Ammo Can Storage Rack
I’ve needed a way to store ammo cans. They pile up, they don’t stack very neatly. You’d think the military design would accommodate stacking and storage a little better. Furthermore, it’d be reasonable to expect there would be a rack on the market to hold them. Nope, and nope.
So, I had to design my own (here are the drawings and Sketchup 3D model). I don’t think wood will be strong and compact so I need to go with metal. I’m not a welder so I’m going to have to have the rack fabricated. I’ve got a good welder so that’s not such a big deal. Hopefully he can make sense of my design and this project goes well.
Once my welder does his part I’m going to use UHMW tape to make durable, slick sliding rails for the cans. Also, I’ll mount the rack into the Man Cave on finished wood rails to distribute the weight and I’ll trim it out with finished wood (especially on top) that will match my Man Cave Shelving. Above that, eventually, I’ll take shelving up the wall to the ceiling.
The rack holds (20) 50-cal cans so there’ll be quite a bit of storage in them. I’m confident it’ll look pretty cool and fit into the Man Cave well.
Bike Rack model
Around the house there seems to be more bicycles than there are people. It’s causing the front porch to get cluttered which tends to agitate me. I’ve been told I’m not the nicest person to be around when I’m agitated.
Long ago I found the best solution to avoiding the agitation is to find a solution and then work on training the kids (best results in younger children) to use the solution. It wouldn’t be fair to be agitated about something that has no real solution available. So, to solve the cluttered bicycle problem I found some design ideas on the Internet and modeled the one that will work for us.
The top rail will have hooks on it to hold the bike helmets and any other things that need to be hung out of the way. This ought to be a real quick, easy build. I’ll use paint to match the house finish.
I have a lot of books that I enjoy reading, re-reading, and referencing time and again. The problem is, I have a lot of books and no adequate place to organize them well. So, I end up with lots of piles of books and double rows of books on each shelf of my cheap, freestanding bookshelves.
The shelves you buy in the store have a couple of problems:
- They’re made with cheap, low-quality materials that can’t properly support the weight of the books, and
- Their size is limited for safety reasons; not too tall, not too wide, etc.
I’ve often wanted to install built-in-place custom wall shelving to hold all the books but there are considerable financial limitations to that solution. It would be quite expensive to remove, modify or replace the carpeting to accommodate built-in-place shelves. There would also be sheetrock and cove molding work to be performed.
I could probably perform the sheetrock and cove molding work, but I’d have to contract the carpet work. Also, the amount of material necessary to properly complete the work would be up to $2,000, maybe more. That’s not an amount of money I am willing to drop into this project. I haven’t been able to convince myself to do it.
One day I was chatting with my son and, knowing I’m a bibliophile in search of a good book shelf, he sent me a link to an article about Neil Gaiman’s home library. It blew me away and I looked at the pictures with my mouth hanging open. The books were floor to ceiling on the shelves! The shelves looked great but they weren’t typical, something was different about them.
It was clear that Neil’s shelves were more about the books and less about the shelves. Often, built-in-place shelves are built to be showy and are rigid and inflexible in their size to accommodate different book sizes/types. For days I kept going back to the article to enviously scan through all the pictures. As I repeatedly viewed those pictures, I realized the shelves were constructed using shelf standards and brackets.
This fact had not been immediately evident when I first saw the photos. The shelves had been skillfully constructed to hide the shelf brackets. This was the solution I had been looking for! I didn’t want cheesy, cheap shelves on my wall and I didn’t want to spend thousands of dollars to avoid that problem.
I researched shelving standards & brackets and decided on Knape and Vogt brand 180 series in silver with 10-inch deep brackets. Their are a lot of options with their shelving and their web site was very useful in helping me design my shelves to replicate Neil’s shelves. The best place I found to supply the shelving was Woodworker Express. They had all the parts including the special screws to mount the standards to the wall.
