Creating guitar storage in the man cave

rsvmark · March 2015

spark240 said:

Bit of led strip on the back of those battens, with miniature pir....look really cool when you open the door

1000 times what he said.

What material are going to cover the foam in- in a luxurious mood I suggest a vintage leather like a posh sofa....

hubobulous · March 2015

@stickyfiddle - I'll get some pics up this week, but the foam is covered now with another material, so the nitro issue isn't one I've had to consider, but thanks for the heads up.

@sassafras and @spark240 - LED is a cool idea. I'm not having doors, but a roller blind instead, so not sure how I could automatically trigger the lights on/off. Any ideas?

Sassafras · March 2015

Not really, I'm not very practically minded but LED's sound good. They don't generate much heat so they wouldn't add to the hot pipe problem.

stickyfiddle · March 2015

hubobulous;558625" said:
@stickyfiddle - I'll get some pics up this week, but the foam is covered now with another material, so the nitro issue isn't one I've had to consider, but thanks for the heads up.

@sassafras and @spark240 - LED is a cool idea. I'm not having doors, but a roller blind instead, so not sure how I could automatically trigger the lights on/off. Any ideas?

Good good. Just checking

hubobulous · March 2015

Yeah, the hot pipes are now covered in the silver sleeves as recommended by @timmysoft and the difference is absolutely noticeable so that's cool, if you pardon the pun.

I guess the only way that I can trigger the LEDs, should I introduce some, is to have a switched that's engaged when the blind is unlatched from its down position. I know nothing about this sort of thing. but the internet is my friend. If anyone out there has lighting/electricity skillz. input would be appreciated :-)

hubobulous · March 2015

Quite a bit to catch up on now. Since the arrival of daughtobulous, I've tried to grab time between nappy changes and sleep to chip away at it, and things have gone well.

So back to the body dividers. Once wrapped on 3 sides with foam, they ended up looking like this:

With the cross struts also covered in foam, I put them back in the gap to make sure that they still fit and took the opportunity to take @timmysoft 's advice and wrap the hot water pipes in protective chrome covering that certainly helps with keeping the heat from radiating into the storage area:

The left photo above also shows an acoustic foam tile which I was testing to ensure that I left enough space behind the neck strut for it.

I completed the foam covering for both levels on all body separators and cross struts, and then was ready to apply the outer material covering.

hubobulous · March 2015

As mentioned above, Jonathan from @FelineGuitars kindly offered some material that he had spare to help me with the task of applying the final outer covering. This was to perform two functions - protection for the guitar bodies/necks, and also to cosmetically improve the storage.

He had some claret and silver/grey material, luckily in large enough pieces that the cross struts could be covered as well as spare pieces for the body dividers and neck guides. Claret and Blue would have been perfect to align with my Aston Villa allegiance, but beggars can't be choosers!!

Using the same glue as had been used to affix the foam, the material went on the body dividers:

By making the pieces of material just slightly longer than the mini batons, I could fold the end over to finish off the 'wrapping'.

The material was nailed to the cross struts in the same fashion as the foam, making sure that it was pulled tight around the edges.

The next task was to install the cross struts back into place and measure out the gaps for the guitars so the body dividers could go the correct distance apart. I used a couple of guitars with different width bodies, and different trem types, since the gap would need to not only accommodate the body, but also ensure that the trems didn't touch guitars that were in the space next to them.

I managed to sneak 8 spaces into the gap, with the far right hand side one near the water pipes being reserved for a smaller body/trem model.

I moved along the length of the cross strut, measuring each gap as I went, until all of the body dividers were nailed into place:

This was then repeated for the upper level in silver/grey material:

The cross strut for the neck guides hadn't been covered in the outer material at this point since the holes for the neck guides needed to be drilled and it was easier to apply the claret and silver/grey once that had been done.

hubobulous · March 2015

There's quite a lot of work associated with the neck dividers. Early on I was thinking of covering them with the same sort of foam that I bought for the hot was pipes, but decided against that and chose to just cover with the claret and silver/grey material instead.

I cut the dowling into 20cm lengths, and then marked the first two inches since this would be the part that slotted into the cross strut and would therefore not need to be covered in material:

I'm rubbish at wrapping Christmas presents, and therefore the manner in which I was going to cover these dowling rods in material took some thinking. I finally settled on covering the end that would directly face me with a circular piece of material, and then just roll the dowling in another piece for the length. To cover the ends, I cut some small pieces of both colours and then glued the end of the dowling onto them. Once dried, I trimmed with a pair of scissors:

Before covering the lengths, I wanted to drill the holes in the cross strut and ensure that it was all working as I expected.

Measuring the locations of the dowling rods on the cross strut wasn't straightforward. The body of the guitar that I was using needed to be vertical, so I had to enlist the assistance of Mrs Bobulous to site the dowling rods either side of the neck whilst I ensured that the body was in the right place. Once a couple of them had been marked out, it was easy to replicate the spacings for all of the remaining rods.

