Wednesday 28 August 2013

Making a Paint Rack

This one's for you ThirdEyeNuke
Warning: work required!!
That out of the way, here's the rack I use to store my paints:



This is a life saver. before I built this, my desk was a mess of paint pots, all taking over my work space. I thought about posting it up but in the end, I decided not to. Then I saw this post over on tale of painters. That desk is madness, no offence to ThirdEyeNuke. I offered to post this, to show how I built a paint rack.

First up: tools. Most of these are common DIY tools except the hole saw. You can pick one up for €15 in most hardware stores, but luckily I was able to borrow one.
1. saw (preferably a jig-saw)
2. Electric drill
3. hole-saw (on the left)

Now, I have no WIP pictures so I drew some sketches instead. The first one is simply getting some terms straight: the length and height of the rack. 


Step1. Buy a sheet of MDF as wide as the length you want your rack to be, twice as long as the height you want your rack to be and about 5 or 6 mm thick. Then cut the sheet in half, so you have two pieces, each the size you want the rack to be.


On one piece, drill holes using the hole saw. These will be where the paint pots go. For citadel paints, I used a 39mm hole-saw. One thing to note though, you have to leave appropriate space between the holes, or the wood will collapse under the weight. 


This is a sketch of one of the batons that I used to build the rack. The height is the height of the rack. You can actually cut the height short a little. Again, this can be bought in any hardware store. 


The next sketch is how I mounted the back piece and batons on the wall. The back piece was screwed to the wall, then I glued the batons to it using regular wood glue. 


The last step is to glue the front piece to the back piece. Allow 24 hours to dry before putting any paint in it. Just to note, if you're using larger paint pots (taller than the citadel ones) you may need to use thicker batons, to put more space between the two pieces of MDF

 There you have it, critique away.

8 comments:

  1. Nicely done! Kudos to you. Aren't worried about inks? I've always found they eventually leak if the ink is against the cap too long. Considering making but at an angle so the ink pools at the bottom instead of against the cap.

    Again, great work.

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  2. The hole is large enough that you can tilt the pots if need be, but not so large that they fall out. I suppose you could drill the holes at an angle if you we're worried! I've yet to have a paint of any kind leak on me, so fingers crossed that if I make sure to close the caps properly, they won't leak! I deleted the last two comments because autocorrect sucks!

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  3. Brilliant stuff!

    Speaking as someone who's still using 10 year old citadel paints, might I suggest you periodically just turn them around in situ to ensure they don't settle too much?

    Oh, and wwelcome to the friendliest corner of the hobby online.

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  4. Thank you admiral drax! I use most of my paints regularly, so they don't sit still for too long. Plus, the new citadel paints don't seem to settle as much as the old

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  5. Very nice work! I would be embarrassed if you saw my paint station.If you get worried about leaks you could hinge the top of the rack and add hinged supports at the bottoms. This would allow you lay it flat against the wall while painting and then prop it at an angle when you aren't worried about space or ease of access.

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  6. Thanks. Don't be embarrassed, I just have OCD! The hinge sounds like a lot of work and as I said above, I've not had any leaking problems with the new GW paints.

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  7. I just found this :) Its funny though as my wife made a rack for me to store the paints etc. Its all been quite organized for a while, but everything is slowly returning to how it looks on the post in tale of painters. I think I am just naturally messy when it comes to paint organization. But I always know how to find the paint I need. Cool post :)

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  8. In fairness, mine gradually gets worse and worse, but then I reorganise everything, and the process starts again!

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