Mobile Workbench, Plywood Rack, Lumber Rack - 309

Hey folks, how you guys doing? Hope you're all having a great day today. We've got a lot of really cool and exciting changes upcoming to the shop, which means I have to make some changes to get ready for the changes. So that's what we're going to do today. I've got 10 things on the list, a lot of organization and getting stuff out of my shop and into my storage shed stuff that is not going to be used on a daily basis, like extra lumber and such. This is my new materials shed, and I'm, I'm really excited about this. It's a 12 foot by 24 foot portable shed, and it's built on runners and not permanently attached to the ground, which means that if we move houses, I can take the shed with me. I've had it for, I guess a couple months now, and I really need to set up some type of organization system inside of it. So why buy and not build? Well, quite honestly, for me, it's a time situation. There's only so many hours in the day and I really don't want to spend any time in the middle of the summer of, you know, the Mississippi heat and humidity trying to build a shed. So for me, it made sense building upon the, there's only so many hours in the day statement. I decided to install manufactured lumber racks in the materials shed rather than make my own. These are the Bora wood racks sold by Rockler woodworking and hardware. Each box has two racks and each rack has six shelves. Assembly is very quick with these, just one screw per shelf and then each shelf slides on the bar from above. And I'm installing four of these boxes, which should give me enough for a full 24 foot span of wood storage. Now it's important that the lumber racks are installed at the same height and to make the installation foolproof, I cut a piece of two by four to act as a spacer block. Before we install the lumber racks, let's go ahead and spin around and get a quick tour of the shed. The entry door is on one of the short sides and the entire left wall is where I want the lumber to go. You can see that I've already been stacking lumber on the floor to get out of the way in my shop. On the center of the back wall, I have three slabs that were given to me. One of them is hickory, one of them is Osage orange, and one of them is pecan. These need to move as I want the plywood cart to go in the center of the back wall. On the right wall, I have some previous scrap plywood, my bikes, my ladder that hasn't had a dry storage location in four years and some extra PVC pipe for my dust collection. Now the bikes are the only thing that are I guess non-business related that I want to keep in here and I want to get all of this stuff stored high and on the wall. Before mounting the lumber racks, I had to add a couple braces to the wall right below the windows. I'll be mounting a rack on either side of the window and need to extend the two by four framing from the sides of the window down to the sill plate. This will allow for the weight to be distributed efficiently to the floor. Here's a closer shot at how simple these racks are. A small screw locates each arm vertically and the arm is slid in place from above. That's, that's literally it. These are incredibly simple. Because the arms stick out of the back slightly, a spacer is included for every mounting screw. This provides a solid connection between the vertical bar and the wall stud or whatever material you are screwing these into or attaching these to. The two by four spacer block is placed on the floor and then the rack on top of the two by four. This ensures that each rack is installed at the same height. Three three inch decking screws were used to secure each rack to the two by four wall stud. And then it's a bunch of rinse and repeat for the rest of the racks. This went by so fast because the window is in the exact center of the wall. The spacing, it was a little bit interesting. Starting at each corner, there are three racks that will hold an eight foot long board, uh, span to the fourth rack and it will support a 12 foot long board. And because most of the lumber I have and will get in the future isn't 12 foot long, that leaves the center two racks for shorter board storage. This layout ended up being quite convenient for various different length boards. I'm not stuck to a certain length that I have to, uh, I guess go by when I pick up lumber. And now to get all the wood off the floor and onto the racks where it belongs. This first board is a good test of the strength of these racks. It's a piece of bubinga that is almost 13 inches wide. It's 12 feet long and it's a little bit over two inches thick. This board was heavy, which is exactly why I hired help for the day. Uh, the rest of the bubinga was loaded up on the rack. All of it's eight quarter that I have and the racks handled the weight. No problem. After that, we switched over to mahogany and we both had a really good laugh when putting these mahogany boards on the rack. Just after lifting up the bubinga, this felt like we were lifting up paper. With the lumber off of the floor, I wanted to get these slabs closer to the door. And the first one is an Osage orange slab that I got from Ted Alexander while at the Skytook woodworking event last year in Skytook, Oklahoma. It still needs to dry a bit before I use it. Uh, but its natural shape is telling me that it really wants to be a bench of some kind. I guess we'll see on that one. The next slab is a piece of hickory that I got from Sean Stone. Uh, one side is a bit punky and the other side has got some really, really great character where the sapwood and heartwood meet. I used another slab from the same tree to make the legs of my dining table and that turned out gorgeous. There's a lot of character in this particular tree. And finally, the last slab is a piece of spalted pecan that I also got from Ted. There's so much beauty in this slab. It's a, it's 44 inches in one direction. It's 47 inches in the other direction and it's pretty much close to being square. It's, it's, it's, it's just calling. It's just saying that it wants to be a coffee table and that was its original plan. Uh, but my wife vetoed that plan. So I'm not sure what I'll do with this one. With a destination established for all of my lumber, we went back to the shop to remove what was left. Starting with the pile that I had on top of the miter saw station. The goal