marc:the wood whisperer is sponsored by: powermatic, the goldstandard since 1921 and by rockler woodworking andhardware: create with confidence. now that i'm back in my oldshop space i have got my hands full with projects andthings to do before i can actually build my first pieceof furniture here, and it all starts with a lumber rack.as you can see, i need one. (groovy jazz music) this lumber rack is very easyto build and it just requires
2x4s and plywood. you needto attach it to any open space in your wall andhere's the great thing: you don't necessarily have tobuild it to my exact specs. you could downsize things,you could make them bigger, you could make the wholething longer if you want to. you customize it so itfits your personal needs. let's look at some of the materials and we can get started building. i just picked up my 2x4 stockfrom the local home center.
keep in mind not all ofthese 2x4s are created equal. some piles are kiln-driedand some piles are not. you can even take your handand put it on the board and you'll feel the stuffthat's not kiln-dried has a lot of moisturecoming off of the surface. it feels cold and clammy. this on the other hand,a kiln-dried board, generally feels room temperature. you can feel a little bit ofmoisture in it, and especially
here in arizona it's a littlebit more noticeable but for the most part the kiln-driedstock is really the way to go. what that means to you is thatit's a much more stable board. even though this one has a lotof the moisture driven out, especially here in arizona, there's enough in here thatthis could cause me problems if i wait too long to work withthe board, so i bought my boards this morning and i'mgoing to work with them today. that way i don't have to worry about it.
if you do use the regularstuds you absolutely want to make sure youget those on the wall as soon as possible becausethey will start to bend and turn into pretzelson you. it's bad news. the other thing to keep in mind is the total length of these boards. i like to have the back of thelumber rack made with single boards, i don't reallywant multiple boards for each vertical support,so get the length that
corresponds to how high youwant your lumber rack to be. if that's eight foot, great, if you can get 10-footersand your ceiling can accommodate 10-foot boards,go for the 10-footers. just make sure you get them long enough to accommodate the sizethat you want to build. wood is stored in an insulatedoven where the temperature, humidity and aircirculation are controlled. excess moisture is drivenfrom the wood over the
course of weeks to a month,depending on the species. although you bought your2x4s at the home center, resist the urge to buythe plywood there as well. unfortunately that plywoodtends to be loaded down with moisture so as soon as youget it back to your shop, within a couple hoursinstead of 4x8 beautiful flat sheets you're going tohave 4x8 potato chips. they tend to really warp and it just makes it miserable to work with.
instead i recommend goingto your hardwood dealer and asking them abouttheir shop-grade plywood. don't get the cabinet-grade stuff, you don't need it for a project like this. it's going to cost aboutthe same thing that you would pay at the localhome center, about 40, maybe 50 bucks a sheetbut it's much more stable. you're going to have more plies, in fact mine has 11 internal plies.
it's a lot like balticbirch where it's a lot more stable over time and itholds a screw really well. 40 to 50 bucks a sheet,you just can't beat it. it just means you've got to make one extra trip to a different store. behind me here is where ourlumber rack is going to go. the first order of businessis to find the studs. our lumber rack needs tosupport a lot of weight so it's absolutely vitalthat these vertical
members are attached to studs in the wall. i use a standard stud finderto mark out the locations. if you're having problems with this, a lot of people don't realizeyou can calibrate this very easily by putting itup against a known stud. (beeping) you hear that, right? obviously i couldn't have a stud finder in my hands and not do a joke. i put the stud finder against the wall,
slide it over and whenit hits a stud it makes a sound and you'll see the red light and it tells you where thecenter of the stud is. use that to ballpark thestart and stop points. from this point on ifyou have 16 inch centers all you need to do is measure across every 16 inches and mark thelocation of the stud. keep in mind, some houses, somegarages have 24 inch centers so you're going to want tomake a change to the plan.
