log [drying] racks #1: the initial build

This is a bit old now, as I built these starting in late March this year, but I’m expanding them a bit now, and wanted to post some updates on that. That requires getting off my butt and posting the original stuff I’ve dragged my heels on. With the trees that have fallen over, and the random large branches I’ve managed to find here in LA, I had an awful lot of logs for a 0.18 acre lot. I recently mapped out my tiny 0.18 acre lot, breaking it into 30 equally sized squares, and have gathered the following figures, with included mapping:

8/30 = 0.267x = 0.048 acres front yard (cyan – top right)
8/30 = 0.267x = 0.048 acres driveway (yellow)
7/30 = 0.233x = 0.042 acres house (red)
2/30 = 0.067x = 0.012 acres garage (blue)
5/30 = 0.167x = 0.030 acres back yard (green)

I can’t help myself with the charts, figures, and diagrams :) Anyway, 0.03 acres isn’t much space for several trees worth of logs. The 2 leftmost squares of the driveway (yellow) are hidden behind a tarped chain-link gate, so I decided to build some 6ft.-tall log racks along the cement wall that separates me from my neighbors.

I designed everything in Sketchup. Click the image for the .skp file, if you want it.

I used Sketchup as a reference later when I started building, especially for how and where to cut the angled tops of the posts, which I’m testing out here, spaced one 2’ panel’s width apart, as they will be when assembled:

I had to finish up the first section in the dark that night, with my headlamp on:

It was 20 minutes after I laid in the 4 plywood panels seen here in this night shot that the police stormed my yard and climbed on top of it! Good thing I overengineered it. The officer was about 290lbs with his gear on. I detailed everything in this post back in March.

Here it was the next day, after the police had walked around on top of it for awhile. The plywood looks warped as I haven’t yet nailed it down. That officer was dancing around on an unfinished platform!

Side note: this was back in the days of the hatchback, before I got the truck. I’m so glad to have a truck finally.

The first rack section sits fully on a cement pad in front of the garage, with just enough clearance for the door to open. The front leg of each additional rack sits on cement tire tracks, however, and the back would be on the dirt, so I sunk some cement pads flush with the cement tracks.

I had to test it out by loading it up with some of my logs, of course. I also put in the crossbars for later holding the roof. The plywood was just to keep the hot sun off the top logs while I finished up this day, as it was boiling the Rockler green wood end sealer on the little branch cutoffs.

The long boards are screwed straight into the posts, and the short pieces are pocket-hole screwed into those. I didn’t realize until much later that this will make it super hard to disassemble if (more like when) I move. I’ll have to remove the short pieces, then the long pieces, instead of just taking it apart in movable sections. Having the plywood nailed down makes it even more crazy. Bad foresight on my part here.

For the roof, I wanted corrugated plastic. I picked up a couple of long pieces at Home Depot.

I cut it into 2’+ sections so I could turn each sideways to orient it the right way for rain runoff. It was a little tricky to measure. I measured inside of each groove. The tape measure’s curve fit nicely in them. Then I eyeballed a straightedge with one eye directly over it to line them up. Then I ran a pencil held as vertically as possible up and down each sine wave. Finally, I simply cut along the lines with a hefty pair of Titanium Nitride scissors from Fiskars (I love those things).

Done!

I would need another piece of corrugated plastic to finish off the rack, so I used the scraps from both pieces, taped together for now to finish it off. When I build more sections, I’ll get another piece or two and make proper pieces and replace these.

Loading begins…

By early April it was pretty full:

Time to build some more, and I’m also adding something quirky soon. More on that later.

Don’t get too excited ;)

-- Gary, Los Angeles, video game animator