The drying rack I made before is good for smaller painting panels such as 8×10”. As I am planning to paint more bigger size canvas panels, I need a bigger size drying rack. I searched online and was surprised by their price. WOW. They were all like couple of hundreds. So again, I am going to do it by myself. I do look through the internet for design ideas. After that, I went to local Lowe’s for materials.

Materials are simple. I had two 2×2×8 ft. The cheapest one, $1.96 each. You can fetch the better quality one at Home Depot for about $8 each. Then I had twenty 3/8 inch diameter round stick at 4 ft. $0.96 each. I cut the 2×2×8 into 2 ft and 6 ft. All round sticks cut right in middle, make forty 2 ft long sticks.

Next, connect the 2 ft and 6 ft 2×2 lumber by pocket hole screws. I like pocket hole but you can just screw anything as long as they are fixed.

After that I measure and mark where to drill the 3/8 inch hole. I decided to make each hole 3 inch apart. That gives 22 layers on a 6 ft tall stick. And then I drill and drill and drill. Make sure you have some tools to help you locate the drill so that the hole would be straight not angled.

Once you finish all holes, put some wood glue in there, and put the 3/8 round wood sticks into the hole by hammer. This part is fun and fast. But if the holes you drill are not straight, this part could be really frustrating.

~(￣▽￣)~* 

The following step is adding horizontal supporting bar on the
2×2 lumber. This part is really up to you. You can make the supporting beam movable so that you can move left and right side closer or further. You can make the supporting beam diagonal so it looks good and stronger. For me, I find two pieces of 1×3 pine wood at about 8” long from my scrape box. I drill pocket holes on them and fix them to my 6 ft tall rack stands.

As you can see in this picture, right side is the one I drill first. Some round sticks angled badly but seems to still work. Left side is the one I drill later (with more experience ^_^) so it looks more even than right side. I still need two more 4 ft round sticks to fill in the two bottom layers.

And finally, I put something on it. I would recommend leave it for couple of hours so the wood glue could dry completely.

Well, it is not good looking as the commercial one. But, for under $30, it works for me, for now. O(∩_∩)O

I hope you would enjoy this post and find it helpful.

Thank you.

You know what, as I am writing this post I realize that I should actually adding the horizontal supporting bars FIRST and then measure and maker and drill the holes. In that case, you can use long ruler to level all layers. That would be more accurate.

Well, learn from me. ヽ(￣▽￣)ﾉ

Thank you again~