I'm making a drying box and I am not sure how wide to make it. I want to be able to fit roller rods and surf rods in there, but I don't have any here to measure how high the guides sit off the blank. The box will be 1 rod wide, and 5 rods high, 14' long and will have motors on both sides for a 10 rod capacity. I do not want it sticking out more than it has to, so I'm thinking 7 or 8".

If someone has a box similar to this, or if you can measure the guide height plus teh blank diameter of a roller rod & a surf rod with a high frame 40, that would be great.

Hello Billy

On a surf rod that I have the guide is 50mm ( from foot to top of guide is 77.12mm ) the blank is 23.73mm..total is 100.85mm or about 4" (bottom of blank to top of guide) hope that helps Harry

Regular 40MM on a 7/8' blank is 3 3/8" Fuji 40 MM KW is 3 3/8 guide alone



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2013 10:58AM by Barry Thomas Sr.

If it were my box, I would make the inside dimensions at least 8 inches deep. If the blank were centered in this dimension, you would have a couple of inches on each side for door closure and rod being a bit out of adjustment.


Sounds like a good project.
I assume that you are going to hang the box on the wall? If so, I would have the front access door hinged from the bottom, so that if the door is open, it could just drop all of the way down and stay down for access. Then, a couple of latches to hold the door closed, when in use. I would probably make the front door out of Plexiglas with a full length piano hinge on the bottom, and then put a piece of 3/8X3/8 aluminum angle on the top of the door to keep the 14 foot long door from bending.

Of course, it might actually make sense to have a double door on the dryer box. If you made each door 7 feet long, you could just open the motor end of the door most of the time and angle the rod into the dryer. But in either case, by having two 7 foot doors, the construction, material cost etc. would be much more manageable with double 7 foot doors - rather than a single 14 foot door.

Roger

I already had a 14' box with 2 7' doors that flipped up. I hated it. I'm installing 2 7' sliding doors. It looks like 8" is the magic width number. My other box was 12" wide but it stuck out too far, I want to consolidate as much space as possible, I hated a lot of other things abotu my other set up and I'm hoping to fix them. WIth teh elimination of my pool table, I should be able to fit 40 people in my shop for a fishing seminar...I've already had 30 people standing around the pool table on a couple of occasions. Teh drying box not sticking out will make me happy, lol.

Sounds great to me Billy! I wished I lived closer!

Billy,
I would like to suggest that before you finalize your design, you do a mock up of your cabinet with the sliding doors. With one door still in place, that means that if you open the butt end of the rod, you will still have 5-6 feet of rod behind the other door as you put a rod in or out of the box. I know that it is possible, but it would really be a bummer to find that about half the time you ended up hitting a tip or guide as you put a rod in the box and knocked it out of alignment. With the short depth of the box, you are going to have very little wiggle room.

You mentioned that you have flip up doors on your other cabinet. I assume that you hinged them from the bottom.

How would it be, if you hinged the doors from the top and then had a clip on the ceiling to latch the door open when loading and or unloading the cabinet. Or, if you were well off the ceiling, just have a hook hanging down from the ceiling to hold the door open. With the door swinging down from the top, it would not be in your way - when loading and unloading the box.

I have no idea of your room shape height or ceiling height.

Good luck
Roger

Your last paragraph is exactly the way I had it before, eye hook on teh cieling and hinged from teh top. Most of the rods I do are less than 8', so I am pretty sure I can slide them in. The other box had 2 7' doors, and I'd get them in no problem with a 12"x12" box. I figure even at 8" I would still be able to get teh occasional 10'+ surf rod in there, I just have to be careful. THat is a good point though to mock it up to make sure, THank you

Billy,
I think that others have considered building a box with a top hinged door.
You indicated that you didn't like your former drying box.
Can you explain the problem that you had with the box?

Roger

p.s.
I know that there are several folks in my area that have dryer boxes mounted behind their rod benches. They have bottom hinged full length doors. They open the doors, and the doors simply fall down tight against the side of the dryer box. These dryer boxes are all 10 feet long.
The service the rod, and then grab the handle that is mounted on the inside of the door to swing it shut. They are all very happy with the boxes.

Roger

I hated having a chain hanging off my ceiling. This box is going to be about 3 feet high, so hinging top or bottom is going to be awkward when I open it - I wouldn't even be able to opwn it with a hinge on teh bottom since it would hit my lathe. That's why I want a sliding door, I do not want a big bulky box and that's the only way I can do it - the problem will be loading the box with long rods.

