Introduction: Sleek Wooden Outdoor Bike Rack

This bike rack is a clean, sleek design that is great for designers and woodworkers up for a challenge. This bike rack is an intermediate build that will challenge any builder. It is a versatile and sturdy outdoor rack that can hold a 29" wheel and most frame styles.

Supplies

Tools Needed

  • Table Saw with ⅛” blade 
  • Feather board attachment for table saw
  • Jig saw
  • Miter Saw 
  • Laser cutter (optional)
  • Drill: Spade bits with a 1½" attachment, and ½” twist drill bits
  • Clamps

Materials

  • Glue (Titebond cold lamination) 
  • Cedar 2''x4''x8' boards
  • Cedar dowel rods
  • Screws and nails 
  • ½” plywood

Step 1: Create Molds (The Forms for Bending)


Step Overview: This step is making the mold for the bends to be laminated to (pictures of the molds)


For big mold instructions:


  1. Take the ½” plywood and cut to 30” x 30” squares four times.
  2. OPTIONAL: Then take it to your laser cutter and originate the laser to the top right corner using the Big Mold file attached.
  3. If a laser cutter is not available: hand-cut according to the Big Mold file attached.
  4. Take the piece of plywood you laser cut, and jig saw on the line, image below.
  5. Take an impact driver and a 2” spade bit and drill out the circles on the plywood, the circles are for the clamps to have a better surface to clamp into. 
  6. Attach two pieces of your plywood using screws and wood glue. Complete the other set as well.


For small mold instructions:

  1. Take the ½” plywood cut into 15 6/8” x 15 6/8” squares (4x)
  2. OPTIONAL: then take it to your laser cutter and origin the laser to the top right corner using the Small File Attached.
  3. If a laser cutter is not available: hand-cut according to the Small Mold file attached.
  4. The piece of plywood you laser or hand cut and jig saw on the line, should look like this.
  5. Take an impact driver and a 1½” spade bit and drill out the circles on the plywood, the circles are for the clamps to have a better surface to clamp onto.
  6. Attach two pieces of your plywood using screws and wood glue. Complete the other set as well.

Attachments

Step 2: Cutting Out Strips for Bending


Step Overview: This step is for the lamination process of making the curved bends.


Small board steps are the same steps as the following big molds, the only adjustment is the measurements of the small boards. The measurements for the small boards are 16 1/2”.

Strips for big mold:

  1. Take your Cedar 2x4 and cut 39¾” blank out, make sure you have smooth or “nice” ends of the board
  2. To set up a table saw, you need to take a feather board and set it up ⅛” away from the saw blade.
  3. After the table saw is set up, take the 39¾” blank and run it on the table saw using the feather board on each side of the board, therefore you have a nice straight edge on each side.
  4. Determine the side of the board you want to rip down into strips. Use the nicest-looking side of the board, then start stripping down your board. Strip down your board until all of your strips are equal to 1”
  5. After you have stripped down all the boards, mark the boards with a pencil starting with 1 and ending with however many boards you have.

Tip: I would also put a symbol of some sort (square, star, etc.), therefore if you are soaking more than 1 set of boards at a time in the following steps you don't mix up the sets.

Step 3: Soaking & Bending


Step Overview: This step is for soaking the boards in water so that the bending phase is easier and the wood doesn't break/snap whenever you go to bend it.


  1. Soak thin pieces of wood for 30 minutes to an hour. Tip: don’t overdo the amount of time the boards are soaking; I found the cedar tends to have green spots appear if soaked for too long. (the green spots are not mold they just naturally appear)
  2. Take the mold that fits the strips that you cut down, and then bend your strips to the appropriate mold. Start from the middle and work to the ends. 
  3. Once they are clamped to the mold, let them sit overnight to fully dry.

Step 4: Gluing/Laminating

Step Overview: This step is to glue all of your strips together to make one curved piece.


  1. Take your bent strips of wood off of your big or small mold depending on which bends are which, take one set of your strips and put them in order from 1 to however many strips you have (I estimate around 9-10 strips per set), make sure they are all the correct symbols too.
  2. Take the last number in the set, and put glue on it. Work your way from the bottom to the top putting glue on each layer. Make sure you don't put glue on the top layer.
  3. After all of the pieces are glued you want to stack them together in the correct order
  4. Clamp the glued strips to the mold, clamp them from the middle of the mold to the ends of the mold, to prevent bending and incorrect formation 
  5. Let dry for at least overnight (8 hours) 

Step 5: Planing & Sanding


Step Overview: This step is to sand down and make the glued bends look seamless. 


  1. Take the bend that you just glued and a hand planer to remove the glue. Then plane the wood until you are satisfied with the look of it.
  2. Take an orbital sander or a belt sander and sand down the bend that was just planned, you want to sand it down until all of the sides are flush with each other, and when everything is smooth.

Step 6: Create the “L” Attachment


Step Overview: This step is to create the “L” of the build


  1. Take your cedar 2x4 and cut two25” cedar blanks. 
  2. Designate one of the 25’’ cedar blanks as a horizontal piece which will make contact with the ground, and the other as a vertical piece which will sit upright on the horizontal piece at one end, making an “L” shape. Measure the total height of the “L” (with the vertical piece upright and the horizontal piece laying down) and subtract the difference from 25’’ (example: 25’’ - 1.5” = 23.5”). Cut away the difference from the vertical piece to make an L of equal width and height.
  3. Take the finished pieces to the table saw and cut off a ⅛” on each long side. 
  4. Assign a long curved bend and a short curved bend to an L. Cut down the L piece to the thickness of the curved bends.
  5. Take the long bend and measure its thickness onto the top and bottom of the L this step is so that the curved bend sits flush with the L.

Step 7: Repeating and Connecting

Repeat the entire process to complete one bike rack.

Once you have two halves of the stand you want to take two cubes to join the two racks together. You can adjust the size of the joining blocks to accommodate different wheel sizes. I used two 3 x 1½" blocks connecting at the top and bottom of the rack.

Tip: If you choose to predrill and glue to attach the connecting blocks: you can cover the predrill hole by cutting a dowel rod of the same diameter. Place and glue the dowel rod into the hole for a more seamless finished product.