Rotating Shoe Rack (The Lazy Shoesan)

Hi All,

My friend wants some shoe storage because both he and his SO have a higher-than-average amount of shoes. So he gave me some money and asked me to make it happen. I figured I’d make two at the same time, because why not? Also, I can’t take credit for the name Lazy Shoesan, though I wish I could.

Here’s roughly what the final product should look like:

The final height will be roughtly 1400mm. Each shelf will have three compartments and be 500mm in diameter.

The whole thing will spin on a 16" lazy susan bearing (bought off ebay for about $25). It’s being built out of high grade plywood. I didn’t use MDF because I was worried about wear and tear. Next time, I’d probably just do MDF. Plywood is expensive y’all.

So far I’ve cut all the shelves. I created a round template on my router table:

You can see the gouge in the one on the left. This happened when a rubber shoe on my clamp slipped while the router was running. It could have gone WAY worse. Be careful with powertools everyone.

I cut a heap of plywood squares. After that I rough-cut the circles with my jigsaw.

(anyone need any plywood offcuts? :stuck_out_tongue: )

Then, I used the template and a flush trim bit on my router to make them all nice and uniform.

Next up, I’ll be cutting the dividers/supports. 15 per Lazy Shoesan.

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I know this doesn’t help you much now. but maybe could help next time.

I just bought some 24mm AA (claimed) faced marine ply from a bloke down at Nerang.

It was $90 for the 24mm. $70 for 18mm, $60 for 12mm.

The sheets were 2440x1220. They are BS1088 not Australian standard. I think the main difference there is the British standard allows a higher level of formaldehyde outgassing than the AS.

Good luck on the shoe rack BTW.

Thanks for letting me know! If I’m ever in the market, I’ll hit you up for their details. I paid $88 for 12mm sheets in the same size. It was steep, but my friend was happy with the price.

I wonder how much HSBNE pays for that sort of thing. The woodshop will possibly need some in the near future for new tablesaw sleds.

Update: It’s done!

I took some more photos during assembly, but they’re really dull, so I’ll just leave you with the finished product. I will eventually change the bearing on it, because it absolutely does not operate as intended. It’s too heavy and I didn’t pay proper attention to the weight rating of the bearing.

The painting process caused me heaps of grief, for various reasons.

What I would do differently next time:

  • Make it out of thick MDF instead of plywood. It would be easier to paint and it would be way cheaper.
  • Use a better bearing
  • Pay upfront for better quality paint OR accept that I’m going to go through a tonne of cans of spray.
  • Make a better jig to assemble each layer. There’s probably a really simple way to do this, but man I found it frustraing.
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