Since I’m an electrician by trade, I decided to 1-up Neil by putting LED lighting on my shelves. I went with the excellent Diode LED Fluid View 24VDC Tape Light in 2700K and used their innovative 100W in-wall switch/driver combo to power them. To distribute the power to each shelf I built a custom wiring harness with Diode LED’s 16 AWG 2-conductor cable and used barrel connectors with pigtails at each shelf to allow me to disconnect the shelves from the power harness in order to remove or relocate the shelf whenever I needed to do so.
To build the shelves I went with red oak veneer plywood and solid red oak (all from Home Depot) to trim the edge making the lip which hides the shelf brackets and gives me a place to mount the LED tape lighting. To stain the wood I chose General Finishes (Nutmeg) Gel Stain and for the topcoat I chose General Finishes Arm-R-Seal Urethane Topcoat (Satin). I applied one coat of stain and then put on three coats of the topcoat. The results were better than anything I’ve done previously and I’m very happy with it.
The project cost just over $700 to build including the lighting which is considerably less than my projected budget for the built-in-place shelves. Check out the build photos below for to see step-by-step construction of the shelves:
I don’t like the finishing part (painting, etc.) of my projects. That’s why it took so long to complete this project. It was built, just not finished. I decided to finish it with “trunk paint” which has a similar consistency to the spray-in bead liner material they use on pickup truck beds.
I finally found the motivation to complete this project because there were so many small parts and tools starting a accumulate in my Man Cave. It’s the whole reason for building these drawers and it started to drive me bonkers. I’m happy with the results of this build and I’m happy to start organizing my stuff. Now I need drawer organizers…
Here are links to a few files that may be interesting:
- Build Drawings (.pdf)
- Sketchup model (.zip of a .skp)
- Ponoko template (.zip of a .eps – to laser cut the latch template and recess the latch)
Goat Ranch 2-Door (short) Wall Cabinet
Finished the 2-door wall cabinet and the 2-door wall cabinet (short) before I went on vacation. This short cabinet is for above the stove. Since all the wall cabinets are complete I started making sample finish pieces for Wendy to choose a finish she likes.
She has decided on the clear finish that shows the wood. The wood has a blonde color after three coats of top-coat. I’m happy with it, too. I’ll go ahead and start putting coats of sealer and top-coats on the cabinets while I start the lower cabinets. I have to complete my build drawings first…shouldn’t take long.
Goat Ranch 2-Door Wall Cabinet
Now that I’m getting closer to completing the construction of the 1-door wall cabinet I need to start my 2-door wall cabinet. The bugs should be worked out of my building methods and it should only be a question of doubling the smaller build.
When I made mistakes on the smaller cabinet I was able to develop techniques to avoid them thereafter. Some minor changes to the doors needed to be performed in Sketchup and I’m processing those 3D models into build drawings now. If the rain holds off this week I’ll be able to get the additional materials I need before the weekend to start this part of the build.
After this one, I’ll move on to the cabinet bases. They are big and a little cumbersome. At some point I’ll also have to plan on painting all these cabinets. That will be the first time I use my HVLP sprayer…guess I need to read up on that, too.
Goat Ranch 1-Door Wall Cabinet
I clumsily started building the wall cabinets for the Goat Ranch Cabin. The cabinet I chose to begin with is the smallest of all the cabinets I’m building. There are two reasons I chose this one: 1) I can relatively quickly build it and find any design issues, and 2) I can practice the setup and cuts on a small scale before I get to the larger stuff.
By “clumsily started” I mean I’ve found a problem with one of the methods I was using to suspend the shelves. I’ve used the technique before but, for some unknown reason, it’s not working for me on this project. The result was that I damaged one of the cabinet sides to the point that it will have to be re-cut. There were several mistakes in that side piece which made me decide to re-cut it. It was just too much of a mess.
The design is solid, though; no changes will be needed there. Aesthetically speaking, I think that I’ll add some edge banding on the “face edges” of the cabinet to hide the plywood ends. At first, since this is for the cabin, I wasn’t worried about that. But, it’s just one of those things that, I think, will bug me for years to come if I don’t do it. It’ll look more professional with the edge banding.
