Scoring Some Lumber and Storage Solutions

Written by Steve:

Jennifer regularly gleans the auction advertisements for raw materials for creativity and, recently, helped me score a whole bunch of wood (and more) for about $130.00. This old barn slate, alone, generally goes for 8 bucks each but we got 4 huge stacks for 24 dollars.

Then, there's the four USA-made (also known as "antiques") power tools...

but the main score was two loads of hardwood (oak, walnut, etc.) lumber.

As with any "procurement" the excitement becomes a bit of a panic regarding storage (I have a very small one-car garage woodshop). After quite a bit of head-scratching and a bunch of research on additional types of storage (also known as spend-more-money) we decided to make space in our small barn to keep all of this wood organized and dry.

The first question one must ask regarding lumber storage is "horizontal vs. vertical"? Most people go horizontal as it's believed that vertical (standing boards on end) can result in warping. As usual, we decided to go against conventional wisdom because of the way our space is configured and also because I wanted my boards to be more easily accessible (you also always need the board on the bottom of the stack if you go horizontal).

So here's what I did: Using some steel conduit I had lying around I made 12-14 inch long dividers. I hammered one end of each divider flat and drilled a hole in it and then screwed these along the horizontal 2x4s seen in the picture below. I then stacked boards vertically, between the dividers.

Here is a view looking down on the conduit sections that allow me to stack boards in a couple of ways. To keep the boards from falling out away from the wall I used pine 1x2 scraps and drilled holes to fit the conduit.

Here you can see that the conduit dividers angle upwards a bit - that, plus the friction between the dividers and the retainers, keeps the boards snug against the wall.

Thanks to Jennifer, now I've got a huge stock of hardwood lumber nicely organized in a dry barn. Next: CREATIONS!