Rag 'n' Bone Brown

Making A Mid Century Modern Vinyl Storage Unit (part 2 of 2)

Submitted by Keith on Thursday 05/04/2018

In part 1 I did all the cutting and assembly for the main carcass of the unit and in this video I need to build the leg assembly, add the back panel, apply finish and then deliver the unit at my brother's house

First I found some wood that looked to be a good match for the veneer on the chipboard panels that I could use to trim the chipboard edges. I used my thickness planer to plane it down to 15mm in thickness which is the same thickness as the panels. Then I set up a sacrificial fence at the front of the tablesaw using a scrap of pine and some hot glue. Doing this enabled me to move the tablesaw fence in between cuts up to the block and cut some consistently sized thin strips of material in a much safer way that cutting thin strips against the actual fence.

I added wood glue and used some pin nails to secure the trim and hide the chipboard edges and then cut the trim pieces to length.

I then sanded the trim pieces flush and eased over the sharp edges using my random orbit sander and sanded the rest of the unit too.

Next I'd make a back panel. I used a rebate bit in my router to cut a channel raound the back edges of the panels and finished off the cuts to the central dividers with my multitool and a chisel to square up the round corners. This created a recess at the back of the unit for the back panel to sit in.

I'd used a 3mm thin piece of plywood for the back. The piece I had was salvaged and a random shape so I first needed to mark up a square and straight edge which I the cut on using my circular saw before measuring and marking up the panel to the size I needed and making the rest of the cuts.

When I first offered up the panel it was slightly too big in one corner so I made some refinements with my block plane and then it fitted quite nicely.

The back panel would be painted green to match the colour of the wallpaper in my brother's living room. As usual I like to make use of what I have in the shed rather than buying things, and I had some paint in a green colour called Sea Moss. It had quite a blue-ish colour tone so I added some magnolia which I also had in my shed to it to give it a warmer and lighter colour.

I applied the paint with a mini roller.

I sent a photo to my brother and he asked for it be less vivid and have of an olive green tone so then I mixed in some brown paint that I also had It would have been much better to mix this while the paint was in the glass jar rather than the mixing tray but I just mixed it up as best I could in the tray and it turned out ok.

In order to choose a finish for the unit I first did some tests on an offcut. I tested some shellac sanding sealer, boiled linseed oil, then Rustic Pine Briwax and Clear Briwax. The Rustic Pine Briwax looked most like the colour I would associate with mid century furniture as it had a brown almost teak colour so that's what I'd use, but before applying the wax I first applied some spray varnish to the unit to give it an extra layer of protection. This brings out the grain really nicely.

After applying the first coat I sprayed on a bit of water and then wet sanded at 400 grit just to de-nib the finish and keep things smooth and then applied a second coat of spray varnish.

And then I could apply the Rustic Pine Briwax which would add a brown colour tone, another layer of protection, and also a nice subtle sheen.

I left it over night and then used a buffing pad in my drill to buff out the wax finish and it looked and felt really nice.

Next I needed to add the back panel and I first made some refernce marks where the section dividers were I connected the marks with a line using a straight edge and I could then use those lines as a reference for where to fire the brad nails.

With the nails added I was quite nervous to turn over the unit just to check to see if there were any blow outs from the nails - as that could have completely ruined this project especially because the veneer on the chipboard woud have torn out and it would have made for a really difficult repair but fortunately there wren't any which was a relief!

Because the plywood back was so thin at 3mm I was a also a it worried that the nails would fire right through the plywood even with the nailer set to fire them in gently, and it seemed to be fixed pretty well but just for an extra bit pf piece of mind I also added some hot glue around the perimeter to help hold it in place.

Next I could find some wood to make the legs and again I checked it would match the veneered board ok - I added some water to see what it would like like with finish on and it seemed a pretty good match.

I cut the legs to length at the mitresaw and these were cut at 16cm as that's the heght the unit would need to sit off the floor in order that the unit would sit above some electrical sockets on the wall where the unit will be placed.

