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In most woodworking shops, space is at a premium. If you could increase the size of your shop, you would. And unless you have oodles of space, I’m willing to bet your finishing room is even more tightly crammed. In fact, many of us move the machines to the side and finish in the same space.
When finishing a piece of furniture with many parts, such as a chest of drawers, it’s especially important to make use of all the space that you can. Placing drawers and backboards on horizontal surfaces takes up too much room. At IWF, in The Finishing Store booth, I found an answer to our problems. If you cannot spread the parts around the shop, you must go vertical. Erecta-Rack has a system that allows you to build layers of shelving to space your parts in an upward fashion, and the price is more than reasonable.
Erecta-Rack is a combination of galvanized pipe and injection moulded plastic support blocks that fit in together , think tinker-toys for the finishing room. Build the first layer, fill it to the brim with your pieces by laying the materials across the galvanized pipe supports then add the next layer of blocks and pipe. The setup is easy and the racks are good to 500 pounds when at 10 levels. If you have extra-long materials to dry, you set out a third support tower and you’re good to go.
I said the prices are reasonable. Try this: A Five-level Erecta-Rack kit, including a custom carry bag is $125. Double that to a Ten-level Erecta-Rack kit, including a custom carry bag and the price only increases to $198.
Here are some supplies and tools we find essential in our everyday work around the shop. We may receive a commission from sales referred by our links; however, we have carefully selected these products for their usefulness and quality.
I attended the IWF and saw this product and thought it was very clever. It is a modular design so you actually assemble the bottom level first, then set your first set of doors onto the rack to dry. Then, you assemble the next level and work your way up. This way, you have easy access to your doors and there is no need to "thread" them in, hence no "signatures".
Jeff
Cantilevered beams work better. You can hold your parts on either end and put them on the beams from the open ends of the beams. I made my own racks with wooden beams that had beveled top edges, so only a very thin section of the beam touched the underside of the parts.
As shown in the photo, the beams are enclosed at both ends. This means you need to hold or balance the part from one end and "thread" the part through to the next beam. Your thumb invariable wraps around the part to keep it stable, thus leaving your thumbprint in the freshly sprayed finish. Of course, that could become your "signature" finish.
What a fabulous product.
Will the steel rod not react with the finish where it touches the finished edges?
I would buy this in a minute if it had little protrusions (like nails) all along the steel rod so that I could finish both sides of the piece placing the back sides down on the protrusions.