After many years of stacking my canoes/kayaks against a fence and in my garage I decided to build myself a rack that would accommodate 6 boats.
Well done. I especially like the scrap deck board use.
I have a similar rack. It started as a 9 boat slot rack, # with an extra crossbar near the top
That served well until the day my wife noticed excess shop boats on sawhorses in the yard, made a familiar scowl and suggested that expanding the existing boat rack would look less trailer trashy in the yard.
That suggestion still holds the Worlds Record for the fastest honey do task ever completed by man. How early does Home Depot open?
The new 4 by 4 posts to expand it to a 14 boat rack were concreted in the ground early the next morning. Most of that rack, except the new 4 x 4 posts, is made of scrap pressure treated that was taken off decks I built or replaced.
The only photos I currently have. A side edge view of that rack.
PB280036 by
Mike McCrea, on Flickr
The two excess decked canoes in that photo, which usually live stored inside, are resting on oversized temporary storage sawhorses, with the long, flat cockpit comings resting flat on the temporary sawhorse crossbars. I really need to make another extension on that side where those boats inside storage boats reside when evacuated outside to make room.
Soon after building the rack original nine slot rack some tweaks occurred. I cut a 2x4 width slot out of some scrap two and a half inch PVC pipe and capped the crossbars with that. The canoes now slide on and off like butter, without the gunwale flange washers bumpthumpgrind gouging the crossbar wood when I slide them in place on the rack.
That PVC pipe probably helps keep the gunwales scuff free, and away from damp wood crossbars. It definitely helps keep the crossbars on the wood rack from being machine screw and flange washer gouged every time I slide a boat on or off.
For the kayaks and decked canoes on that rack I cut // \\ angled wedges from scrap ethafoam packing material, for some cushion so the decks were not resting directly on the crossbar and getting warped or deck dimple deformed in summer heat.
Those cushioning wedges for the decked boats on the rack are basically a shallower version of the sawhorse hull stabilizers I use in the shop
PB280030 by
Mike McCrea, on Flickr
That rigid ethafoam stuff is often a freebie, discarded from shipments of electronics or equipment. It is useful stuff, anytime I see I nice thick chunk of it dumpster bound I grab it.