I wanted the legs to be tapered on two sides so I used my combination square to mark up the tapers. And I used the bandsaw to cut the shapes and a hand plane to clean up the bandsaw cuts.

I also rounded over the sharp edges on the legs using my block plane.

For the apron rails between the legs I could use some offcuts of the veneered board.

I positioned them where I wanted them to meet the legs and used my marking knife to mark up where I could cut a housing joint.

I decided to cut all the joinery by hand. Usually I'd drill out the excess material with a forstner bit and then chisel it away but I was in the mood for using chisels, so that's what I did.

And then I did a dry assembly and the joints fitted ok.

So I marked up the opposite side and cut that in the same way.

And then I glued up the legs and used a couple of bar clamps to pull them tight.

And I wiped away the excess glue with a damp cloth

So that was one short side complete, and I did the second leg assembly for the short sides in the same way.

Then I cut some more chipboard for the apron rails for the long sides at the tablesaw.

I positioned the legs the right distance apart for the size I needed the leg assembly to be and then offered up the rails, marked them for length and cut them at the mitresaw.

And I wouldn't need to cut any joinery for these rails as I could just glue and screw them to the inside of the legs. That would be plenty strong enough and also it means the apron rails would be less visible on the front of the unit as they'd be further back.

I sanded the bottom of each leg - this should help prevent tear out of the grain when the unit gets moved around.

To attach the leg frame to the unit I cut some cleats out of some scraps of veneered blockboard.

I glued and nailed the cleats to the unit to hold them in place temporarily before re-enfor cing them with screws.

And then I drilled holes through the top for the scews to be added later.

I gave the leg frame a sanding and then wiped on some boiled linseed oil for finish. This was a different finish than I used for the main part of the unit but that won't really matter.

I added glue to the cleats and apron rails flipped the unit upside down and then I could position the leg frame where I wanted it and add screws.

Finally I added one of my stickers to the bottom.

Then I could deliver it to my brother.

Here's a time lapse we took of putting the records in. I can't vouch for his taste in music.

I'm really happy with how the unit turned out and my brother is too.

It wasn't a project I particularly enjoyed though, mainly because working with chipboard can be pretty frustrating, it's very unforgiving because if you damage the veneer then it's pretty much ruined unless you can find a way to patch it up or repair it. I much prefer working with plywood or blockboard to a veneered board, because you don't have to be as careful with it. But I'd much rather make use of it in a project like this than throw it away and the veneer on this board is actually really nice looking it's pretty decent quality stuff compared to most of the stuff you can buy nowadays

If I were to make this again I would have cut a housing joint in the side panels to accommodate the central shelf as I mentioned in the first part of the video. The only other thing to mention is that I think the apron rails look a little bit too prominent when you look at the side of the unit, so perhaps I could have designed the leg frame joinery and assembly slightly differently.

This project took about 22 hours in total to complete. And all of the materials used were either salvaged or given to me so the costs were minimal.

I hope you enjoyed this project, please subscribe if you haven't already and thank you for watching

Making A Mid Century Modern Vinyl Storage Unit (part 1 of 2)

Submitted by Keith on Thursday 05/04/2018

In this video I'm going to be making a record unit for my brother. He recently bought some nice mid century style furniture and he's been looking for something in that style to hold his records but hasn't been able to find anything suitable, so he asked me to make something. The unit would need to be 1m wide, have two shelves to store records with dividers inbetween, and sit around 15cm off the floor so that it sits above power sockets on the wall where it's going to be placed. So I did a drawing in SketchUp and this is what we came up with. As records are heavy, there'd be a leg frame assembly with apron rails to support the weight of the records, and the section dividers would also help to support the shelves and prevent them from bowing. The side panels would be tapered to add a bit of visual interest, and the back panel would be green in colour to compliment the wallpaper in the room.

I positioned the marked up side panel on to another piece of the same material so that I could cut both the side panels together for consistency.

But before making the cuts I first applied some masking tape to where the cuts would be made to help prevent tearout to the material on both pieces.

