similar? The only thing I'm wondering is the width- less than a full width of a plywood sheet.
Very space conscious. Not sure it really matters that it is not 4' wide but since a full width piece will stick out anyway, you might as well make it 4'.
My only concern is that moving a full sheet in the vertical orientation may be a lot harder than horizontally. It is awkward enough sideways.
--Nathan, TX. Hire the lazy man. He may not do as much work but that's because he will find a better way.
Good point on the moving sheets aspect. I was also thinking that I don't have a lot of plywood stored so thinking how I could modify for just wood storage in the new space I've been working on.
I had horizontal storage (WWMM cart), and had some rather gross "mouse issues" in the long storage sections. I cannot face that again (nor do I want to dispose of wood like I did 🥴). I currently store my long boards vertically and do worry a bit about bowing although I try to have them with "no" lean.
It’s an interesting design, but I think it really on plays in if you have short ceilings. And I do think it would be harder to pull boards out than it appears, but it’s always cool to see someone’s solution to a common problem.
Ryan/// ~sigh~ I blew up another bowl. Moke told me "I made the inside bigger than the outside".
I, temporarily, solved the flat stock storage issue. ;) I moved four sheets of OSB and three sheets of plywood up into the attic of the garage side of shop, where it will become flooring. Add to that a half sheet of 3/4 OSB that will become a shelf sitting flat atop where two support beams come together to meet on the bottom 2x of the trusses (solving the leg support issue). It sits over the top of a wall, which, for purposes of that part of the flooring and storage, is load bearing, so the trusses don't, for the most part, have to suffer the weight.
The flooring replaces the single 2x tying several truss bottoms together and makes walking around up their a cakewalk.
Trying to avoid flat horizontal storage after the mouse mess situation. Have some shallow sturdy bins that I plan to sort/store my cutoffs/shorts. Hope to build some type of angled vertical storage for long boards.
Just picking up some large storage units that we found on FB Marketplace. Have to made 2 trips as we couldn't fit both in our truck with the cap on. 🤦♀️
