?? about lumber rack construction

Re: ?? about lumber rack construction

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>1. You say the joists run parallel to the rack - I assume by that you mean parallel to the wall on which you're mounting it. You could cut a short brace that screwed to the nearest joist and to the top of the 2x4 to hold the top end in place. The bottom end then gets held in place with your knee while you drill the first hole. After that, you're golden.

You might consider, by the way, running the 2x4 past the bottom of the joist and putting in a block that kind of wedges between the top of the 2x4 and the first floor joist to transfer some of the load to the joist. There are tradeoffs here, though; a lot depends on how sturdy your joists are - you don't want to twist them, and I wouldn't do it with the plywood-and-1x2 type joist, only with lumber joists.

2. I'm not current on masonry fasteners, but cinder block's not very strong, and lumber racks are very heavy, so consult with your supplier about the strongest fastener for the application. Not very helpful an answer. The Breaktime forum at Fine Homebuilding is where you'd go for this info (www.taunton.com and then look for Breaktime).

Re: ?? about lumber rack construction

Moses Yoder in White Pigeon, MI

>I would drill the hole in the upright, then set it in place and just hold in place by hand and drill in the wall long enough to jsut mark the hole, then remove the upright and finish drilling the hole. I am not a carpenter, so am not real familiar with the different masonry fasteners, but the ones I like best are the plastic inserts you put into the hole and then screw into. I have never had good luck with any other masonry fasteners. You will have some lateral weight on a rack, but most of the weight will be vertical, and all you need is to keep the uprights from falling forward. If it was me building a rack today, I would use 4x4 uprights and 3/4" black pipe for the supports, holes drilled into the uprights with a 3� upward slant. The pipe will take a lot of weight, and use up a lot less space than wooden brackets.

Re: ?? about lumber rack construction

Jack Guzman from Maine

>I am a carpenter and I don't trust masonry fasteners alot.I use them to keep wood from moving from side to side.Almost any type of fastener can pull straight out with enough force.Masonry crumbles.Drilling into it dislodges small pebbles so it's had to get an even hole.I would try to limit the outward pulling force as much as possible by bracing.Unless you can anchor from top to bottom. Don't depend on the wall anchors holding your wood to the wall.---Just my opinion however.Others may disagree.---Jack

Re: ?? about lumber rack construction

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>I made a frame, like a simple wood wall frame, out of the 2x4s, and bolted the plates to the floor and to the ceiling joists. This design is from an old Wood magazine shop book. I can make no engineering assertions about the design, but it seems quite solid. If you look carefully at the top of the photo, you can see the heads of the 5/16 bolts sunk into the joists.

Re: ?? about lumber rack construction

Marc Burt in Northeast GA.

>That looks like an excellent idea. Did you fasten your uprights to the wall themselves or just to the frame?

Re: ?? about lumber rack construction

William Duffield, on the Cohansey

>Here is a photo of my lumber rack, before I filled it up.

It is attached to the 24" o.c. 2x6 ceiling joists with 5/16" bolts. The wall behind is CB, on a concrete footer, with a sheetrocked 2x4 insulated stud wall between the exterior CB and the lumber rack. The uprights are ripped from 3/4" veneer core CDX plywood with 2x4 spacers between, screwed and glued. The laterals are 5/16" through-bolted to the uprights. They are constructed of 2x4s and two gussets of 3/4" lauan lumber core plywood, again assembled with drywall screws and glue. Note the diagonal grain direction of the face veneer and the lumber core of the gussets. The lateral 2x4s extend 3 1/2" back beyond the ends of the gussets, but the 2x4 spacer blocks at the bottom of the gussets do not. Also, note that the grain of the 2x4 spacer blocks that tie the uprights together must run horizontally.

All the laterals can be easily repositioned. All the bolts have washers and nuts on the other end, but the nuts are really unnecessary. Even unloaded, there is no way a bolt would work loose without being intentionally driven out with a hammer and pin punch. To make it modular, you do have to be careful with the placement of the holes in the uprights and the laterals, to make sure they line up, but without slop. I made a jig, and drilled all the holes in the ends of the laterals on my drill press.

Also, carefully watch the vertical alignment of the bolt holes in the uprights. It's better for the lumber if it is evenly supported.

Note that the load on the ceiling joists is lateral, away from the wall and compressive. If your joists run the other direction, parallel to the wall, you will need to bolt each upright to a cripple nailed between the two nearest joists and at least add additional x-bracing out from those joists to help distribute the twisting load to the adjacent joists. The load through the lateral mounting bolts on the uprights is also lateral. Do NOT make the uprights from 1x4s, as overloading to failure would cause them to split. They must be plywood or better. Loading at the bottom is towards the floor, and also laterally backwards through the footer of the studwall and into the CB wall. When I installed the studwall, I put additional anchors through the footer behind the lumber rack into the concrete slab for this reason.

The little black spots in the photo are either the heads of drywall screws or bolt holes for repositioning the laterals. Use lots of yellow glue. The drywall screws do the clamping while the glue dries.

One thought. No, two.

Tom Sontag - St. Louis

>If masonry anchors will not work (and I am not in favor of that idea either), how about construction adhesive? If you can rig some clamping pressure, that should hold the verticals to the wall. Or, if you connect all the verticals with a horizontal brace (say, across the top and bottom back of each post) why wouldn't an occasional cross brace to the first joist keep everything against the wall?

I use a variation of Moses' idea: 24" steel pipe poking at a *slight* upward angle out of 4x4. The key is to get the spacing and angle consistent - it is the most space-efficient way IMO.

Another thought...

Glenn Madsen

>I tend to rearrange my shop once or twice a year. For me, making the lumber rack 'permanent' would be a mistake. YMMV.

Have fun with it.

Mine's currently overflowing, by the way. And more walnut is waiting to be picked up from a friend.

Re: Another thought...

Marc Burt in Northeast GA.

>Yes, I'm the same way. For that reason I'm leery of using something like construction adhesive as removal would be quite the pain. Upon further examination yesterday I see that I will have about a 2" gap between the front of my uprights and the first floor joist. So right now I'm planning on shimming that out to brace against that joist and adding some cross braces between that one and a few behind it to distribute the load. I was also thinking about using some strapping of some sort to fix the uprights to the sill plate behind.

This would have been so much simpler if my joists just ran the other way!

Re: ?? about lumber rack construction

Don Thompson - Cutler Ridge, Florida

>Just to the frame.

Re: Another thought...

Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA

>I'd been thinking about your project as a drive-to-work project for a couple of days, and it sounds like you're considering the approach I had thought about.

Brace from the bottom of the joist you're wedging against to the top of the next joist out, and you'll transfer the load to the joist-subfloor joint, which should be plenty strong.

I would use some masonry fasteners; I just wouldn't rely on them.