Popular Woodworking 2007-04 № 161, страница 34

retrieving the one you're after, and then restacking the entire pile. At the same time, you can't see everything in this sort of stack. Visibility is limited to the top board and then a series of edges along the side of the stack. For a really good look at what you have, count on taking the boards off the rack and examining them one at a time.

Another disadvantage is that the space in front of a rack should be kept relatively clear of clutter so getting to a piece of lumber is not akin to running an obstacle course - not only a pain in the neck but potentially hazardous. Avoiding this problem can be tough in many shops where space is at a premium.

The other school of thought is to store boards vertically on their ends and lean them against a wall. George Nakashima, the influential post-war furniture maker whose studio is still in family hands, used this approach to store some of his lumber.

He was a great collector of wood in many forms. Nakashima would buy whole trees and cart them to a mill where they were turned into boards. He had them stacked in exactly the same order in which they came off the saw and banded together so they could dry. That method, storing wood in boule form, is beyond most of us. But vertical storage is not.

In his book "The Soul of a Tree" (Kodansha), there is a wonderful photograph of Nakashima in his wood room, surrounded by a thicket of wide hardwood planks as if he were standing in a grove of trees. All of that beauty in anyone's shop is inspiring. You will be limited, of course, by the height of the room. And the more lumber you collect and store this way, the harder it will be to get to any particular board you're looking for.

But one advantage is that you can easily see all sides of a board once you've found it. By tilting a plank up on one of its lower corners and holding the board in a near-vertical position you can pivot the wood freely to see either the front face or back face.

Woodcarver David Monhollen has ready access to lumber that's stored upright. he can easily leaf through what he has on hand.

For shorts and small offcuts - those boards that are left over when you cut a big plank - vertical storage is probably the best solution. They won't easily fit on a rack horizontally and a large number of pieces can be stored on a relatively small amount of floor space. The only caveat here is to remind yourself to sort through the pile periodically and get rid of anything that doesn't serve a genuine purpose. It's easy to hang on to every bit of scrap lumber you create ("I just know I'll use that for something someday") but the truth is that without periodic weeding every garden becomes overgrown.

Another approach for short scraps is to make a storage bin from short lengths of PVC pipe. In these makeshift bins, you can sort short pieces of moulding, lumber and dowel for easy retrieval when you need them.

Panel Products Need Their Own Kind of Storage

Panel goods are a mainstay of many cabinetmaking jobs and shops often gather a good assortment of them: MDF,

veneer-core plywood, high-strength Baltic-birch plywood, particleboard for countertops. A time will come for all of them. And because most panel goods come in 4' x 8' sheets, there is often a good deal of leftover when a job has been completed so you may find yourself the curator of many pieces in different thicknesses and materials.

Their size dictates that panels be stored on edge. Very few shops will have the kind of room you need to store panels flat. And besides, unless you have a lot of one kind of panel, this is probably the least practical of all storage solutions because you'll have to move a lot of material to get the one sheet you need (remember that a 4' x 8' sheet of MDF weighs nearly 100 pounds).

A practical solution is to build a narrow rack, a couple feet wide and 8' long, to hold panels on edge. Locate it so you can pull a full sheet of plywood straight out without running into anything else. The width can be divided into two or more individual bays to help you organize different types of panel goods - ³/4"-hardwood plywood can go in one, a mixed lot of sheet goods in the others.

Popular Woodworking