Friday, September 12, 2008

DIY - How to make a handy sheet material rack

I recently built a rack in my shed to hold all the sheet material that I keep, or have left over from other projects. It was basically 2 lengths of 3x2 fixed to the wall on an angle with a couple of shorter bits on the bottom to keep the sheets raised off the ground. Nothing fancy but it does the job.


My system does have a problem though, and that is when I need to access a sheet from behind the stack I either have to move all the other sheets in front of it, or try and lift it over the other sheets, or slide it out from behind which requires leaving enough space for the length to slide out completely.

Now what about this system I found on the Readers Digest site. A material rack that is hinged to the wall on one end and has casters on the other. This way it just rolls away from the wall on one end, and access to all the sheets is easy. I think I like this idea much better.

Here is a bit from the site:

They allow you to swing the storage rack out from the wall and slide out the board, panelling or other offcut item you want. Dividers strengthen the rack, while allowing you to separate large sheets from small. If you buy all materials new, they’ll cost less than $400 (see our cost details at right). But why not take advantage of all the offcuts you previously had nowhere to store and use them first before buying new material?