Juggling ball storage rack

This was a pretty niche project, but anyone who enjoys juggling will soon end up with some storage issues. I have many different types of balls, and I wanted a way to store them in an aesthetically pleasing, easily accessible and secure way. I came up with several designs, and this is what I ended up building. For those curious, from bottom to top: bounce balls, contact & glow balls, stage balls, vinyl balls, homemade ‘Russian-style’ balls (play pit balls half-filled with salt).

 

The basic concept was pretty simple; build angled shelves using some kind of concave molding that would securely hold my juggling props.

I went through many iterations of possible designs, initially planning to include hooks/holes for clubs and rings, or explore some sort of weave-ish aesthetics where the shelves intersected in complicated ways. I really liked the idea of holes drilled in wood to hold individual balls, but this would have been less stable or required very thick shelves. With my method, I get support from the balls from the extreme edges of each shelf. I also like the way they roll into place neatly from anywhere. I also decided against including clubs or rings because it would have become a pretty massive unit for wall mounting. If someone with more room built the bottom-left version, I still think it would look pretty cool.

In the end, I decided to keep it simple. I wanted to maximize the available storage and let the balls shine through. It was important at this stage to use graph paper and actually draw to scale in order to take into account how much clearance I wanted for each shelf, as well as the amount of wood needed to produce a particular design. Many of my ideas turned out to be impractically large or have a lot of wasted space that wouldn’t hold anything. I basically went with the bottom-left design, minus the rings and clubs. I spaced the shelves to accommodate my largest props comfortably.

 

 

Once I’d bought some appropriate molding, I set up a little test ramp to ensure that the slope I had in mind would hold the balls stably. I also made a little mockup of the outline to get an impression of the scale. It can be hard to really imagine how something will feel on a wall until you see it in real space.

 

In the end my design called for roughly 9 degree slopes, so I chopped up the molding into the necessary lengths. I tested the fit with some juggling balls as I went.

For once, sanding wasn’t the most effortful part of this project. the shallow angle end-grain connections I wanted to make were a puzzle to produce. Gluing end-grain to end-grain is really not a good idea for strength, but I wanted to have a clean look. Since the whole thing (loaded) weighs about 10lbs, I gambled that it would hold up to the minimal stress of its own weight over time. That being said, I’d encourage anyone following in my footsteps to consider putting in some reinforcement pieces or using biscuits or something if you have the time.

To begin with, I glued each pair of shelf pieces together. In order to clamp them, I cut out some pieces of scrap wood at the same 9 degree angles on the chop saw. I basically wanted a convex point to sit the pieces against, and a concave area opposite where the clamps could apply pressure to parallel surfaces. Since I couldn’t cut the concave part properly with the chop saw, I just cut straight through and used an off-cut piece as a spacer to bring the edges parallel again. You can see this best in the pictures below.

 

 

First, one glue-daubed piece was clamped at exactly the center of the jig. Parchment paper was used to keep the wood glue from getting everywhere. The second piece was also coated in glue, pressed up against it and clamped tight while maintaining the pressure inwards towards the first piece.

 

Putting it all together provided some more fun clamping problems. I decided that the easiest approach would be to secure the top- and bottom-most shelves first, then fit the three center rows in by pressing them downwards in the resulting frame until they hit both sides. This would ensure good contact at both sides of each shelf, offloading any wiggle in my measurements into the vertical spacing between the shelves.

The top and bottom were secured at the proper distance with the help of some spacer blocks, and ‘clamped’ with some rubber band rigs. Once this frame was set, I clamped the three central rows by pulling them down towards the narrow end of the frame. The lengths were all good, but I had some imperfect fits where the shelves were slightly twisted and wouldn’t fully contact the sides. Rather than sand them and possibly disturb the even spacing of the rows, I just snuck some thin little shims of wood covered in glue into the gaps. This thing is not built to code.

Another point to mention is that I built this to sit flush against a wall. In order to have enough room for the largest balls, I did not attach the shelves to the centers of the side pieces. As you can see, all of the pieces in these pictures are touching the ground. The side facing downwards during gluing will be the outwards face on the wall. Not only was this easier for gluing, it also means that the shelves of the final product are spaced as far from the wall as possible. Even my stage balls are never in contact with the wall when on the shelves.

The completed structure! I had some fun rolling a ball around on it. Maybe I should make three and use them as meta juggling props?

I finished with some 2-in-1 stain and sealer, just to give it a nicer color. I then fixed two screw-in hooks to either side for hanging. Since the whole thing weighs about 10 lbs loaded, I went with some regular “50#” drywall picture hanging anchors.

That’s it! A custom storage solution for displaying my juggling props in a secure and accessible manner. I built this nearly a year ago to date, and it’s still holding up nicely. If anyone decides to make something similar, please send photos!