P.S. — I just call it the Goat Ranch because the previous owner had planned to raise goats there. We don’t have any goats.
Goat Ranch Cabin with Kitchenette Cabinets and Appliances
I’ve neglected building out the interior of the cabin for many years. It’s rustic…very rough. It has air conditioning and, obviously, electricity but no plumbing or any special accommodations. I’ve done maintenance on it and worked on it a little bit but my focus has been on large projects here at home.
The large projects at home are pretty much wrapped up so, for Christmas last year, Wendy asked to have the cabin buildout completed. Slowly I’m creaking into motion on that project. I’m getting some traction on it mainly in planning and design.
Yesterday I took an opportunity to go to the cabin and I modeled the whole thing in Sketchup. All the framing and decking and structure of the cabin is now a 3D model I can work on in Sketchup. I can make all the measurements I need for design and fit them with appliances in the 3D space.
There is a bedroom (a have the walls framed already), a loft (where kids sleep), and soon a bathroom (shower only…outhouse is down the trail), and a kitchenette (shown in the image above). It will be designed on Tiny House design principles and it’s our goal to keep it simple and low-maintenance. It’s our place to get away, let the kids roam and play in the woods and not worry about constant housekeeping.
With the cabinets designed (the brown objects in the image above) it looks like I need to get moving on the other things holding up their installation…like the wood flooring. It’ll be really nice to have a place to go and stay for extended periods; almost camping, but not quite.
8-Drawer Small Parts Cabinet
I came across an article about using an airline beverage cart for a storage solution for hot glue and paint. After hunting online for quite a while, I became frustrated by the condition of the used carts and the price of the new carts. So, as usual, I decided I could do a better job at getting what I want at the level of quality I want and maybe save some money in the process.
The downside to buying used equipment online is that, when you need another piece, you may not be able to match what you already have. By building your own equipment you can customize it to your needs and build as many items as you need with consistent quality.
A quick search online gave me the dimensions of the cart and drawers. Using that information I went to Sketchup and began to design the small parts drawers (shown in image above) for all my gun parts and gunsmith tools. In the design I used stainless steel, spring loaded latches and UHMW plastic rails for the drawer slides. I have all the baltic birch plywood in my workshop and the hardware & rails are ordered from McMaster-Carr.
Once the design was complete in Sketchup I exported it to Layout (included with Sketchup Pro) to make the build drawings. The cabinet will work well on a stationary base as well as it would on casters. Below are some download links for the model and drawings on this project.
- Sketchup 3D Model via 3D Warehouse
- Build Drawings (PDF)
#10 (1-gallon) Can F.I.F.O. Storage Unit
Recently I began purchasing freeze-dried disaster/emergency preparedness food. After experiencing the disruption caused by large storms—hurricanes and tornadoes—in the Texas Gulf Coast area, we decided it’s best to be as self-sufficient as possible in the aftermath of these events. It didn’t take long to realize we needed a way to store the #10 (1-gallon) cans so we could rotate the stock and easily transport the food when necessary, i.e., when it’s necessary to evacuate / relocate.
We’re a large family and—depending on the time of year—there can be as many as six of us to feed; one, 1-gallon can will feed the whole group for each meal. But all storage solutions I found on the Internet were geared toward small food cans. There were some commercial First-In-First-Out (F.I.F.O) units I liked but they were expensive, not modular or easily portable. So, I took the ideas I liked and headed to my trusty Sketchup 3D app and started designing my own based on the dimensions of the #10 cans.
My approach to building these units will be a little different: I’m going to make a full-sized, 1:1 scale template and work off of it to cut & rout the sides. I don’t intend to produce build drawings other than the 1:1 scale template. This is my budget solution for a CNC since I haven’t assembled my CNC…yet. The unit is 18″ tall x 22″ deep and holds six cans.
