Once in awhile a project comes along that is low stress, kind of fun to do, and does not require a lot of extra talent. It could take a lot of glue (I like to glue stuff). It could use up some of those odd scrap wood pieces laying around (it's still my goal in 2017 is to shrink my wood scrap pile). Also everyone has some of those jars of ugly old screws sitting on their shelf that are useless, but we saved them anyway ( mine date back to the eighties) because we know that someday we will have a special use for them. (I got rid of a few of those.)
My brother, Rod, inherited the green thumb in the family. He has a designated green house area and has already started to plant some of his starter trays with little seeds of flowers and things. He asked me up to take a look at his lighting setup which involves a saw horse with growing lights hanging from the mid section of it. This saw horse is straddling a couple starter trays with a heat source underneath. In the past this has worked out good for him but it is kind of bulky and it restricts his lighting area.
The goal is to build something that could hold another row of lights. Also it should be something that could be easily dismantled later on when it was no longer needed. Of course, something that could be made from scrap and not cost a lot of money. Rod gave me the gray boards that you see in the pictures. Those boards came from a wooden fence that was removed from around his back yard a few years earlier. I was a little apprehensive about the weather exposure on these boards until I ran a couple of them through the planer.
Each of the boards had a little deterioration on what would have been the top edge when it was a fence so I trimmed off about an inch making a six inch wide board now five. When I did that I discovered some pretty good wood,.
The fun part was gluing these boards together. The boards where I needed to apply glue, I ran one more pass through the planer. There was no plan - I was just working with some idea that I had in my head. (That's a little scary.)
Another exciting phase for me was that I never had to dig out any sandpaper. In fact I never had to do any sanding at all. (Oh my gosh. I love projects like this!) I built a couple uprights for the sides using a 4x4's for the base and ripped fence boards 2 1/2 inches wide for the uprights. I sawed some small pieces of plywood to place along the bottom side of the upright. For the top I ran one 24 inch 1x5 parallel to the base. When I was done with the uprights - they both stood strong and true (Although I never got the square out.)
For the top rails I built two cross boards and re-fortified the ends with some plywood. I cut a slot about two thirds the way up through the ends. This way you can just pull up on the cross pieces to take this light stand apart. Also this allows for the top cross boards to slide sideways or apart as far as 24 inches or as close as 6 inches. Structurally you could place quite a bit of weight on these cross pieces and they would not break or collapses. There will be little hooks going across on the bottom of these cross boards to hang the 48 inch grow lights on.
Well, to the right is the ugly little beast. Rod should be now be able to hang two lights - one from each cross board. Before he could only hang one from the saw horse he was using. Also now instead of having two trays under the light length ways he should be able to have four trays under two lights cross ways.
I have delivered this stand and help set it up, but didn't stay long enough to see the lights, starter trays, and heat units installed. I just had my coffee and treat (a cookie) and left. Someday I will have to head back that way for another cup of coffee and a cookie (or three) and take a picture of the end result.
As I am writing this blog I have realized that lately a few of the projects that I have done this year I have started out constructing something and then delivering it to let someone else finish it as they see fit. Some day I will have to have a end result blog with pictures of - well - of the end result.
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