Easy Lumber Rack
Here's a quick (short) post about an easy lumber rack I knocked together from an extra sheet of plywood and some scrap lumber I had laying around. I needed a better storage solution than the wire-racks I had bought years ago for camping gear and other stuff. It was fine to hold things, but difficult to sort through and impossible to move if I needed to get it out of the way. The sheet of plywood is the only 'new' piece of lumber, which I had originally planned for another project but decided was too rough to use, and I bought some decent quality casters from a local hardware store.
The extent of the plan I had going into this was to cut the plywood into two 4 foot squares, and arrange them in an A-frame using some 2x4s I pulled off of my old workbench top. I cut the more beat up ends off of these, and found a few scraps for the rest of this. I cut a bevel on the 2x4s that would hold it together using my table saw, but these wouldnd't have been too hard to do by hand with a scrub plane and some patience.
I ended up using fewer of the 2x4s than I was initially expecting. If I had thought it through, the plywood at the bottom of the triangle could have been saved with only the 2x4s holding the bottom together. I think having it there will help with strength and gives me a good shelf to put additional lumber on.
I added a small scrap strip of hardwood as a stop to keep the lumber from sliding off the bottom, tacked it down with brad nails. Later I attached these wheels under it, boltling them through the 2x4s that cross the bottom. I put a couple of crossmembers inside to add an inside shelf and strenthen the plywood a bit if anything really heavy gets leaned on them.
Finally, I addded some eyebolts and a couple of bungie cords to keep the long pieces of lumber from tipping over. This was after having my kid help with attaching the wheels (well, dusting and attempting to tighten the bolts for me). I noticed with wheels that moving it around would definitely cause the lumber to slide around and fall over. Not something I want to have happen to myself or anyone else.
Finally, I got to start putting lumber on it - for comparison, part way through moving lumber, you can see my messy old lumber rack here with some of the lumber removed. Still a mess, but much better than it was.
