Thread: Timber rack - strength.

I am about to build 2 timber racks, one in my workshop and the other at the back end of my garage. Both buildings are western red cedar weather board on standard, 90mm x 35mm, pine studs all on a concrete slab. The walls in question are 6 meters long with studs at 520mm centres, or therabouts.

I have a heap of Malaysian hardwood, Durian, 90mm x 30mm, that I picked up at a really good price (free). I propose to use it as the rails to support the timber stock.

In the workshop I store milled, dry timber no more than 300mm wide. In the garage I store part dried timber, often slabs, up to 600mm wide.

I am contemplating bolting the Durian to the sides of the studs, each piece with 2 - 6mm black bolts.

In the workshop the projecting section of each rail will be 400mm with no support apart from the bolts, to allow for front loading and unloading. The rails will be 450mm - 500mm apart vertically on each stud, giving me 4 rows with space underneath for sheet material on edge.

In the garage, if I were to use the same system, each rail would project 650mm supported only by the 2 bolts at one end.

Questions:

Will the rails support the weight of, say, a total thickness of 300mm of timber? My wife would be really happy to go into the garage and find the bonnet of her car crunched under a heap of Sheaok.

Will the studs carry the load without distorting?

My existing racks, 2 of them are:

1) 750mm deep supported vertically at both ends of each rail and requiring loading and unloading from the end, a real PITA.

2) 300mm deep supported at one end only by screws into studs that have had sections of stud material sistered to them edge to edge with screws. These racks are not deep enough. The effective depth of the supporting studs is 180mm and they just take up all the space than I have.

They are both in the wrong places and need to be removed.