Bed frame wood racks (first try at a wood rack)

[BrianK]

In another thread I posted about the hardwood ends I picked up from a local pallet company that builds pallets and skids from PA hardwoods.

I wanted to get them up off the ground.

After looking at lots of ideas here, I decided to throw together a wood rack from some scrap lumber and old bed frames I had lying around. Good Will, second hand stores and Craigslist usually have bed frames cheap and often free (check your local Freecycle Yahoo group too) so someone else might benefit from this.

The brown painted stuff was from the frame of a domestic hot water solar panel I no longer use. I tried to leave some space between the wood, but in the end it wasn't easy to maintain as much spacing as I had hoped. On the other hand it was quite easy to stack. The base of the rack is 20 inches deep, the stacks 6'6" wide, and I stacked 5'6" high, about a half cord total. Real nice wood and worth the $35 they charged ($0.65 per cubic foot) to me. Now if it just dries quickly. (I'd really like to burn this next season.) The rack is in the sunniest spot on my lot, and perpendicular to the prevailing wind so what space I did manage to leave is parallel with the wind.

I cut the bed frames in half and used 8 foot 2x4s, 4x4s to tie in the bottom corners and some plywood shelving I just tore out of the storage room at my office for the base:

The roof line was too high on the right, drove me crazy so I reset it level after the photo.

I'm debating whether to cover the rack with Ondura roofing now, or leave it open and wait till fall.

 

[NH_Wood]

A good temporary rack - I'd have left space between the rows (or single row them) to get better air flow - pretty tight stack. Cheers!

 

[Hogwildz]

A good temporary rack - I'd have left space between the rows (or single row them) to get better air flow - pretty tight stack. Cheers!

That stuff is kiln dried, he don't need the air space.

 

[BrianK]

A good temporary rack - I'd have left space between the rows (or single row them) to get better air flow - pretty tight stack. Cheers!

"Temporary" - think it will disintegrate too quick? I planned to move it down into the back yard eventually and build some nicer racks to take its place.

I wanted to fit all of this load on this rack. My bottom row had a little better spacing but my plans deteriorated as I stacked higher.

Learning as I go. Next one hopefully will improve on this one, both the rack itself and the stacking.

I hope to pick up a 7000lb GVW 5x12 tandem axle utility trailer next weekend, and bring home a load a week over the summer. I'm also going to pick up more of the smaller kiln dried oak ends from the other local manufacturer and fill up the back of my garage. Plus start cutting firewood locally.

This is a bigger undertaking than I had thought out ahead of buying the stove.

 

[BrianK]

That stuff is kiln dried, he don't need the air space.

Unfortunately this is from a pallet manufacturer (30 miles south east of here) and its not kiln dried. I have no idea how long it will take to season cut and stacked this way.

There is a hard wood products manufacturer 60 miles northwest of here that sells the kiln dried oak ends I posted on earlier ($25 a truck load). Its much smaller than these blocks, burns hot and fast. Its on the left in the milk crate in this photo:

I hope to combine the two eventually (and never have to fire up my Stihl. Wishful thinking, any way.)

 

[midwestcoast]

Nice rack & good use of free materials! I can see how that stuff would pose a real problem to stack with any air-space. Just to throw it out there: Have you tried starting the bottom row by alternating blocks on the flat with blocks on edge? Starting with that uneven layer might get you some more random heights & angles to create more airspace in the stack if you build another one. Likely not as stable though...

 

[NH_Wood]

A good temporary rack - I'd have left space between the rows (or single row them) to get better air flow - pretty tight stack. Cheers!

That stuff is kiln dried, he don't need the air space.

Gots to keep up on the posts Hogz! ;-) Cheers!

Brian - just thought you weren't keeping this rack around for a while, so said it was a good 'temporary' rack. I'm sure it will last a while. Cheers!

 

[Woody Stover]

Nice rack & good use of free materials! I can see how that stuff would pose a real problem to stack with any air-space. Just to throw it out there: Have you tried starting the bottom row by alternating blocks on the flat with blocks on edge? Starting with that uneven layer might get you some more random heights & angles to create more airspace in the stack if you build another one. Likely not as stable though...

Good idea. Still, I doubt if it will dry over one Summer if it's wet Oak but I think they are using other woods more for pallets these days...

This is a bigger undertaking than I had thought out ahead of buying the stove.

Yes, and now you have to tear down that stack, separate out the Oak for two years' drying, and re-stack the remainder more loosely. Sorry! :lol:

 

[cptoneleg]

Nice rack & good use of free materials! I can see how that stuff would pose a real problem to stack with any air-space. Just to throw it out there: Have you tried starting the bottom row by alternating blocks on the flat with blocks on edge? Starting with that uneven layer might get you some more random heights & angles to create more airspace in the stack if you build another one. Likely not as stable though...

Good idea. Still, I doubt if it will dry over one Summer if it's wet Oak but I think they are using other woods more for pallets these days...

This is a bigger undertaking than I had thought out ahead of buying the stove.

Yes, and now you have to tear down that stack, separate out the Oak for two years' drying, and re-stack the remainder more loosely. Sorry! :lol:

You really know your wood if you can I.D. those I think the stuff will be fine to burn next season, those racks look good, so good luck.

 

[BrianK]

Yes, and now you have to tear down that stack, separate out the Oak for two years' drying, and re-stack the remainder more loosely. Sorry! :lol:

They use PA hardwoods (90% oak, some maple) for the base of these pallets. They use some pine but its easy to identify in the wood pile and just pick out the hardwood. This stack is almost all oak, a few pieces of maple, no soft wood.

 

[Backwoods Savage]

A good temporary rack - I'd have left space between the rows (or single row them) to get better air flow - pretty tight stack. Cheers!

"Temporary" - think it will disintegrate too quick? I planned to move it down into the back yard eventually and build some nicer racks to take its place.

I wanted to fit all of this load on this rack. My bottom row had a little better spacing but my plans deteriorated as I stacked higher.

Learning as I go. Next one hopefully will improve on this one, both the rack itself and the stacking.

I hope to pick up a 7000lb GVW 5x12 tandem axle utility trailer next weekend, and bring home a load a week over the summer. I'm also going to pick up more of the smaller kiln dried oak ends from the other local manufacturer and fill up the back of my garage. Plus start cutting firewood locally.

This is a bigger undertaking than I had thought out ahead of buying the stove.

Brian, it is a big undertaking but you will find the first couple of years is the hardest. Then once you have the stacking down pat and are a bit ahead with the wood, it will be much, much easier. If you really want things to get easy, get 2-3 years ahead and you'll be surprised after that how easy it is from year to year and you'll get so much better results when burning the wood that you'll wonder why others are having problems.

 

[Jags]

Grandma always used to say "stack it so a squirrel can run through it, but the dog can't".

 

[Hogwildz]

A good temporary rack - I'd have left space between the rows (or single row them) to get better air flow - pretty tight stack. Cheers!

That stuff is kiln dried, he don't need the air space.

Gots to keep up on the posts Hogz! ;-) Cheers!

Brian - just thought you weren't keeping this rack around for a while, so said it was a good 'temporary' rack. I'm sure it will last a while. Cheers!

Well damn, I'm slacking. My mistake. checkerboard stack it.