DIY Floating Wall-Mounted Bike Rack (Free Template!)

In this woodworking project, I’ll show you how to build a DIY wall-mounted bike rack using “floating” shelf support brackets! Make your bike storage the centerpiece of your home and put your bike on display. This is a great beginner project and there aren’t many tools required to build this bike rack!

DOWNLOAD THE FREE TEMPLATE HERE

Don't miss the video above for a lot more detail!

The tools required for this build are really simple. You could get away with using only a jigsaw, a drill, and some sandpaper. I listed all of the tools I used, in case you're wondering.

Materials Used On DIY Floating Wall-Mounted Bike Rack (affiliate):

• (2) 2’ x 4’ Plywood Project Panels
• ½” Dowels : http://amzn.to/2CRNBWO
• Peel & Stick Veneer : http://www.rockler.com/psa-pressure-sensitive-ven...
• Wipe-On Poly : http://amzn.to/2BwO04D
• Blind Shelf Supports : http://amzn.to/2BLeMDj
• Cork : http://amzn.to/2kTAexS
• Double Sided Tape : http://amzn.to/2BJBFaj

Tools Used On DIY Floating Wall-Mounted Bike Rack:

• 1 ¼” Dish Carving Router Bit : http://amzn.to/2kTYqjS
• T-Track Clamp : http://amzn.to/2BNyVZe
• Jigsaw : http://amzn.to/2wJbYGB
• Drill : http://amzn.to/2xxMHNl
• Router : http://amzn.to/2iHSZGC
• Flush Trim Bit : http://amzn.to/2BLfgt9
• Spindle Sander : http://amzn.to/2BtBGSD
• Inventables X-Carve : http://bit.ly/xcarvecrafted
• Powermatic 15HH 15-Inch Planer : http://bit.ly/powermaticcrafted
• Laguna 1412 Bandsaw : http://amzn.to/2zfuN1U
• Parallel Clamps : http://amzn.to/2zgQtdS
• Woodpeckers Router Table : http://amzn.to/2CkQJtO

I designed this project to be built from two 2 foot by 4 foot plywood project panels, available at most home centers. If you nest the pieces correctly, you should be able to get 7 pieces per panel, giving you a total of 14 triangular pieces.

The first step is to print of the free template from my website, which spans across two pages, and then tape them together to form the template. Trim off the excess and then use spray adhesive to attach the template to the plywood.

One trick with spray adhesive: spray it onto the template and let it dry before sticking it to the plywood. This will make it really easy to peel off later, with no sticky residue left behind.

After applying the template, I grabbed my jigsaw and got to cutting, making sure to stay proud of my line. When cutting plywood with a jigsaw, you want to make sure and have a fine toothed, wood specific blade, since it will leave you with a much cleaner cut without tearing out the veneer on the surface of the plywood.

With the outside edges cut, I moved onto cutting out the inside. First, I used a ½” drill bit and drilled a hole in each corner, getting as close to the line as I could. Once the holes were drilled, I cut along my line with the jigsaw, connecting the holes.

After cutting the piece to rough shape, I moved over to the drill press to drill the alignment holes, which are also marked on the template. These holes allow you to use dowels when assembling the bike rack later, and are a huge help to keep the pieces from slipping around during the glue up.

If you don’t have a drill press, you could drill these holes with a handheld drill, but make sure to keep them as straight and square to the surface as possible.

Once the holes were drilled, I used my spindle sander to clean up the edges and sand to my lines. This is one of the most handy tools in the shop and is so useful on projects like this. That said, if you don’t have a spindle sander, you can just use files, rasps, or just sandpaper wrapped around a dowel to get the same results.

After sanding, I removed the template, which peeled right off. Now, let’s talk about a few ways to make 13 more of these triangular pieces.

Alright, so now that we have one of these done, we need to make 13 more. Efficiency is going to be a big key here so that this doesn't drag on forever.

One of my favorite ways to duplicate pieces is with a router and a flush trim bit like this one. It's got a small bearing on it that rides up against your original piece. This serves as the template and you get an exact duplicate of the piece. It's really easy to do, just attach the two pieces with double stick tape. That's one great method.

Another method, since this doesn't really need to be very precise since there's going to be a lot of sanding involved once it's all glued together anyway, is to cut them out to rough shape with the jigsaw. After the glue up, you'll just take a belt sander to it and get it all smoothed out. That's a great option, especially if you don't own a router.

The last option, and the one I'm going to go with, is to put my robot minions to work and use my Inventables X-Carve to go ahead and cut out these pieces for me.

Obviously, I realize that's a massive privilege to have one of these in my shop but it's really nice to have that working in the background while I can work on other things, and I know that all of the pieces are going to end up exactly the same.

I think one common misconception with CNCs is thinking that they do all of the work for you and you end up with pieces that are ready to go. While CNCs are great for creating duplicate pieces like this, there is always some cleanup work to do afterwards.

