Drying Rack

If you need to paint in a confined space, it can be helpful to build a drying rack.

The one pictured is built from 2 sheets of 1/2" birch plywood. It can hold up to 25 paintings at a maximum size of 18" x 24" per painting.

As you can see from the second picture, I use 18" x 24" sheets of cardboard as the shelves, which I slide in and out as I work. You could also slide in something more rigid (like 1/4" plywood) and rest sculptures or other large objects on them.

Plywood is available from any larger hardware store, like Home Depot or Lowes.

At the lumber yard I had the sheets cut in half so that they'd fit in my car.

I then brought them to the shop where I used a panel saw to make most of the rest of the cuts — A, B and C in the attached diagram.

I then used a table saw to cut the supports, which at 2.5" wide are too small for the panel saw. I set up an offset on the table saw at exactly 2.5" so I could cruise through the cuts quickly, letting the cut pieces fall to the ground and gather in a pile.

Just make sure to watch your fingers!

I first glued the supports to each of the sides independently and let those dry. I then added the top and bottom to make it a box and finally the back. The top, bottom and back were all attached with screws.

The alignment doesn't need to be perfect, as you're going for mostly flat, not perfectly flat. But I marked down the length of the sides with a pencil to show me where to put the supports.

After I assembled the entire box, I put a bunch of screws through the sides and into the supports to make them much stronger.

That's it! The contraption is simple, but it doubled the quantity of paintings per day I could make in my small home paint booth!