i would make sure thatyou put your verticals, if you have 24 inch centers, put your vertical supportson every one of those studs. if you go to the next levelwhich would put a 48 inch gap, a four foot gap between your verticals, that's a little bit too much. i don't feel comfortable doing that. put your verticals on every 24 inches. for me, since mine are 16inch centers i'm going to
put mine every 32 inchesand i think that should be enough to support the weightthat we're looking for. go all the way down the line,mark the locations of your studs and that's going tohelp us for every part of this project when we need toanchor stuff to the wall. the first thing i want todo is attach a support cleat onto the wall. this is notonly going to give us extra support for each one of thesevertical members but it's also going to make it a loteasier for us to install them,
it helps us hold them in place. just a regular old 2x4 is goingto work just fine for this. i've marked already on it every16 inches because i want to attach it with a single screwinto each stud down the line. before i drive the screwi'm going to pre-drill just because i want torelieve some of that material and i don'twant to crack the board. (drilling) i'm just going to go along the
length and get each screw started. i'm using 3 1/2 inchspax screws for these. you can certainly use lagscrews if you want to. i'm going to drop this about 12to 16 inches up from the floor. i've got a little mark herebut this doesn't have to be absolutely perfect. i'mjust going to get it close. line up my screw with a knownlocation of one of my studs. now i can drive the screw. feels secure, thatdefinitely went into a stud.
now i can continue along therest of the board but before i do that i don't like tomeasure all the way across to make sure it's perfect, i'mjust going to use a level. hey, look at this. scorpion. to get the full lengththat i'm looking for i did have to add one additional piece because the size that igot wasn't long enough. one 30 inch extra piece should cover it. just make sure that thelevel is on top and helps
me make sure thateverything is nice and even. each one of our vertical piecesis going to receive a number of screws from top to bottomto help secure it to the wall. how many? it's up to you.i'm going to probably put mine maybe every 16 to20 inches all the way up. just make sure that you have one at the top and one near the very bottom. this way everythingwill be locked in place. we're going to pre-drill again.
once again i'm going topre-start a screw here. this one is very similar, it's a spax screw but look how long it is. it's actually 4 3/4 ofan inch so it's plenty long to go all the way through this board. we'll recess it by quitea bit and we'll have a really nice amount of abite into our wall stud. one thing i should havebeen a little bit more clear about before is when youpre-drill your hole here
you're going to want to makesure that that whole is wide enough to take the entirescrew without it catching. not too wide but just wide enough. this way when the screw hitsthe stud inside the wall it will pull this entireassembly forward into the wall. if this screw starts catchingon too much material inside our vertical support theywon't really pull together. you need to have thisjust barely loose fit here and that should really helpto pull it into the wall.
if you're lucky you'll be ableto put the stud right up on the cleat and start drivingyour screws into the wall. my problem is i've gotconduit to work around so i'm going to need to mark thelocation and use my jigsaw to cut a little scoop out thatgoes right around the pipe. perfect. we'll start by attaching thiswith one screw near the bottom. it doesn't have to be the verybottom but near the bottom. eyeballing at this point.
now with one screw in placeyou want to check for level. if one screw is in the stud,assuming that the stud is straight up and down andnice and plumb you should be able to put your levelright against your board, make sure the bubble is nice and centered, and then drive the rest of the screws. by the way, an impact driver is worth its weight in gold on a project like this. i'm going to continuethis process working my
way down and installingone piece at a time. (funky electronic guitar) our shelf supports themselvesare going to be made from a 2x4 that's sandwichedwith two pieces of ply. this one's loose, nothing isscrewed together yet but let me show you the componentsand how we make them. the one side piece ofply goes down like so. the 2x4 is added and it'sflush with the front. then the other piece ofply comes in like this.