for this space is to use it for wood that will be in immediate upcoming projects. As I determined what woods will be used next, I'll bring them into the shop and let them acclimate up here. But I don't want to get too crazy with storing stuff up here because I've got a bad shoulder and lifting heavy stuff up high. Just, well, it just kind of sucks. This other corner of the shop has been a catch all for, for years. Basically since day one, four years ago, I had more eight quarter boards sitting over here. Some various pieces of plywood stored in this corner. This corner is, it's basically like a set of lungs. The pile expands and then it contracts and then it expands and then it contracts. I'm trying to cut that out and keep this area open clean somewhat I guess for project staging as needed. And finally the shelf on my outfeed table, it needs to be emptied. All of this lumber is good quality two foot to four foot boards and it all needs to go to the shed. That's basically because I'm getting rid of this outfeed table. It's just a basic plywood table, so there's nothing that's really going to be lost and I plan on replacing it with a folding outfeed table. I'm not sure if it's going to be a purchased or homemade folding outfeed table though. I don't know. I'm getting less and less. I'm less and less interested in shop projects these days and more interested in actually making furniture. So time will tell which route I go with it. I just want to get back to making something other than shop projects. The next bit of organization, or I guess an increase in overall shop flexibility will come from adding casters to my workbenches. Now these are the Rockler workbench casters and I'm putting them on both of my workbenches, which leads me to a very common question I get about my workbenches, which is how heavy are they? My response has always been that I don't know and I really don't care because a traditional workbench needs to be heavy enough that it doesn't move when you don't want it to move and light enough that you can move it when you do need to move it. Well, these workbenches, they, they can be moved around without casters, but it's not fun at all and it's definitely not convenient. And also these, these casters are rated at 400 pounds for the set. So to answer the question, my workbenches weigh less than 400 pounds each. To install them, I used a two inch wide board and a pencil to strike a line two inches off the floor on each one of the legs. Then the bracket is installed with the lower screw right through that line and then the top screw completes the installation of the bracket. The caster is installed next with a single nut and that's, that's literally it. And they work incredibly well. I was actually really surprised with these. Like I said, I have no idea how much either of my workbenches weigh, but now I can very easily move them around to get more open floor space for assembling larger projects, which is kind of what motivated me to put these on there. The last two projects that I made for my office were kind of too big for the space that I had available. All right, so now that the workbenches can get out of the way easily, I can knock out a simple plywood rack for the shed with a couple of two by sixes and two by fours. Now, the goal for this plywood rack is to be able to store a combined 15 to 20 sheets of various size plywood because the best plywood that I've used without spending more than say about, you know, four and 15 minutes North of where I live. It's not Baltic birch, it's just cabinet grade birch. And it doesn't make sense financially to make a two and a half hour trip in a full size truck just to get one or two pieces every time I need them. So in the long run, it's cheaper for me. And it makes just, it just makes a lot more sense for me to get these in bulk and have it on hand for upcoming projects. Some of the pieces for the rack need to be cut at a seven degree angle. And in order to rotate my miter saw, I have to remove one screw and push a wing back into the dust box. This isn't an inconvenience at all as I rarely make angled cuts with my miter saw. And like I said, it's just one screw, but I figured I'd show you because that's something else that I get a lot of questions on as well. Then all the miter cuts are batched out. And when I returned the saw back to 90 degrees, I can put the wing back in place and secure it with a single screw again, very, very easily. Then the last pieces can be batched out as well. And I designed this plywood rack to be quick and easy to assemble with reference faces. There's, there's literally only one time where a measurement is needed with the assembly. The first step is to assemble the base with two two by six boards. And those are connected by four two by four boards. The center ones is just kind of eyeball to get them close to an even space distribution. Then a two by four with a seven degree cut on one end is added to the inside of each of the previous two by fours. And that seven degree face is used as a reference face for the first vertical piece. And this piece isn't actually vertical. It also has a seven degree cut on bottom, which makes it lean seven degrees to the inside. And here's where the only marking is needed. It's the distance between the two by six outside piece and the location of where the opposite side seven degree board will go. So the opposite side, seven degree somewhat vertical board is installed with the seven degree cut on the bottom and the outside face of the two by four intersecting the line we just drew. So that means that on top, the two two by four boards should meet up and a couple of screws will secure each pair together. Now I will say that I messed this step up. I did something out of sequence, but I'll continue to show you the error that we created and how we fixed it. Each side gets a one quarter inch plywood skin. And these are, these are basically here just to let the plywood slide easily and to prevent the entire plywood rack from racking along its length. And here you can see the error we created. It was totally my fault. I just got ahead of myself and forgot to align all of these seven degree boards before securing the pairs. Uh, luckily the solution was, it was very, very simple. We removed the screws on top, clamped a straight two by four to each of the seven degree boards, and then