Mead Rack

One of my other hobbies is mead making. Mead is just wine made with honey instead of grapes and I can sometimes make quite a bit at a time. Recently I bottled about 12 gallons of various flavors of mead and found I had nowhere to put it all. It came out to 54 bottles and my current rack in the living room only has space for 24 bottles and isn't really in a good area to bottle age the mead. So it was time for a new rack for the basement.

The 'problem.'

I started by drawing a basic rack that I would put together with pocket hole screws and nails. It is eight rectangular frames strung together and the bottles are supported by what are basically cleats. I began my cuts with a stop block mounted to the chop saw for consistency. These board were used for the horizontals and I also cut the vertical parts without the stop block since they were too long.

Stop block in place.

All frame pieces cut.

I used my pocket hole jig to assemble the frames and had the jig attached to my vacuum which kept the work clean. I had sixteen boards to drill four holes in each but this didn't take to long once I had everything set up. I put the frames together using a Kreg clamp to keep the boards flush and used 1.25" coarse thread Kreg screws as is recommended for joining 3/4" material.

Mass producing pocket holes.

Frame assembly.

All eight frames.

The next step was to make the cleats the the bottles would actually lay on. These would span horizontally from the front to the back of each frame. With the amount of wood I had setting around the shop I could only make the frames tall enough for seven rows of bottles. And to fit it in the space between the beams in the basement it could only be seven bottles wide which gives me a 49 bottle rack. With two cleats per bottle that means I needed 98 cleats total. I didn't have any small square stock so I ripped several 1x3 boards on the table saw. I then setup a new stop block on the chop saw to create my 10" long cleats.

Cleat creator.

Frames, cleats, and stringers.

After all this cutting I had all the parts to finish putting the rack together. The end frames only got cleats on the inside but the inner frames needed them on both sides. The first frame acted as my master template and allowed me to position the starting cleat in the same position on all frames. I had also cut 3 1/2" spacers to use to consistently position the remaining cleats. This resulted in the cleats being evenly spaced, parallel, and all in the same positions across the frames. I attached the cleats with finish nails.

Frames with cleats.

I then was ready to tie the frames together with the stringers I had cut earlier. I used the same 3 1/2" spacer blocks to maintain consistent spacing between frames and to ensure they were parallel when I was nailing them to the stringers. I also used a dab of wood glue for added strength on the stringers. The base has two stringers but the top only has one in the back. I left the front open so I could stack the extra bottles on top, at least until I build an extension. If I go any higher I will need to put a stringer on the front so that the weight of the bottles doesn't bow the frames out and cause the rack to fail.

Spacer blocks made everything straight and parallel.

Assembled and ready.

After assembly I moved it to its home in the storage area along the basement wall. It fit between the beams with about 3/8" on either side; perfect! I then filled it up with all of the mead I had bottled the previous Sunday that was just standing on the floor since then. Again, I had 54 bottles but my new rack only holds 49 (all of my spare wood was used) so I stacked the few extra on top. I think once I get a bit of extra wood in the shop again I'll make it a bit taller. I should be able to just build more cleated frames and attach them to this one with either pocket hole screws or dowels. The dowels could be glued on only one side to make it easy to disassemble but I doubt I'll have to move this any time soon.

Already overflowing.