what that does is it creates almost a open mortice or a little pocket here. this is going to go intothe vertical support. to make the support brackets i cut up a bunch of 2x4s to 18 inches in length. for a full-sized rack you'regoing to need a lot of these. i then used my track sawto slice six inch wide strips from the full sheet of plywood. i find it much easier tobreak down sheet goods
on the floor instead of at the table saw. the plywood strips are thencut to 21 1/2 inches long. remember you're going to needtwo of these per support. on each piece of plywood iplace a mark 3 1/2 inches in from the back edge and 3 1/2inches down from the top. then i use a straightedge to connect the lines. the taper can then be cut at the bandsaw since the line doesn't have to be perfect. if you're lucky enough to havesomething like a festool mft
you can certainly makequick work of the taper. once the part are cut they can be assembled with glue and screws. a level line across the studshelps me position the supports. before screwing thesupport in place be sure that the stud is makingfull contact with the vertical support for theultimate in strength. we don't want any gap here. now i drive two screws in from each side.
it may be overkill but i liketo add an additional longer screw to each side thatgoes all the way through the vertical support and into thepiece of ply on the other end. speaking of overkill i decided to make a late game change here. i added a few extra-longlag screws to each vertical member justfor some extra security. ah, now that feels better. the next order of business isto construct the plywood cart.
the entire thing is madefrom 3/4 inch plywood and the parts are cut to thespecifications in the plan. each joint is put together withglue and countersunk screws. it doesn't get simpler than this. these parts are very largeso get a helper if you can or just get creative using someplywood scraps for extra support. (upbeat jazz music) before we put thisbeast on the ground it's a good idea to attach the casters while
we still have access to the underside. the casters that i'm going to use, i just picked these up at home depot. they're really heavyduty, cost about 12 bucks each and they're blue so they look cool. i'm going to install themon the bottom here but before i do i want toreinforce the bottom. there's only one piece of3/4 inch ply down here. i like to have something a little bit more
substantial to biteinto so i'm going to put an extra strip of plyright here at the front where the casters aregoing to be screwed in. i can attach it with some glue and screws. now i'm going to mark the locations of the holes in each caster. have it roughly centered here. i'm just pre-drilling the center just to help the screw get started.
now i'll drive inch anda quarter wood screws. that bad boy is not going anywhere. to install the plywoodcart obviously you're going to need to prop up oneend a little bit because the one end has castersand the other side doesn't. i'm just using whatever ihad laying around to prop it up to approximately thesame height as the casters. attaching it to this vertical member here i'm going to use on of these gate hinges.
it's a pretty big one so itcan take a lot of weight. i'm going to attach it likeso so that the leaf end, this triangular leaf can be attached to the side of the cart itself. let's drill these inwith a couple of screws. now with two hingesinstalled we can try to move the whole thingback a little bit here. get it lined up as best we can. now we can screw them in place.
if all goes well we should beable to remove the supports. hopefully you won'thear any wood cracking. this bad boy should swing right out. yeah, baby. here's the cool thing.you don't really ever have to move it out much more than this. just enough so that it's convenient to slide sheet goods in and out. once they're in place pushit up against the wall.
i see it's actuallycoming back out toward me a little bit so you maywant to come up with a little hook system orsomething to hold it in place but for the most partthis is looking pretty good. and thankfully i don'thear any wood cracking. i'm going to attach this littlehandle here for convenience. this should finish it off nicely. you can see i've alreadygot some lumber on the main racks and now we canstart loading this guy up.
plenty of room for solidwood and also sheet good scraps here, whatever youwant to use those for. now i'll load up the main sheet good rack. (sultry jazz music) there it is. a sturdyand high capacity lumber rack and a sheet goodscart that swings out. it's nice and convenient.it's right by the front door so i could just pullthe materials right from the truck and put itright here for processing.
honestly i'm really happywith the way this turned out. there are lot of different ways that you could take a project like this. you could add neat little features to it, you could do more to reinforce it. let me know what you guys do because i'd love to see your changes. for me, for now, i thinkthis is going to work pretty good until istart to buy more wood,
which seems to always be a problem. thanks for watching. ofcourse, check out the plan for this project at thewoodwhisperer.com and we'll catch you next time. (woman singing)