Firewood racks need to be neither expensive nor fancy. Their essential purpose is to keep the logs or (ideally) split firewood off of the ground and accessible to decent airflow, to help the wood dry out.
Given the opportunity, I prefer to build my log racks out of recycled and found materials.
After our complete dock rebuild project from a couple summer’s ago, we had plenty of old pressure treated wood laying around the materials pile.
We were fortunate to have some salvageable old pressure treated 5/4 decking, 2×6’s, 2×8’s and 4×4’s, just looking for a second life.
The only other thing needed was some left over (new) coated deck screws, which I had plenty of from the same dock project.
The total cost for this firewood rack- a whopping $0.00! That’s a price I can live with every day of the week, lol!
Buil
ding the log rack was very quick and easy.
Notice the palisade tops of the log rack- these were the hand cut ends of the dock posts that were previously driven into the lake bottom. Cutting the remaining three to the shortest one’s length established the height of this particular rack- 4ft. This is the perfect height- it’s tall enough to hold a lot of wood, but still in a good proportion of height to depth, so it remains stable and steady.
I then cut four pieces of 5/4 18 inches long and screwed them to the 4×4’s. Two were flush to the bottom of the 4×4’s and two were near the top. This add some rigidity. The two at the bottom ere supporting the 2×6’s that serve as the resting area for the logs/firewood.
Since this was a relatively short rack (due to the shorter 2×6’s I used), I didn’t need to add any extra support in the middle of the rack.
The total build time for this free log rack was approximately 30 minutes, including gathering the materials, setting up the chop saw, and putting it all together.
If you like this project, or any of our posts, please consider subscribing so we can notify you when the next post is ready… Thanks, Steve.
