New painting stand

[Scratch]

I do a good amount of spray painting in my shop. Whether it's painting metal signs, garden stakes, or other small parts that I plasma cut... or old jeep parts like air cleaners, brake parts, and clutch pedals that I sandblast and need to be primed an painted. I usually do one of two options, I grab two sawhorses, toss a scrap piece of cardboard or plywood on them and set my parts on there flat, or I cut a foot long piece of tie wire, hang my part from that, then find somewhere to hang that part after I paint it to dry.

I decided to come up with a better solution.

I have pretty much a metric ton of 1" ID (1-5/16" OD) galvanized well pipe. My well is 450' deep and I had to have it replaced once and I kept all the old pipe. I also took my neighbors old pipe and everything is 20' long so yeah... I got a bunch of it. I cut four pieces of it all to 6 feet long.
pic 1


Then I cut a piece of 1"x2" square tubing to 24" long and welded some casters to the bottom of it. Then welded one of the pipes to the middle of it on the top. I also cut a 4" piece of 1.5" ID pipe and welded it to the bottom as a receiver. I made two of these.
pic 2

[Scratch]

At the top of that 6' pipe, I also welded another 4" piece of receiver tube. Those receiver tubes at the top and bottom have been drilled and welded with 3/8" nuts.
pic 1


Next I made some 3/8" "hand twist clamp bolts" or whatever you call these things.
pic 2


After that, I got out the bender, and made some 5" long S hooks from 1/4" round bar.
pic 3

[Scratch]

And after the paint dried, I put it together.

In this pic, the top and bottom crossbars are 6' long, but I can go as long as I want to with them. I have a bunch more 20 footers if I really want to. I could even just cut one at say 10' long and use that on the top. That way I'd still have the bottom bar at 6 foot, and have the top bar sticking out about 24" on each end for even more parts hanging opportunities!
pic 1

[Scratch]

But that just covers the hanging parts. What if I want to paint something laying flat?
I made some support bars by cutting two pieces of 3/8" rod, 24" long, and welded a washer in almost the center of the rod.
pic 1

Then drilled a hole for each at about 33" high in both uprights.
pic 2

Now I can span those support bars with some scrap 2x4's or whatever and set the parts on there to be painted.
pic 3

[Scratch]

I had some extra six foot long shelving corners and decided to use those since it gives me 12 more feet of parts hanging goodness. I can also lay a scrap piece of plywood or cardboard on them for the flat parts.
pic 1

Plenty of practical parts painting possibilities!
pic 2

[Scratch]

For storage, I drilled a hole in each bottom for the support bars, and can store them there.
pic 1

Then I slide the crossbar over the support bars.
pic 2

And use a ranger band (bicycle tube cut at about 1/2" wide) to hold it in place.
pic 3

As you can see, it doesn't take up much floor space and on the first try, it took 55 seconds to go from fully stored, to fully ready!
pics 4&5

If you have any other ideas for cool features, let me know!

[JohnBoy]

That's tasty. I love the way it tucks in for storage.

[dubby]

I got distracted wondering, "How'd he paint the uprights without a paint stand?"



Looks great and very practical. I've always realized after the objects were freshly painted that I could have done a better job if I'd planned to go about it differently. Most times I just find a flat space, throw some cardboard down with something to block the object up, and start squirting.

[chumly2071]

Very nice!

[toprecycler]

Very nice. It is satisfying when you make something that is very universal that will help with a very often done project. I’m sure you will come up with a few other tweaks along the way.

Only thing I can think of is a piece of bar grating to lay part on, instead of flat cardboard/ plywood. Can allow paint to drip off, if you spray it a bit heavy like I tend to do.

I always used to say “runs don’t rust”.


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