I set the cutting depth on my circular saw to just over the thickness of the two pieces and then I could make the cuts following the lines I'd marked up. And I made the cuts free hand being careful to stick to the line.

When I peeled off the tape, I found that the masking tape had helped keep the cuts nice and clean.

Next I wanted to cut a bottom and top panel so I first measured the width of the tapered side panels at the top and bottom.

I ripped the bottom panel to the right width at the tablesaw and then went to rip the top panel to the right width but then realised that the material was not wide enough. But that was an easy fix, I just marked up a line at the back of the side panels 30mm in from the edge, set up a straight edge with some F clamps and ripped them down to be slightly less wide so that I could use the full with of the chipboard as a top panel.

This did mean that I needed to rip a little more off the bottom panel.

To cut the top and bottom panels to length I used my panel sled on the tablesaw as these boards were slightly too wide to cut at the mitresaw. You can see here I'm using a weight just to help hold the board on to the sled without moving around.

I squared off the ends of the housing joints using a chisel.

And then I could route the next joint in the same way

And they were a really nice fit.

Next I ripped another piece to the width I wanted the central shelf to be, and cut it to length at the mitresaw. And it didn't have quite enough reach so I finished off the cut with a handsaw.

I could then mark up the central dividers to the central shelf and route them out in the same way as I had for the bottom shelf.

Then I could start assembling the unit. I'd start by securing the bottom panels to the side panels - I applied wood glue and used some masking tape just to make up clean up of the excess glue easier.

I used some corner clamps just to hold the pieces in place and then I drilled pilot holes with a countersinking bit through the bottom panel and in to the side panels and added some screws.

I could then flip the unit upright and remove the tape.

As the side panels measured 720mm in length I divided that by two to get the postitioning of the central shelf and then I marked that up.

I'd use some of theses metal angle brackets to help support the shelves. I picked lots of these up at a car boot sale. In hindsight I wish I had cut some housing grooves for the central shelf to sit in to but I think I was worried about doing that just because this sheet material was so thin at 15mm but I think it woud have been a better option. Not that there's anything wrong with these brackets, they'll do the job just fine and they won't be particularly visible either because they'll be below eyeline and also hidden by records. I drilled pilot holes and screwed in the brackets using a speed square to keep them straight to one another.

After applying some glue I could fit the shelf in place using a sash clamp to get a tight joint and then secured the brackets to the underside of the shelf.

Next I measured up the distance between the section divider housing groove and the top of the shelf so that I could cut the section dividers. I ripped a new panel at the tablesaw to the width I wanted the dividers to be and by flipping the board over between cuts I could retain each of the veneered edges.

I set up a stop block and cut the dividers to length.

I added more angle brackets to what would be the top of the dividers and then I could apply glue to the joint and knock the dividers in place with a mallet before securing the angle brackets to the shelf above.

Then with the unit upside down I could secure the top panel using glue and more brackets.

And I could then secure the section dividers for the central shelf in the same way as I did before.

Wooden Dog Beds - Mid Century Modern

Submitted by Keith on Thursday 05/04/2018

In this video I'm going to be making some dog beds using some oak veneered MDF left over from the radio studio desks commission I did recently.

A lot of the dog beds you can buy tend to look a bit cheap and nasty, so the idea I had was to make something that looked more like a piece of furniture that will look good in someone's home.

I wanted to design something with a mid century modern feel mainly because that'd the style of furniture that I like.

Before I got started I first did some 3D drawings in SketchUp - that allowed me to not only help me visualise what the beds would look like, but also to help figure out how many of the beds I could make from the MDF pieces that I had to work with.

I began by ripping the panels to the right width using the tablesaw.

And I made a few crosscuts with my circular saw using a straight edge as a fence. I'm not cutting them to their final length here, I'm just dividing up the pieces to be more manageable in size.

I decided to use mitre joints for the bed, mainly because the 45 degree cuts would hide the MDF inards of the sheet material

I tilted my blade to 45 degrees and used my panel sled on the tablesaw to cut one end of each of the panels.

I then realised that these panels were narrow enough to cut on the mitre saw, so after measuring and marking up each panel based on the dimensions from my drawing, I made the rest of the cuts at the mitre saw. That way I could set up a stopp block so that all of the cuts of the same length would be consistent.

After cutting the short sides of the box, I then marked up, set up a stop block and made the cuts for the longer side of the box.

Unfortunately I lost quite a bit of video footage at this point in the project, so I'll try to reconstruct what I did next in the project as convincingly as I can without actually re-doing it!

Lucily I've got a panel here that I decided not to use because it got damaged when it fell off the workbench so I'll use that to demonstrate. First I needed to cut these housing joints to accommodate a bottom panel on all four sides of the box. I made those cuts at the tablesaw just by making a series of cuts moving the fence each time to form the joint. I could then check that I got the sizing right by offering up another panel.

Next I positioned all four panels of the box together, and measured the distance between the housing joints on the opposing panels and that gave me the dimensions for the bottom panel.

Before cutting the bottom panels though, I took 3mm off each of those dimensions, again just to make the glue up assembly easier.

Then I cut the bottom panels at the tablesaw.

And after that I could mark up the diagonal angle on the side panels. I did this by offering up the back and front panels to the side panel, and then I marked up the shape I wanted on to the outside of the side panels, making sure that it started at the height of the front panel, and ended at the height of the back panel.

I also needed to make sure that the diagonal cut on the side panels started after where the mitre joint was - and that's because I'll be adding a trim piece to the this piece later on from one end to the other.

I cut out those shapes at the bandsaw.

And then it was time to assemble, which fortunately I have the footage for, so back to the video!

I added some wood glue and then fitted the bottom panel in to the housing joint on one of the side panels, making sure that the bottom panel was centred to the side panel so that it would fit inside where the housing joint meets the mitre joint - if that makes sense.

And then I could add the opposite panel in the same way.

Then I applied glue to the mitre joints and the housing joint of the back panel and added that. I made sure it was seated with a mallet. And then I added the front panel in the same way.

I used some ratchet straps to clamp up the four panels to get nice tight glue joints.

And I wiped away any excess glue with a damp cloth.

These mitre joints would not be very strong so I'd use dowels to re-enforce them. I drilled some 10mm holes using a brad point bit using a piece of tape to get the right depth of the hole.

Then I added glue and knocked the dowels in place.

I cut the dowels off flush using my japanese pull saw.

I had some offcuts of sapele, and I'd use these to make some trim pieces to hide the MDF edges.

Then I applied glue and added the trim using some brad nails before cutting it to length

The trim pieces for the diagonal part of the side panel needed to be cut at the right angle so I marked it up, and then cut that angle. Before adding these pieces I just did a little clean up work with a block plane to make sure that my bandsaw cuts were good and straight.

I did a bit of hand sanding just to soften any sharp edges. And I used some oak fillter to fill any small gaps between the trim and the panels.

And then I did the rest of the sanding with my random orbit sander. And for those who are wondering why I'm using the Bosch sander here, it's because this was filmed a couple of weeks ago while I still had it. It went back to Amazon so I no longer have it.

I removed the rubber feet from the bottom which were screwed on,

Then I set up a stop block at the mitre saw to cut all the legs to a consistent length.

I cleaned off the old finish using a hand plane.

Some of the legs were a different type of wood an didn't plane too well, so I used a scraper on those instead. And this wood is going to cause me some issues which you'll see later on in this video.... It's some sort of extremely dense hard wood.

I decided to cut a new taper to each leg so that they'd all be a consistent shape, and I first thought to use my tablesaw with my tapering jig

However as I was making the first cut, it really didn't feel safe enough because these pieces were short and as I was cutting, the force of the blade was pulling the tapering jig away from the fence. If something doesn't feel right, it usually means it isn't right, so I abandoned that idea, and instead measured and marked up a taper on to each leg, and made the cuts on the bandsaw insread which worked fine.

I then needed to clean up the bandsaw cuts so I did that using a hand plane

I also put a slight bevel on the edges of the legs using my block plane.

