Duncan Wither

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Surfboard Rack

Written: 06-Apr-2025

So I built a surfboard rack1, and I do not recommend you copy me! Well, I highly recommend building a rack, just not this rack.

Design

So despite Olivia’s objections of “just going for it”, I thought it prudent to think about some dimentions. This is what we worked out:

Artisan plans

This was duly translated into cad because why the hell not? The wheels and tring was left out, because they’re just2slapped on.

Construction

The aim was to use some scrap wood we had from some friends. They’d pulled out their kitchen and we stole all the big bits chipboard. We’d already gotten one bit of “furniture” (below) out of it, and now we were gonna try squeeze another. This should explain the use of large amounts of thin stock.

Simple shelves for the cupboard.

Thankfully a good friend let me borrow his table saw to slice up the wood into the requisite pieces. This was pretty simple once I’d drawin up a bit of a cut list:

It was quite satisfying how efficiently the panels got used.

And got all my screw hole measurements lined up:

It wasn’t entirely un-thought through.

So after making the cuts, I took a couple of days to assemble. This sounds relaxing, but was not. Assembly had been considered, but probably not enough. I used some “interesting” workarounds to force the wood to sit in the right positions whilst I glued and screwed it3.

Temporarily using one of the stakes to push the base to a nice 90deg angle with the uprights.

There were two “audibles” called during the construction phase. One good, and one bad. The good audible was a suggestion from a wiser individual, which was to add some screw blocks between the diagonal braces. The second audible was to add the backboard to the top, which you can see here. This would better hold the posts, but added significant weight to the top.

The last discrepancy was having to add “riser” blocks to the castors so the screws wouldn’t poke out the top. And also being fine with some of the screws not having backing4:

Worked suprisingly well… to date at least (touch wood!)

This was remedied by fixing the rear castors in their furthest back position, which is actually what the above picture is of (look at the lower castor). This along with some anti-slip matting for the boards appears to have fixed the issue.

Finished Rack

I still wouldn’t recommend copying the design, but it does work for us, so no minimal complaints here.

Link To PDF Drawing (yet to be updated).

And now the images you’ve all been waiting for:

Not too shabby eh!

  1. Or a quiver if you so choose.↩︎

  2. No foreshadowing here…↩︎

  3. Belts and braces approach. They’re both cheap, so can’t hurt to sprinkle in some extra of both. Plus there was only one way this was going to be dissembled. 💣️↩︎

  4. In case it’s not obvious I was trying to get the build done then and there! ### Issues The main issue is the centre of balance is high and to the back. Combined with rollers facing the wrong way, the rack had a tendency to fall over. Not the most useful trait. This happened when my brother was round for tea and we both sprinted through thinking a burglar had just crashed through the window. Thankfully no human was hurt, nor was there a burglar, but the two boards needed some TLC[^bic].↩︎