secured a, secured the pairs once again, but this time with new screw holes, this should have been done before the quarter inch plywood was added. And while we were installing the second side of the seven degree boards, but Oh well, luckily it was a very, very quick and easy fix. A third sheet of quarter inch plywood was ripped lengthwise for the platform strips and quarter inch plywood is fine here because all I'm wanting is something to allow the sheets to slide easily over the two by four frame below. Next, we loaded the plywood cart into the bed of my truck to go to the shed and the plywood rack. It's not crazy heavy. We could have walked it over there, but it is awkward due to its size and shape. No casters are needed on this particular plywood cart. It slides easily to the back of my shed and fits exactly where I wanted it. You can see that the base is offset to one side and this was on purpose because I'll have thicker plywood on the side with more room. Once again, we go back to the shop and this time it's to eliminate a footprint by moving the contents of one of my shop carts to the lower shelf on my Hickory workbench. But first I need to make a quick shelf out of three quarter inch plywood and attach some cleats to the inside. Storing my grinder and hybrid pantorouter out of the way, but still easily accessible on this shelf will allow me to take the cart that they were on and store it in the shed. That means that it's just one less footprint in the shop, which means more of that valuable floor space is available and I don't want to get rid of this cart as it rolls great and it's good for using while spraying finishes on projects. Here is a quick bandsaw and half lap bracket for the pipes on the opposite side of the shed. Now these pipes, there aren't that heavy and don't require heavy duty brackets, so this will be just fine. I didn't get any footage of installation though because we lost daylight and we didn't have enough lights to keep recording. All right, excuse the shaky hands. This is the next morning. We ended up finishing up last night in the dark, so we lost daylight and couldn't record the last little bit, but I wanted to show you the final results of these organizational changes. So all of the larger lumber is over here on this wall. You got a huge stash of babinga and this is mahogany down here. This is hickory up here and hickory up there. A couple of pieces of maple over here. This is some various other stuff. One's rosewood and the other one is Caribbean something. I forget, but the plywood cart, check out my second channel to see this thing loaded up. I've got some small scraps, all my smaller scraps. I'm just going to sit in the corner. No big deal. I'm going to load this up in the next couple of days, make a trip to get a bunch of plywood in bulk. This is a project that I want to duplicate or put my own twist on. It's just a particle board piece of junk really, but I want to make a really nice one. I don't know when I'll get around to doing that, but it's got to stay in here. And then I put up some of these really, really light duty brackets here. This is just like a half lap joint right there. Kind of slap together screws to get these pipes up and out of the way. Like I said, light duty stuff, something that doesn't require a lot of weight, weight capacity or whatever. Hung up my ladder finally. And like I said, these bikes just have to stay. So that's the only thing that's not shop related. These are from my dust collection. These pipes are, but this extra space, such a tremendous asset for the business. So I can get all the storage out here and not have my shop being used for storage. But anyway, I wanted to share with you the last little bit because like I said, we ran out of daylight yesterday. As I said earlier, I've got some really exciting changes coming to the shop, which you'll see soon enough. But that has kind of made me need to modify my philosophy, I guess on shop layout. So previously I've always wanted, and I still always do want a situation where everything is set up and ready to go. You just go to the machine and use it, go to the workstation and use it, go to anything in the shop and use it without having to spend setup time or time on setup. I have to trade off a little bit of that for a little bit of mobility and actually everything needs to be mobile now. And with the addition of the workbench casters, now everything is truly mobile except my miter saw station cause it's built into the wall. So this is going to be, I mean look how much space this is. This is crazy just by putting my workbench cast workbenches on casters and pushing them out of the way. I've got a crazy amount of space to build and I've been pushing these workbenches around quite a bit recently because I've been building some larger projects for my office and I just didn't have a big spot on the floor for assembly like cabinets and staging. So I've been pushing them way over to here, which it's doable. I mean you can push the workbenches around, but it's not fun. So these casters, I'm still amazed at how awesome these casters are, how they move something heavy so easily. You can pull a workbench out here with one finger. That's pretty cool. But yeah, everything's on casters now, so everything can move very easily and be, you know, set up as needed. A big shout out to Rockler Woodworking and Hardware for supporting this video. And more importantly than that, for being an active part in the woodworking community. The more people we have in the woodworking community, the better it is for every one of us. So shout out to them. If you're interested in the casters that I used as well as the lumber racks in my shed, then I'll have links in the description below. Oh, that's another thing. Getting all of the lumber outside of here because it's just taking up storage space and then only bringing in a few pieces to acclimate for upcoming projects. That's the goal. That has freed up quite a bit of space as well. And the outfeed table that had the lumber down below, that's going to go and I'll replace that with some type of folding setup. So yeah, I think I rambled on. It was a very, very, productive day and I'm excited for what's to come. Thanks Rockler. Check out the links down below. You guys take care, have a great day and I'll talk to you in the next video. So much room for activities.