How To Make A Simple Lumber Rack Workshop Projects

I’ve been fixing up my shed to use for metal working projects and part of that is to include an area for lumber storage. I don’t need a lot, more or less just enough for the lumber that was already stored in the shed before I started fixing it up. And being able to quickly see what I have at a glance should help me to be more efficient when selecting the wood for upcoming projects.

I concentrated on this end on the shed and got the walls done here first so that I could build the lumber rack on this end wall:

Then built the rack sections (as shown in the video at the bottom of this page) from scrap wood I already had. Here are the dimensions I used:

The arms are glued and screwed to the plywood cleat using polyurethane construction adhesive and 3-1/2″ screws. And while this is not the strongest rack in the world, it is strong enough for my needs. If more weight capacity is needed, you could always use more of these brackets spaced closer together (more equals less weight per section), or shorten the arms (shorter arms will reduce leverage on the joint – it’s a physics thing). You could also use thicker plywood for the vertical cleats and thicker wood for the arms, and use more screws to fasten them together. You could also put the arms closer together to limit how much lumber can actually fit on each row.

Mounted on the wall of the shed using just six 1-1/4″ drywall screws per rack section screwed directly to the 1/2″ particle board wall sheathing:

I left space on the left side to stand up longer pieces. I also took the time to paint the sections to knock some of the ugly off the old, weather-beaten deck board lumber I used.

Loaded up with all of the lumber (mostly hardwood) that was in the shop before I started work on it:

As you can see, it has no trouble holding up all of this.

Here’s the build video: