Oops
My shop redo was going swimmingly. The operative word there, of course, is was. With all the garage and yard stuff out of my shop, Ive been taking advantage of…
My shop redo was going swimmingly. The operative word there, of course, is was.
With all the garage and yard stuff out of my shop, Ive been taking advantage of my additional space. The first order of business was to get a large stack of lumber off the floor, and up on the wall in a new lumber rack where it belongs. I built a lumber rack based on vertical 2x4s with lumber supports consisting of a short length of 2x4 sandwiched between two pieces of 1/2 plywood. The ply is 3-1/2 longer on one end than the short piece of 2x4, allowing it to slip over the verticals where its then drilled and bolted solidly in place.
The rack has four verticals, with three supports on each one, making three very sturdy levels for stashing lumber. Everything went fine the 2x4 frame went up great, all 12 of the supports went together nicely (with help from my brad nailer as discussed last time), and I got them all drilled and bolted down just fine.
I loaded up the top rack, then the middle, but it wasnt till I actually started loading the bottom row that I noticed something amiss. All the lumber on the right-most support was floating in the air. A quick peek was all it took to see that Id measured the position for that one support exactly one inch too low.
Nothing tragic here. It would be easy to remove, re-drill and re-bolt to get it perfect, and in fact took less than three minutes to make it so.
But as the saying goes, even the best of us make mistakes.
Apparently, so do those of us who arent the best.
Till next time,
A.J.
A.J. Hamler is the former editor of Woodshop News and Woodcraft Magazine. He's currently a freelance woodworking writer/editor, which is another way of stating self-employed. When he's not writing or in the shop, he enjoys science fiction, gourmet cooking and Civil War reenacting, but not at the same time.