Then I coule glue the legs in place on to the bottom of the bed. I held them in position with clamps so that I could flip the bed over. And then I could drill some pilot holes through the bottom of the beds in to the legs, and add some screws.

So I mentioned earlier that one set of the legs was a very dense hardwood, and this is where I had issues.

I think what was happening is that the screws were getting so hot when being driven in to this type of wood, and that caused a couple of them break. And these are really expensive, good quality screws too, I got bunch of these given to me a while back by my uncle. So I was quite surprised.

To fix this, I first needed to cut off the protruding screw using my angle grinder. And the corner was a bit too tight to get in there properly, so I came back with my powe belt file to grind the top of the screw flush with the panel. And then I drilled a wider pilot hole right next to the first, and drove another screw in to the wood as gently as I could. But unfortunately I still had a couple of them break on me!

It was only one of three beds that I had this issue with, the legs on the other two beds went on just fine. So for this one I instead used a couple of metal angle plates to re-enforce the legs from underneath. And then just for a bit of re-assurance, I also mixed up some epoxy and added that to fill any gaps between the legs and the bed frame. And then I was confident that the legs were good and strong.

I used some sandpaper to break the hard edges on the bottom of the legs, to avoid any possibility of when the beds get dragged around.

To finish the beds I decided to use some mineral oil. I mainly chose this because it seemed like the most pet friendly finish that I had.

For the cushions I'd use these, I bought these from Amazon for around £11 and when I did the 3d drawings I sized the beds so that these cushions would fit snugly inside. I did think about making cushions for the bed, but it would have cost me far more in materials and time, and plus these cushions have the added bonus of a zip which makes the ccovers easy to remove and wash. And they're super soft too. The only downside of these is that they have a bit of branding in one corner, and I would have preferred them not to have that, but that's not really a big deal.

Before I could even finish all three of the beds I walked in to find one of them had already attracted a rogue squatter.

I'm pleased with how these beds turned out, I think they look nice, but there are a couple of things

Hitachi NR1890 18v Brushless Cordless Framing Nailer - First Impressions / Review

Submitted by Keith on Saturday 17/03/2018

Hitachi NR1890 Framing Nailer

In this video I'm going to talk about the Hiatchi NR1890 Brushless 18v Framing Nailer, I'll talk about my first impressions, the features, and I'll also put it through some tests in this video.

I've only used the nailer on one project so far, and that was the sheet materials storage rack I made for my lock up storage space.

This nailer is a relaitively new product and at the moment there is only one other battery operated framing nailer available to buy and that is the DeWalt DCN692 18v Brushless. That one has similar functions and features to the Hitachi.

The big benefit of using a battery operated nailer is the convenience. The two alternatives to battery operated are pneumatic nailers which require connection to an air compressor via a hose, or a gas nailer which requires replaceable gas cartridges which obviously cost money, let off smelly fumes and also require cleaning and maintenance.

This nailer is kind of a battery/pneumatic hybrid as it has a compressed air cylinder built in to the tool which is sealed so no chance of any dust or dirt getting inside, and when you pull the trigger the compressed air is released, driving a piston down to strike the nail in to the wood all driven by a brushless motor for great performance, lifespan and also battery efficiency - apparently you can fire up to nails using one of the Hitachi 3.0Ah battery. If you need more run time you can obviously use bigger batteries available from Hitachi.

My first impressions of this tool are as follows:

It's powerful. When I first got this out of the box just to try it out, I fired a nail through a 20mm thick short piece of pine and the nail actually went straight through it and out the other side, splitting the piece of wood clean in half. I've also tried it in some dense hardwoords like oak, and it drives nails in fully as you'd hope - so it certainly doesn't lack power. There is a depth adjustment knob on the front so you can set the power of the nailer according to which size nails you are using and how far you want to drive them in.

It's quite heavy. It weighs just over 4kg without a battery and is bigger than most pneumatic framing nailers but for me personally, I think that's a fair trade off for the convenience you get from using a battery operated nailer. Hitachi does have lighter batteries than some of their competitors though because they use less cells for the same amount of power. If you're thinking of using this tool for longer periods particularly if you're using it to fire above your head you might want to consider the extra weight of this nailer over a pneumatic nailer which tend to be a bit lighter weight.

