Thursday, May 01, 2008

Tack Locker complete

Tara's tack locker is finished. It took about 10 hours longer than I had anticipated, but that' ok - it was fun to make.

It's basically a 2x2 frame of pine with 3/8 fir plywood for the sides and shelves and 6" pine T&G floor board for the door. Two and bit shelves, a nice spot for the crops and whips, enough hooks for everything (I hope) and two adjustable saddle racks. It turned out not too bad, if I do say so myself.

It's not without it's flaws. The floorboards were a bad idea for the door - the wood was warped enough that both doors have a insignificant twist to them. I tried several attempts to rectify the twist, but in the end I couldn't do much. In the first shot below, you can see that the door is sticking out a bit - I'm going to see if I can get strong enough magnetic latches that keep the door closed. So the lesson here is - if you are going to make one of these, don't use cheap floorboards (and use a planer!)

But I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. I wasn't sure I would be able to pull it off, but I have a great dad who taught me everything I needed to know about building this thing (and who was just a phone call away in case I got into more trouble that I could deal with) - Thanks Dad! All those years ago you didn't think I was paying attention, did you. :)

Now the challenge will be getting it to the barn - not only is it large (46" x 28" x 76"), but it's also heavy - I guess it's about 100lbs empty. And we don't know if it's thin enough to make it up the stairs to the tack room at the barn. If it's not, we'll stick it in the bucket of the tractor and lift it up.

Most of Tara's tack is at the barn (in various rubber maids), but I populated the locker with as much of her tack lying around the house as I could find.

Anyways - this is what I've been doing for 3/4 of my week off. It's nice to build something solid for a change.






9 comments:

the Doug said...

Nice work sir! Looks great.

Unknown said...

wow, thats sweet

Anonymous said...

Richard: That tack cupboard looks amazing! Tara is a lucky girl. She certainly never got a cool tack cupboard like that from us :) Just be ready when they see that one at the barn you may have people after you wanting to order one for themselves! Take care...luv mom R.

Anonymous said...

Thank you!! This is exactly what I was looking for - great job!

Emily said...

I'm curious as to whether you think this frame would support a large western saddle as well? This locker looks amazing but i've got a large reining saddle in addition to my 3 english saddles.

Richard Siemens said...

I think this would support a western saddle; you might need a slightly bigger support thought.

haley said...

WOW!! im gunna try to build this in woodshop at my school.. this is gunna b a challenge..but im up for it..thanks :D

Unknown said...

Hi,

Do you have plans and / or materials list?

Cheers,

Anonymous said...

Thank You!
Used 5" swivel casters under mine.