Upcycled Gear Rack

I work as a mountain guide part time on the weekends, which means I have a fair amount of gear to maintain and catalogue. I live in a small space, and need to be really efficient with my space, so I want to better organize my gear closet. Currently, I just have a handful of hooks screwed to my closet door that I can hang gear on to keep it off my floor.

In terms of aesthetic, I’ve spend a fair amount of time working on my apartment to re model it into more of a mountain aesthetic. Lots of wood and stone, and natural colors. However, I also think there’s something to be said about the rural characteristics of the Western Slope where I live, and I’ve always enjoyed an industrial aesthetic, so I chose to incorporate sort of a rural/ industrial aesthetic into my design.

Originally, I wanted to use chain link fencing for my gear rack, and after finding a sheet of it at a scrap metal yard, I found it was simply to hard to cut, bend and work with. So, I instead asked a friend who has a ranch near here if they had any left over fencing materials, and they provided old sheets of welded wire fencing. This was much easier to work with, bent easily and still held its shape under a fair amount of load.

I cut and drilled small pieces of sheet metal to hold the fencing onto my door, and drilled it into the wood. This seemed like a secure connection, though I could always add more tie down points in the future if needed.

The finished rack can be seen above with some gear mounted on it. Detail photos below along with video.

I think in the long run, the wire fencing may bend some with wear and tear. We’ll see. I’d still like to investigate using a thicker gauge, or chain link, but with maybe 50 pounds of gear on the rack, it still seemed to hold up okay! Very fun to use a non traditional material for this, and put something to use from elsewhere as opposed to just buying something off Amazon. I also think it would be cool to incorporate some old climbing gear into the rack somehow. Maybe old bolt hangers, or something?