Loading the nails is easy, you just slot them inside and pull back this trigger allowing the nails to feed.

To operate the nailer you use the power button, hold it down for about a second and the blue light comes on. There's also a function button here, when the blue light is on the nailer is in single fire mode, if you press it the blue light will flash meaning the nailer is in bump fire mode. It also has a battery indicator button which unfortunately only has two lights so it's not ideal for accurately knowing how much juice is left in the battery, but that's not a major issue, for me anyway.

After 30 minutes of no use, power to the nailer is automatically switched off. Obviously you can also turn it off manually using the power button. There's also a safety lock switch on the handle.

It also has an integrated hook which seems a bit on the bulky side to me, you could hang this from a 4" beam which might be useful for some but I think it would have been nice to see Hitachi include an optional smaller hook in the package so you could swap it over. This one isn't ideal for putting on your belt, it's too big so it's just going to twist around

For any jams you do need an allen key in order to open up the front and remove any blockages. I've not had any issues with jamming and to be honest I think it's very unlikely that jamming on a modern nailer like this would be an issue - I expect that would be quite a rare occurance.

It fires nails between 50mm and 90mm in length.

It also has a safety feature to avoid accidental firing - the trigger needs to be pressed within 2 second of pressing the nailer head in single fire mode, and in bump fire mode it's vice versa, i.e. the nailer head needs to be pressed within two seconds of holding the trigger. Very clever design there I think.

It's fast, you can drive two nails per second, here you can see i'm in bump fire mode.

So my experience using this tool so far have been very positive, I really enjoyed using it. It's very comfortable in the hand. I've not had too much experience using framing nailers in the past and it's not often that I get to work on construction projects but I really look forward to the next one as I'll get to use this some more. If I could go back in time to when I built my workshop, my workshop extension, my shed and the palletshed I made for my friend, this tool would have made those projects much quicker and easier. I look forward to using it again in future projects.

That's all for this one, if this is your first time watching one of my videos, I publish videos every week on a Friday, usually project build videos but also tool videos and occasional vlogs. Please subscribe if you'd like to see more. Thanks for watching

Storage Rack For Sheet Materials (Plywood, OSB, MDF, Chipboard, Melamine etc)

Submitted by Keith on Saturday 17/03/2018

In this video I'm going to build a sheet materials storage rack to hold all my plywood, OSB, melamine, chipboard and MDF.

I've already done a 3D drawing using SketchUp to design what I want to make. I designed the rack to be as compact as possible but also have the ability to hold a full 8ft by 4ft sheet. It's not often I use full sheets, because most of my work is with reclaimed materials but I still want the ability to be able to store them.

I based the dimensions for my rack to fit insie an alcove in my storage lock up, but if you want to build one, it'd be pretty simple to make it longer or shorter based on your own space requirements.

I first started working on the frame and for this I'd use some reclaimed 3 by 2s, these measure 38mm x 63mm and these are cheap to buy - usually aroud £3 here in the UK per 2.4m length, but as the stuff I'm using is reclaimed the lengths of the pieces I had varied. So I started by measuring each piece and writing the dimensions at the end to help me plan how to make the most out of the lengths that I had based on the measurements from my drawing

I'd start by making the back panel. I set u a stop block at the length that I wanted my rack to be, and cut two pieces with the mitre saw. These would be the horizontal pieces.

And then I cut 4 pieces at 1200mm for the vertical pieces.

So ordinarily for this sort of project I'd use some screws and my impact driver to assemble, but as I now have a Hitachi framing nailer and I wanted an excuse to try it out, this seemed like a great opportunity to use it.

I applied wood glue, and started to assemble, first adding a vertical piece to each end of one of the horizontal pieces. I used a speed square to keep everything square.

Then I turned it over and added another horizontal piece form a rectangle.

I measured the internal dimensions of the horizontal piece which was 1350mm and dividing that by 3 gave me the spacing for the 2 vertical pieces to equally space them out.

