I have been staring at my Olympic Bumper Plates stacked against the wall in the basement for over a year, thinking about building a nice rolling rack to organize them.
There were a number of reasons for just staring/not working.
First, my shed was a disaster. There was plenty of room for my table-saw, and my compound miter saw, but there was a crappy utility trailer in the way, as well as a motorcycle that I hadn’t ridden more than 200 miles in two years. Also, the lumber I wanted to use for the rack was in a 10 foot by 10-foot wall panel that I had removed to install a garage door but never completely demoed.
But things started to change this year. First, my wife and I bought a camper, and that camper is going to live in that shed, which meant we spent 2 weekends cleaning, organizing, giving some things away, and selling others until finally, we could reach that wall panel.
We dropped it, pulled plywood from the 2×4’s, pulled hundreds of nails and staples, and turned that wall panel into a stack of 2×4’s and two-and-a-half sheets of plywood.
Finally, after all that, the shed was clean and open enough to host; we had some friends from our “quarantine pod” over for ribs last week.
And on Friday, I stared at that stack of weights for the last time.
Yesterday, I measured a lot and cut a few boards. Today, I cut a lot more, glued, clamped, pre-drilled, counter-sunk, applied adhesive and built a rack with locking casters for all of my Olympic bumper plates.
It’s not pretty.
I’m pretty sure “Liquid Nails” would be frowned upon by most woodworking guilds. But it’s done, and it’s a tank. I’ll probably bestow it to a niece/nephew/God-child upon my death.
And I’m proud of it and of the work it took to get access to the tools and materials needed to build it.