I think I am ready, no, I am certain I require a new way to store my boards. I was thinking of building something like the racks you see in the surf mags – T-Rax and the like. Would a coupld of 2X6s, 5" lag bolts and 1.5" dowels with pipe insulation work? One question…how do I get the angled holes in the 2X6?
yeah, that should be fine. I built ones like that for my ding business about 8 years ago and their still going strong. To get the angled hole you can use a drill press. They have a bed that angles. You dont need too much. If you dont have acess to a drill press they sell this crazy attachment for a regular drill to adapt it into a drill press. I saw them at Depot the other day.
I did something almost exactly like that – except using slightly smaller lumber. I drilled the holes in 2x4s with a drill press at a 15 degree up angle, and used 1 inch diameter dowels, spaced about 10 inches apart. The spacing can be adjusted, eg. wider if you have longboards w/ big fins, or if you want to stack 2 boards on each set of dowels, narrower if you are racking thrusters/fish/boards with fins removed. Same goes for the length of the dowels, if you are racking only narrow boards they don’t need to be quite as long as if you’re racking big boards. They are strong enough to hold up a tandem board, so I don’t think any bigger dowels are necessary. Make sure your hole saw or drill bit is sized to give you a tight fit on the dowels – I pounded mine in w/ a hammer and they are plenty strong that way. I suppose a loose fit and glue would work too. And if you dont have access to a drill press, you could eyeball the angle with a hand drill. My rack holds 12+ boards at any given moment. I used velcro straps to hold on the pipe insulation, that way the padding rotates on the dowels so boards roll on and off from the end. And cut the pipe insulation just a bit long, that way it pads the end of the dowels (I chamfered mine for a bit of a nicer look too). I would recommend you countersink your mounting bolts (to the wall) – that will avoid the possibility of scratching the rail of a board against them.
Tim, I lieu of a drill press you can make a simple sight jig so you can angle the dowels in. Just cut a piece of thin plywood into a 4" x 10" rectangle, then cut the long edge at the angle you want (you don’t need much of an angle to hold the boards safely). Hold the plywood next to your drill while drilling and keep the drill lined up with it. For non-critical jobs it works fine. Of course a drill press is the best. To really tighten the dowels into the 2x4 I would recommend that you split the end of the dowels with a hand saw: cut it 1 and 1/2 inches from the end in. Put some glue in the hole of the 2x4 and into the saw kerf you just cut, tap the dowel into the hole, then hammer a thin wedge into the saw kerf from the back. The end of the dowel will expand in the hole and tighten the dowel. It won’t come out. After the glue dries, if any dowel is sticking out on the backside, you can just sand it smooth with a beltsander and you’re good to go. Doug
Tim, If you’re in the neighborhood, you can check out the ones we built in my garage and in the shed. -John
I did what Doug did, using a jig - it get’s it pretty close… 1 1/2" is a big dowel, and will certainly increase the price of your rack… maybe you do a lot of LB’s. Don’t underestimate how fast that price goes up with a small increase in dowel diameter. To save some bucks I only made my dowels about 12" -15" long, enough to reach the halfway point of any of my boards (I mostly have shorties - actually I made the bottom couple of racks a little longer and more robust for the LB’s). Then I put some PVC over the dowels extending the full 24". Then pipe insulation over that. As Keith stated, and I was pleasant to discover, this allows the boards to roll on and roll off - a very nice feature.