I made some marks 450mm in from each side and then I could centre the uprights to those marks just by eye, and glue and nail them in place.

That was the back panel finished and I took it out to the garden just to free up some space in the workshop.

If I was making this rack using newly purchased wood, I would make the whole thing using 3 by 2s or 63mm x 38mm lengths to be more precise and that would be as per the 3d drawing I was working to. But if you've been watching my channel for a while you'll know by now that I don't like buying new wood especially when I can make use of stuff that I have already.

At this point I didn't have enough 3 by 2s to make both the bottom panel and the 45 degree braces that needed to be added later. I did however have a piece of spruce - which is the same construction timber as the 3 by 2s - so I decided to use that. I also decided that the framing for the bottom panel didn't need to be as thick as 38mm x 63mm, so to get more out of the piece that I had, I ripped it in to 38mm square lengths using the tablesaw.

Then I cut all the 38mm square pieces to length on the mitresaw based on the dimensions from the drawing.

The frame for the bottom panel got assembled in exactly the same way as the back panel I could use the same spacing again too for the two pieces evenly spaced in the centre.

At one point the nailer stopped firing nails and I just couldn't get it to work. And then I realised that I was an idiot, and the nails needed replenishing!

The bottom panel needed to be cladded, as it would basically be a shelf to support various sizes of sheet materials. Rather than using up anything decent, I decided to instead use three pieces of melamine reclaimed from an old wardrobe I found in the streets. Two wardrobe doors, and a side panel to be more accurate.

These were almost the perfect size, I just needed to remove the door handles and hinges.

And then I could position them starting with one piece flush to one corner and fasten them down using some drywall screws. I didn't bother using glue here as the wood glue probably wouldn't adhere to the plastic coating on the melamine very well, and it wasn't really necessary anyway, the screws would do the job just fine.

Once all three pieces were secured, I just needed to trim off the excess so after marking up a couple of cut lines with a Sharpie, I used my circular saw to make the cuts.

I also had a spare pair of castors, so I decided to add them to the underside of the bottom panel to make the rack mobile, which I'm sure will come in useful at some point in the future.

Now that the back and bottom panels were done, all that was left to cut was the 45 degree braces that would really help to make the rack nice and rigid.

I used the last pieces of 3 by 2 for this, and cut the 45 degree ends at the mitre saw based on the dimensions from my drawing.

Then I took all the parts over to my storage lock up ready for the final assembly.

Both the bottom and back panels fitted snugly inside the alcove which was great - glad I got those measurements correct.

I first added some long 70mm screws through the bottom of the back panel in to the frame of the bottom panel.

And then I could add the 45 degree braces. I used glue and nails to fasten the ends which joined to the back panel. And for the other ends I used screws instead of nails, because I wasn't sure if the melamine would break in to pieces if I were to fire through some nails.

Once the rack was in place I could sort my random assortment of mostly salvaged sheet materials on to the rack. I get a lot of questions about where I get wood from, and the best answer I have is to watch the video on my channel called "How to get wood for free or cheap" from around a year and a half ago, as that basically explains where I get most of it. I'll leave a link to that in the description box below if you're interested in checking it out.

I mentioned at the start of this video that I designed this rack so that it would be able to hold a full 8ft x 4ft sheet, but when I installed the rack I found that I didn't really have enough height in my lock up to be able to store 8ft lengths the way that I had intended anyway. But no big deal, and some of the pieces I have were thin enough that they sat inbetween the roof rafters anyway.

So here's the rack before and after all my sheet materials had been organised.

I'm really pleased with how this project turned out - the rack has helped me to store my sheet materials really efficiently in a small amount of floor space meaning I can use the space free'd up in my lock up for other things.

This project took around 4-5 hours to complete so it was nice and quick, the framing nailer definitely helped to speed things up a bit but this could have easily been built with screws instead - I really just wanted to have a play with my new toy!

I've also made a video about my first impressions of the framing nailer, so check that out if you're interested.

Thanks for watching!