I'll soon be moving into a new, smaller, flat and as a result will have to move my small collection of electric guitars from individual stands to a rack. I've had a bit of a look online and didn't like any of the ones I could find. There were a few US based carpenters who make quite fancy ones that cost a fortune but nothing that really grabbed me so I've decided to have a go at designing one myself...
As I live in the middle of London I don't have access to a workshop but I've found a company in Hackney with an Epilog laser cutter who can cut sheets of 12mm plywood up to 900mm x 600mm in size. So I've been designing a guitar rack that slots together (no tools needed I hope) and can be cut out of one sheet. The design looks like this at present but I might refine it:
As the laser will cut it (I hope)
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4148/5020862514_ccf3f4a46c_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_atrocity/5020862514/)
And assembled
(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4103/5020862522_865046346d_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_atrocity/5020862522)
Before I commit to doing this I thought I'd see if anyone here has done anything similar and if so had any useful tips or experience? I think the wood should be strong enough but if anyone has any advice I'm all ears. Thanks!
Well this is one of my hare-brained schemes that didn't die on the vine. I took your advice and made some tweaks to my design, mostly the addition of some pegs for extra structural support and from that drew up my design properly and made a maquette to check I was happy with it:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5205/5254565902_0ae342764b_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_atrocity/5254565902/)
I actually made a couple of maquettes because I learned from the first one that by offsetting the slots top and bottom I could create a single design that could be configured in multiple ways. Having had a chat with the Epilog-equipped cutting folks at Cutlasercut (http://www.cutlasercut.com) in Hackney I learned that they could not cut one piece of 12mm plywood as it's too thick so I opted to cut 2x 3mm sheets and a 6mm sheet of MDF and from that I could glue the MDF into a plywood sandwich. I went and picked up the cut pieces on Friday and did a test assembly:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5129/5253956611_78d29545e4_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_atrocity/5253956611/)
You can see the pegs I added to the design for rigidity here:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5244/5254565730_d7fa9914d5_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_atrocity/5254565730/)
I was pretty happy with this. The laser cutting process is so precise that the pieces locked together absolutely perfectly with no extra sanding or cutting required. I glued the plywood/MDF sandwich and reassembled the rack and put a couple of coats of varnish on it yesterday. I'm still deliberating if I want to paint either the sides or the cross-pieces white for a sort Dieter Rams era Braun style finish but that's a decision that can wait a while.
Here's the finished rack:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5086/5253954521_f0d650999f_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_atrocity/5253954521/)
And here it is in situ:
(http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5205/5254565574_d02a1657a1_z.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_atrocity/5254565574/)
I'm really pleased with this, it's very sturdy and matches the style of our living room as well as a guitar rack could I think. I need to clean up the vector drawing file and add some notes but I'll post the finished plans in an Epilog friendly file format in case anyone else wants to get this design cut for themselves. Hopefully that will happen this week work permitting.