One thing I have been meaning to do for years and years now was to build a rod drying box. It helps not only to keep dust out of the finish, but also when you have to ship an impatient customers rod ASAP it helps to cut a bit of time off the time it takes for the finish to set up.

So today I spent about 12 hours remodeling and cleaning the rod shop. One thing I was tossing out in the trash was and old stand up 6ft tall book case. One of those Sauder ones that you get at Walmart. Well I had it about halfway dragged up the stairs when it hit me....This would make a great rod drying cabinet!

So I started out basically with something like this... 6ft x 14" x 14" bookcase



Then I took all the shelves out of it, flipped it on its side, and mounted it to the wall with a pair of heavy duty shelf brackets. I then bought a sheet of 36"x30" clear acrylic sheet and cut it into 2pcs for the front window. To mount the front acrylic I bought a 4ft long hinge and mounted it so the window opens downward so its not in the way when putting rods in & out. For the heat I used two light sockets with 75w bulbs in them. Added a thermometer to keep track of the heat range, and also mounted an 8 plus power strip to the side which has a timer built into it. That way rather than leaving the dryer running all night and wasting power like I do now I can just set the timer for how ever long I want it to run and it will shut of on its own.

I did a test run of it tonight and it went from 66 degrees up to a sustained 80 degrees after being on for 1 hour till the temp leveled out at 80. I still have to weatherstrip the edges of the front glass so once that is done I should be able to hit around 83-85 is my estimate. The perfect temp for speeding up dry time.



Power strip with timer mounted...



Front view...







Steve