Can you split the doors horizontally and vertically? So a total of 4 doors. Two opening up, two opening down. Another option is to have sliding doors that go up and down instead of left and right.

Chris Richer
Iroquois ON

Billy,
What about not having any doors on the box? Do you really need the doors on the box?

If you just had about 4 light bulbs on the lower back of the box, I would think that you would have plenty of heat in the box, with out worrying about doors.


Roger

Hi Billy,
Perhaps if it doesnt take up too much room with the wider track, 3 sliding doors that way you can have two thirds open to aid with the long rods? assuming you are using plexiglass doors that should only require an extra half inch in depth.
Good Luck on getting your shop back together.

J Scott
Englewood, Fl

Billy -
I think you should consider Jim's suggestion for 3 sliding doors. Most any sliding glass door or sliding glass window tracks will work for your application and allow you to put rollers on the clear panels to eliminate binding. I know what you mean about hanging chains and how inconvenient ANY vertical closing door can be = up and you stretch or the door drops / down and you potentially loose easily accessed space under the box. Your slider idea is a really good one.

The track is kind of expensive - I was looking at $180 for 2 tracks, adding one more is going to add an additional $120 to the box. And it will give me 1 & a half more feet to work with. If I can get plastic track it's a heck of a lot cheaper, but like Ken said it might bind.

I'm not familiar with any of these prodcuts and will probably call teh company to find out, but is anyone familiar with something like this:

This would be the track: [www.completecabinethardware.com]
Thsi would go on teh plexiglas and allow it to glide on the track; [www.completecabinethardware.com]

It's by far the cheapest way to go, I am a cheap SOB, if I can get somethign that works and costs me less than $50, that would be a lot better than over $200.

Billy,

If you go with three sliding plastic panels the weight won't be all that bad on a single panel. You should simply be able to have the plastic panels slide on their edges in a track cut from hardwood (like maple) on a table saw. As Roger suggests by his notion of an open box, this certainly does not have to be an airtight fit. You can cut the dados for the panels oversize so there is plenty of room and no binding of the plastic. This would be very inexpensive to construct and should work reasonably well. This is not something that has to have an elegant solution.

For very little additional money you could have someone with a metal shear cut you some thin strips of sheet metal to lie in the bottom of your dados and your plastic doors would slide on the sheetmetal even easier.

Not including the plastic doors, I can’t imagine this costing more than $10 in materials to a resourceful frugal person.

As the others have suggested, to make tracks in a board would only require running the bottom board through a table saw with a dado blade in the saw. 3 passes for the bottom track and three passes for the top track and you should be good to go.
Since the doors are light weight you could make them out of pine. Of course a hardwood would hold up better, but would not be necessary.

If you just put an end on each end of the tracks, you could have nice fitting doors, that would simply slide into the box from the ends of the track. Then, put the cover over the ends of the track to create a stop and you would be good to go.
The doors would not have to be clear if you didn't want them. You could have one clear door, and then just use 1/8th inch hardboard for the other doors. Very inexpensive and long lived.

You could make a frame out of 2X2s, and then face with tempered hardboard, and the entire box would likely not be more than $30-$40.

Roger

THanks. I forwarded this to my friend who's helping me. I have no idea what anyone is talking about, lol. I know about building rods, and building nothing else.

I need plexiglass for teh door. I have a lot of people in my shop and nothing looks better than a kickass drying box. I want to make the ends of the box where the motors are going to be installed out of 3/8" Plexi. I have a friend who can get me Plexi for free. THanks again for the recommendations, they are helping me out a lot.

Billy,
Another option, that you could also consider for a dryer is the use of a drum dryer.
On a 9 inch wheel, I have space for drying a dozen rods at a time.

Several folks have integrated this design into a dryer box. simply put, Install a bearing in one end of the box and install a motor in the other end of the box. Place the center tube with the drums on the tube into the box and hook up the motor.
One motor to dry 12 rods at the same time. This would allow you to have a dryer box that would be about 15 inches square for your use.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

If you want more details on such a dryer, just drop me an e-mail:

hflier@comcast.net

I have some rod builders on the east coast that are currently using this design in their rod shops.

Be safe
Roger