For example, I used tabs to hold these pieces in place during the cutting process, which meant I had to cut the tabs to free the pieces. I did this using a chisel.

Once the pieces were cut free, I was left with these little tabs sticking off the edges of the pieces, and the best way I’ve found to clean them up is using a flush trim bit. This goes quickly, but with 14 pieces, there were a lot of tabs to remove.

With the pieces cleaned up, I moved on to assembly, which went really smoothly with the help of the alignment holes. I used ½” dowels between each layer and they kept everything in place while I continued to add more layers. The dowels were also helpful when I went to add clamps.

Also, it’s a really good idea to come back and remove the glue squeeze out after an hour or so, since it’ll be much harder to remove once it has fully dried. Don’t ask me how I know. :)

To add a little more visual interest to my bike rack, I decided to add a Walnut veneer to the front face of the rack. I made my own veneer from some scrap Walnut I had on hand, but you can buy pre-made peel and stick veneer in a ton of different wood species from places like Rockler.

To make my veneer, I resawed a few pieces of Walnut to about 1/4” thick at the bandsaw and then planed them to an even thickness on the planer. Next, I glued them together, making sure to keep them nicely aligned and flat.

After the glue dried, I cleaned the panel up at the planer, planing it down to about ⅛” thick.

Next, I traced the rack onto the veneer and cut away the excess at the bandsaw.

Once it was cut to rough size, I glued the veneer panel to the face of the rack, making sure to use plenty of glue and clamping pressure.

After the glue dried, I cut away the inside area of the rack using a jigsaw.

To flush up the veneer, I used a flush trim bit on the router table.

With the veneer flushed up, it was time to get to the tedious process of sanding all of the layers flush. Even using the dowels for alignment, you’ll be left with glue squeeze out and slight imperfections where the pieces don’t line up perfectly. The best method for flushing this up was a belt sander, although flushing up the layers on the inside of the rack are quite a bit trickier and will require a lot of hand sanding.

After getting everything sanded, next I needed to route in a groove on the top of the rack for the bike to sit in. I found this 1 ¼” dish carving bit and it was exactly what I needed.

I set up the bit on my router table, with the front edge of the bit about 3 inches from the fence. I made a pass, then moved the fence over about 1/2”, to widen the groove. The total width of the groove after the second pass was roughly 1 1/2”.

Next, I needed to drill the holes for the blind shelf supports. I marked the hole location on either side of the rack, making sure they were spaced 16” on center to line up with the stud locations in my wall.

I drilled the holes on my drill press, since the holes really need to be perfectly square so that the shelf supports can work correctly. The hole needs to be drilled roughly 5” deep, so you’ll most likely need an extra long drill bit for this.

Also, a quick note here, I’m using an older version of Rockler’s blind shelf supports in this project, but it looks like they’ve just come out with a new and improved version that’s more adjustable and includes the screws for mounting the hardware to your wall. I’ll link to that new version in this post, but the process for installing them should be roughly the same.

After drilling the holes, I marked where the mounting plate hit the back of the rack and chiseled it out so that the shelf will fit flush to the wall. The layers of the plywood really want to pop out here, so be careful and take your time. I ended up adding a little CA glue off camera to stabilize some of the loose pieces.

To give the rack a little bit of a cleaner look, I rounded the front edges using an ⅛” radius roundover bit and then gave the whole rack a good sanding up to 180 grit.

For the finish, I wiped on a few coats of a wipe-on poly, allowing each coat to dry for about 8 hours between coats.

Next, I cut out a strip of cork to add to the groove where the bike will rest. This will give the bike some padding and keep the bike or the shelf from getting damaged. Make sure to use a straight edge like this and make your cuts in a few passes, so that the cork doesn’t crumble.

To attach the cork to the rack, I just used some good quality double sided tape.

Finally, it was time to install the rack on the wall. First, I marked the location of my studs using a stud finder, then I put the shelf supports into the back of the rack and held the rack up to my wall, making sure it was level. I applied a little pressure, which drove the pins in the shelf supports into the wall, which marked the exact location where I needed to install the brackets.

To install the brackets, I added two 2 ½” screws per support. You might also notice that I had to cut one corner off of the support to make sure it was hidden behind the rack, and I did this off camera with a hacksaw.

With the shelf supports installed, I added the rack and it was finished!

I hope you all enjoyed this project. This seemed like a pretty simple project going in, but it ended up being a lot more time consuming that I first thought due to all of the sanding and preparing all 14 of the layers. That said, I love the way the rack looks and I think my brother (who I built the rack for) will love it.

If you enjoyed the project, make sure to check out my YouTube channel to see a lot more projects like this, and also my website for more detailed articles and plans. Thanks and, until next time, happy building!

- Johnny