Lumber Storage Shed
Written by on January 13, 2017
INTRODUCTION
Providing yourself with a proper environment to store your lumber is an important addition to your building quality wood pieces. It is an effort to build a shed such as this, but it will provide a lifetime of security for your stock. Being able to select that perfect piece of walnut or oak immediately will always be a benefit to your passion for makings things from wood.
Having lived with stacks of lumber cluttering up my yard and garage for years, it was time to build a place to organize and store my accumulation. Having a sawmill as a hobbyist means that you eventually WILL need a place for extra pieces from projects, as well as a place to store unexpected lumber from logs that just seem to show up. Many times, logs will be offered from folks that know or learn of your mill. Many hate to see the logs they believe useful going to waste, and will gladly give them to you. And that means MORE LUMBER!
The first challenge for me (and doesn’t apply to large scale sawmill operators) was to design a structure that was easy to access. I lift my boards manually since I do not own a fork lift. That is also impractical for me at my home. I looked for lumber storage ideas all over the internet, and saw only a few that resembled the look I wanted. I finally came up with a system which provided strength, and good organization to meet my needs.
I wanted to be able to store lengths up to 16′, since I rarely cut anything over that length on my Norwood Lumbermate 2000. I began by laying out a 16′ x 16′-8″ design with 2 aisles. Each aisle would have stacks on each side. I’ll show you the finished product first, and then a few pictures showing how I built it. Now that it’s done, its only about one third full, with all of my different wood species and sizes available for immediate retrieval.
This is the finished shed:
As you can see, the front entrance doors lead to two aisles front to back, with shelves on each side. The shed is 16′ side to side, and 16′-8″ front to back. The glass area in my two flea market doors were perfect for allowing light into the storage areas. Both were found at the local Texas trade days flea market for $20 each. I cut the majority of the lumber for the shed on my sawmill. I ended up purchasing the 1″x4″ material for the shelves, since time was limited for me, and I wanted a consistent finished size of lumber to make the parts fit well.
Here’s a picture looking into the shed:
