Scaffolding Board and Pallet Wood Rustic Shoe Rack in a Day

The rack where we keep our shoes and boots is very small and the area always looks untidy(See Photo), what we need is a longer double tier rack, the only timber I have to hand is some scaffolding boards and some rag ends of pallet all different thicknesses, gathering up all the bits I could find, even dismantling a previous pallet wood project which was no longer used, also the timber had splits but to be honest, the rack isn't going to have a lot of weight on it, and it's all I have so it will have to do.

I wanted to build this Rack in a day but like always, guests turned up and stayed for a couple of hours which is absolutely fine but it knocked my schedule out of the park! or did it.

No time to mess about, I have a lot of work to get through.

Pallet Wood

Scaffolding boards

Assorted Screws

Palm Sander

Router

Sandpaper

Elbow grease!

I had already run a scaffolding board through the thicknesser recently for another half cocked project which never materialised, so that saved me some time, as for the pallet wood of all different lengths and thicknesses that's another matter.

My plan is to use the scaffold boards as the 2 end uprights and also cut the remainder into 4no 30mm strips/bearers and then cut the pallet wood into all the same lengths to span horizontally across the bearers.

I cut the lengths of scaffold board I needed for the 2 End Pieces, then using another scaffold board I measured these to the size I wanted minus the 2 end piece dimensions which was about 34mm, My dimension was 130cm,
Cutting these bearers on my Mickey Mouse Table saw wasn't clever and I just about got away with it, the cuts werent very good, its not like these bearers would be seen anyway but still, I routed the length of what would be the bottom part of the rails.

I had 4.5 full lengths of Pallet wood @ 18mm thickness off the no longer used project, I will skim these with the thicknesser to ease sanding as they are all the same thickness, as for the rest of the pallet wood, this was all different lengths and thicknesses, the thinnest piece was 15mm so this would be my aim to make all the pieces 15mm, this took quite a while on the thicknesser, but soon enough I had them all down to the same thickness, Using a croc style shoe size 9 as a template for the width I cut all the pallet wood to the same size which would cater for all sizes of shoe/ boot.

Onto the next stage:

With the Rack being of the rustic variety you can get away with anything but it's in our entrance hall, there is a pallet wood wine rack and a mirror which look pretty good, so with that in mind I set about routing all the pallet wood cut lengths, this was a bit of a chore to be honest but I'm glad I did as the finished look is a lot better than just bare edged pallet.

I'm now at a stage where I can start to assemble the Rack.

On the 2 end pieces I cut and sanded some spacer blocks for the lower and upper bearers, these were pilot hole drilled in 2 positions on each, the star point 3mm drill I used had a built in counter sinker which was handy as I only have one battery drill, then I screwed these to the scaffolding boards so they mirrored each other.

I then drilled the pilot holes for the bearers in the scaffold boards, drilling next to the spacer blocks 15mm out from centre, then like an idiot I screwed all four bearers to the scaffolding board ends using green decking screws and cup washers, then I thought how can I secure the pallet wood to the bearers? 2 screws per piece of pallet wood one each side, with the top bearers in place my battery drill wouldn't fit in, so later I had to unscrew the top 2 bearers, anyway wasn't too much trouble.

I could now mark the centre of the bearer on the end pieces, lay out all the pieces of pallet wood and mark with pencil where I could pilot hole the pallet wood slats, this I did on first the bottom tier, then counter sunk all the holes, then screwed the each slat in 2 positions, some of the wood was already split but I didn't have anymore so I stabilised with CA glue and sanded, looked ok to be honest, I sanded the whole bottom tier and then I screwed the upper bearers back on and went through the same process, sanding everything, I took the rack outside and brushed all the sawdust off and gave it a good blow off with the air gun, and that's it, there is no finish to apply, pallet wood darkens over time given it a nice patina.

To the summary:

This project has been on the back burner for a few weeks, I didn't think I had enough decent material to complete it, but sorting out all the different lengths of pallet wood gave me an idea that I could, there was a lot of cracks and splits in both the scaffolding boards and Pallet wood but this would be ok as its not load bearing so to speak.

In my haste to get this project finished I didn't get much chance to take as many photos of the processes as I would have like but to be honest there wasn't a lot to it really, and there was no wood glue used either but it's as tough as old boots:)(Excuse the pun)

This was another of those projects with no plan as such, and I was really pleased with the outcome, there was a couple of laborious tasks but just getting stuck in gets the job done, I do think having 2 battery drills would have helped, swapping from pilot drills to counter sinks to screw driver bits is a bit of a bind, something I need to sort for the future, but having machines like a Thicknesser is a must for pallet wood etc this saved me a lot of time sanding etc.

Once again a Project from a pile of scrap wood, always very gratifying and it does exactly what we want it to do, we can put shoes underneath, and also on the 2 tiers, Just the job, and built in one day as scheduled.

I hope you enjoyed this Instructable and thanks for looking