Wood Storage (2003)
When you start to accumulate wood you’ll need somewhere to store it safely and in a manner that won’t encourage it to warp or twist. Keeping it flat is always better than propping it against a wall, but the challenge is finding a storage method that will hold enough heavy wood and keep it flat.
I’ve used the following method in my last few shops, and it’s always worked well. My wood stays reasonably flat, and I can load it up with an extrordinary amount of stock without overloading the system. It’s simply heavy duty shelf standards and brackets from HD or Lowes. These are the kind with double rows of slots along the length of the standard. This stuff is incredibly inexpensive, and it works great. In previous shops I’ve screwed them into wall studs, but in my current basement shop I lagged them into the concrete walls with Tapcon concrete screws. The shelf brackets are easily adjusted up and down the length of the standards, and this makes it great to keep stock sorted into piles by type.
I keep the lowest shelf about 49” above the floor. This let me keep plywood and short offcuts stored on the wall under the shelves. The whole shabang only takes up about 8’ of wall space, and I can store all the wood I need.
Here are a couple pics showing the rack details:
And this is an auxiliary rack I use in another part of my basement to air dry lumber:
© Copyright 2006 Chris Billman