6 Player Paintball Gun and Mask Rack

I play for the scenario paintball team Pub Crawling. We have more than 20 members on the team and over the years we have come up with ideas to make keeping the staging area better organized. One of the items we get asked about a lot is the paintball gun and mask rack. We are currently on version 5 or 6 of the rack and have made many improvements along the way.

Requirements for the rack would have to be: holds as much gear as possible, hold the gear neatly and safely, break down for travel into as small a size as possible, easy to put back together and be light for travel purposes. Each rack is designed to fit on 1/2 of a 6 foot table so we can put 12 guns and masks per table. We currently have four of these racks for all the players on the team to use. 

This version of the rack we will be building was built and designed by Chuck "Chucky Cheese"  Canesi. I just reverse engineered it and posted it here.

You can find out more about the paintball team Pub Crawling at www.PubCrawling.Org.

6 Player Paintball Gun Rack
32 1/2 inches Tall
16 3/4 inches deep
36 inches wide

Material List
3/4 inch schedule 40 pvc pipe Approximately 24 feet
(8) T connectors
(6) 90 degree elbows
(3) Crosses
(6) pipe Caps
(6) 9/16 nuts
(6) Barrel Holders
(6) Tank holders
(12) 3/4 inch screws
60 inches of weather stripping
(1) 5/8 inch dowel rod 30 inches long

Lets start with the piece that holds the tanks. 
Cut 1st piece of PVC pipe 32 3/8 inches
Cut 3/4 inch Dowel Rod to 30 inches
You may have to sand the dowel rod so you can insert it into the PVC pipe we just cut.
As you can see in the picture, the top of the dowel was sanded flat where the screws for the tank holder would attach.
Insert the Dowel into the 32 3/8 long piece of PVC pipe, We centered it with about an inch of space in either end. Really i think the dowel and the pipe could be the same
length but we used a piece we had laying around.

Next We will attach the Tank holders to the PVC.This piece started off as a flat piece of metal that we bent to shape.

Drill Two holes into the Tank holders near the bottom where it will attach to the PVC. You can see originally we tried with one center hole but it spun too much so we went with two holes on the side. We counter sunk the screw heads into the metal tank holders.
We used (12) 3/4 inch wood screws to attach all of the tank holders to the PVC and dowel rod.

Spacing for the tank Holders. Measured from the end of the pipe to the bottom center of the first holder. 2 1/16, 7 9/16, 13 1/2, 19 3/16, 24 15/16, 30 3/4 inches.
Use the (12) 3/4 inch wood screws to secure the tank holder into place. Then cut (2) 5 inch pieces of weather stripping per tank holder and attach both to each one. We used the kind of weather stripping with adhesive tape backing to make it easy.  

Two Sides of the base:
You will need (4) 6 1/2 inch pieces Of PVC pipe. 
Between 2 of the pipes attach a T connector and to the ends of the pipes (2) of the 90 degree elbows. 
Repeat process to build other side.  

You will need (6) T connectors, (2) 1 7/8 pieces of pvc pipe, (5) pieces of 4 inch pvc pipe.

Starting with a 1 7/8 pieces of pipe connect a T connector then a 4 inch piece of pipe and keep going until you finally finish with the last piece of  1 7/8 pipe connecting to the last T connector.  In the pictures you see then upright barrel holder pieces in there but they are glued in and I couldn't take them out for the picture. I will describe how to make those in the next section. 

Now you should have all of the pieces to put together to make the base. 

For the Barrel holders you will need (6) 8 1/2 inch pieces of PVC pipe. They will fit into the T connectors.

Take the (6) PVC pipe caps and drill a 3/8 inch hole into the Top center of the cap.

For the barrel holder itself this was a metal ring piece that we cut in 1/2 and then dipped in liquid plastic.
Insert the threaded piece of the U shaped barrel holder into the cap and attach with the 9/16 nuts.
Put the completed Caps onto the PVC pipe.  Then the other end of the pipe into the T connector in the back base piece. 

In the photo section you can also see an alternate barrel holder I used for one since Lowes and Home Depot near me didn't have the part used on the other rack. 

(2) 29 1/2 inch pieces of PVC pipe.
(2) 90 degree elbows

Put one of the elbows onto a pvc pipe and the other end onto the T connector on the base. 
Repeat for other side. 

(8) 5 5/8 inch pieces of PVC pipe
(2) 8 1/2 inch pieces of PVC pipe.
(4) Cross connectors

Assemble (2) of the 5 5/8 pieces of PVC pipe into the 90 degree elbows from the uprights.
Attach (2) of the crosses to those end pieces.
Attact the (2) 8 1/2 inch pieces of pipe to the Crosses and attach the last Cross pieces in the center of those.
Attach the (6) 5 5/8 pieces of PVC pipes to the crosses to make the mask holders.

You should now have a fully assembled 6 person Paintball gun rack and mask holder.  

From your friends at Pub Crawling http://www.pubcrawling.org You can also Follow what we are up to next on Facebook

In the pictures below you can see another rack I made for our friends on the PA Brew Crew. Their colors are Black and Red so I painted this one up a bit for them. Since I couldn't find the same Barrel holder and Tank holder brackets I used some alternate parts. (see pics in the other steps) and coated them with Perfomix's Plasti Dip.  I used Vaspar Plastic spray paint on the PVC pipe.

The question came up about linking this rack with another. I think if you replaced the two bottom 90 degree elbows on one side  with a 4 way connector (like we used in the top center if the rack) you should be able to connect another rack to this with two small straight pieces of pipe.