I then removed the cross strut, cut out holes for the dowling locations in the foam, and then drilled the 18mm holes:

Quite an exciting moment this, since I could then put a few dowling rods in to check that they fit, and put the cross struct back into the gap with a couple of guitars to see if it all worked. My drilling for the dowling holes wasn't brilliantly accurate so they are a lillte up and down, but with the guitars in place, this won't be seen too much:

I then covered the cross strut with the claret material, punched holes through for the dowling, slid all the rods in, (they will be glued eventually), and installed it to see how the whole idea worked with a couple more guitars:

The final piece of the jigsaw before covering the dowling with the material was to know where to put the restrainer which would fix to one dowling rod and then loop over the other with the intention of stopping the guitar falling out of the rack. For this I bought some normal hair ties, some small screws and washers. By putting a guitar in the rack, I determined that the restrainer should go 4cm from the end, and therefore I'll attach the hair tie to one dowling rod, and cut a little notch in the other:

rsvmark · March 2015

so not sure how I could automatically trigger the lights on/off. Any ideas?

What about some sort of PIR (senses movement) to switch the lights on with some sort of delay and auto turn off. I put the larger type into a downstairs toilet recently which triggers the lights and extract fan. I also put the miniature type at low level to trigger some feature lights in my daughters en suite. You will need a sparky to do it (cos I haven't the foggiest) but it's easily do-able

http://www.johncullenlighting.co.uk/products/pir/

hubobulous · March 2015

@rsvmark - yeah, I think that sort of idea could work. I think I'll have to spend some time working out how the blind is going to latch, and specifically where to put the blind so that its as close to the front as possible, but at least with something like a PIR I can keep it in mind when thinking things through.

Lew · March 2015

Lots of progress here Hubob. Surprised any is made with all those nice guitars ;-)

hubobulous · March 2015

What with the new baby and this project, the playing has taken a bit of a back seat. I still play unplugged in front of the TV, but until the storage is done, I can't really create the space to set my amps and pedalboards up.

No matter though since I'm finding that im really enjoying learning some new skills, letting my creative juices flow in a different capacity and finding out that I'm a bit better at this then I ever thought I'd be.

But the guitars won't be idle for long!

Dave_Mc · March 2015

wow that's starting to look pretty awesome

usedtobe · March 2015

Coming along nicely!

hubobulous · May 2015

Blimey, its been a while since I updated this and progress has been good, so here goes....

In order to cover the dowling rods, I needed to engage my GCSE maths brain to work out how much material to cut. I knew that some of the dowling didn't need to be covered given that it would be pushed into the drilled holes in the cross strut, so just measured the part that would be visible. This obviously gave me the length of the material which was 15cm.

'But how wide should it be to wrap around the dowling?' I hear you ask

Pie x Diameter I answer.

So a piece of material 15cm x 6.3cm was required. To get this as accurate as possible, I created a template on some graph paper that had been sitting in a drawer for well over 15 years - amazing what you find when rummaging!!

I had offcuts of the material from when I covered the cross struts, so used them along with the template to create the coverings:

Once cut out, I measured a couple against the dowling to make sure that the maths was correct, and then continued with the rest of the batch:

There was one final task before applying the material to the dowling however. In order for the elastic restrainer to stay in place if a guitar neck fell against it, I needed to create a notch in each dowling rod. By doing this, the elastic could take the pressure of the neck weight without the band sliding off the rod. Using the measurements from before, I knew where the elastic band would be attached, so I drilled out the notches and then finished with a file:

With that done. I could now cover the rods using the same wood glue, ensuring that the material went down into the notch. The final step was to attach the elastic restraint and check that it wouldn't move out of the notch with the material now on the rod. All was well...!!

Bogwhoppit · May 2015

You're overthinking this. Try this method, it will save you all the time and hassle...

.

hubobulous · May 2015

That's what I currently have. Thought it might be time for a change ;-)

hubobulous · May 2015

Next up, I needed to work out how to fix the side struts to the wall and create the top panel to house the roller blind.

Attaching the side struts was pretty straightforward in that I could use small baton bits of wood and drill them into the wall. By screwing them first to the side struts, I could try to get them as close to the wall as possible, (given that the wall isn't straight).

Getting the panel at the top was difficult since it meant cutting a piece of wood to fit walls that weren't straight as well as taking coving into account. I knew I could use wood filler to plug small gaps, (also to be used where the side struts didn't quite meet the wall), but I wanted it to be as accurate as possible.

I bought some thin wood to use as a template and then spent some time getting it to be quite close:

Although not perfect, this was good enough to then be drawn around and slightly modified on the actual piece of thicker wood that was to be used:

I put it all back together again without screwing anything in to make sure it fit:

So now I was ready to add the blind and air vent as suggested by @impmann to allow for the warm air from the room and pipes within the storage area to circulate so as to avoid damage to the guitars.

57Deluxe · May 2015

I bet you work in an office don't you...?

hubobulous · May 2015

I do indeed. What gives it away? Is it my terminology being all 'office speak' or is it the desperate need to use my brain in a practical and useful manner :-)

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Creating guitar storage in the man cave

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