My new drying cabinet

[Midwest Custom Fly Rods]

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

[hardhat]

Great imagination on recycling that book shelf into another usable piece. Nice looking shop also.

[lastchance]

That's so inventive. I wish I was handy like many of you guys on this site. It looks great!

[Ray Kunz]

The monitoring of air temp with the thermometer is good but watch for overheating the rod areas that are too colse to the lamps.
I would suggest you try putting some pieces of cardboard to shield the rods from direct light radiation. Just let the lamps heat the air only. I've had situations like this in curing paint in my modelmaking.

[JohnScott]

Steve -

Why am I not surprised that you turned an old bookcase into a neat piece of rod building equipment ??

John

[Midwest Custom Fly Rods]

Ray- Good point, not too much of a issue though because I forgot to mention that the light sockets are mounted on a bolt that allows the bulb to pivot so when I put a rod in there I pivot the bulb upward so its not in very close proximity to the blank. But good point for anyone else that is considering building their own though

Well I used it for the first time over the weekend, and could not be happier, it works perfectly! Since my shop is in the lower level of my house and I'm in Michigan it gets down to about 65 degrees down there this time of year. So normally my dry time is about 11-12 hrs till a rod is what I call "Shippable" at this time of year. This weekend I did a rod and put it in the cabinet which stayed at 81 degrees the entire time and the rod was completely dry in 6hrs 20mins. So I just about cut my dry time in half now

Steve

[popperfly]

Well in this case....one mans junk is the same man's treasure....nice thinking Steve, looks good.