Building a ski rack

My friend Melissa needed a rack to store her cross-country skis in her garage. I figured this would be a fun little project to bang off in an afternoon, so I volunteered to build one.

She likes to keep everything tidy and organized, and she just recently drywalled and painted the inside of her garage. So I wanted to make this ski rack look nice as well.

I started by borrowing Melissa's skis, poles, and snowshoes. I laid these out on a piece of 2x10 lumber to figure out how big the rack would need to be.

The skis and everything are held in place by 5/8" dowels. I marked the positions for the dowels by taking my 5/8" forstner bit and tapping it into the wood with a mallet. That made a divot for the center of the holes and also marked a circle for the outline of the dowels. This made it easier to get a sense of the layout as I marked the dowel positions.

I tapered the ends of the dowels that hold the snowshoes. These have to poke through between some of the webbing, so this makes it easier to get the snowshoes on the rack.

All the dowels are glued into their respective holes.

I also glued a top shelf onto the rack so that she'd have a place to keep the ski boots during the summer. During the winter, it's best to keep them in the house, so they won't get too cold.

I also planed my piece of 2x10 down from the original 38 mm (1.5") to about 30 mm. 38 mm was just a little too thick in terms of how the shelf looked.

Unless you tie your skis together, they will hang something like this from this type of ski rack. Melissa is not one who usually ties her skis together, so I figured I should make a holder to mount lower down that keeps the skis held together.

I figured I might as well turn this lower holder into a small shelf. It's a good place to keep the ski wax.

The shelf is at about waist height. I rounded the corners on it so that hopefully nothing gets caught on it as one walks around the car.

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