If you are undertaking a woodworking project, you will probably need to store your wood somewhere, probably in your shop, for a period of time before you get going on your project.

And actually, before we talk about a couple techniques for wood storage, we should also mention that it makes good sense to store the wood in your shop for at least a couple weeks before beginning your work, which will allow it to adjust to the climate of your workshop before trying to build anything with it.

stack of lumber

Keep it off the floor

You don’t want to store your wood on the floor, concrete or otherwise. This is just a bad idea.

Moisture will more than likely seep through the floor and get absorbed by the wood, causing undesirable results. You want to keep your wood high and dry. Put it up on a shelf, build a shelving system that provides you with plenty of wood-surfaced storage shelves to store all your lumber.

wooden planks air drying

Basic inventory system

Try to keep your lumber organized, and store similar sized chunks together. This will prevent a lot of mix ups and confusion when looking for certain sizes of wood pieces.

You can mark down thickness, width and length, or any combination that you find useful. Basically, you just want to be sure that you can pick out certain sizes easily without much confusion.

stack of new wooden studs

Ventilation

Make sure that your storage space can breath, you want good air circulation. You will also want to try to keep the storage area dry and free of excessive humidity. This goes back to the point about keeping your wood in your shop for a couple weeks before using it. This will ensure that it has a chance to adjust to the dryer conditions of your shop before beginning work.

wood timber

Storage methods

You are going to want to keep your extra wood out of your way, where are some good places to try to keep it? How about these ideas:

  • In your rafters
  • Put up some shelves
  • Store wood under your workbench
  • Vertical racks

Any of those options will work, and should allow you to keep your wood in ideal storage conditions in your workshop.