Storing Steel Vertically?

[keith204]

My shop is in my 2-car garage w/ 10'+ ceilings, so I store a lot of my dried lumber vertically (and some horizontally on the wall).

I'm about to order a whole bunch of steel, mostly - 1" to 3" square tubing, and I'd like to store some of it vertically for easy access and reduce weight hanging on my walls. But, I don't see many people doing that with steel. Are there any particular reasons or things I ought to be aware of?

 

[GMCGarage]

I think making sure it does not slide away from the wall. Also weight, as the weight increases, its just harder to handle from a vertical position to horizontal with one person, or if using a lift of some sorts.

Steel wont get a permanent memory like wood from standing on end.

 

[Whasat]

I have stored small amounts vertically in the past. Tubing shouldn't matter much, flatbar and round stock that was not propped against a piece of tubing eventually developed a sag or bow in the middle. Most important factor in my mind is securing it to the wall, mine had a strap going around one of the posts of the building to make sure it wouldn't accidentally fall over on someone.

 

[readhead]

I store mine vertical. I usually have it cut into 10' lengths and I don't have any wall space long enough for ten foot lengths.

 

[keith204]

Ok thanks - that verifies some of what I imagined and gives me some good additional considerations.

I’ll put the flat/round/small stuff on the horizontal racks to avoid the warping. Good point about the difficulty of handling vertical to horizontal for cutting. I may try and figure some additional, lower, horizontal storage methods.

 

[tfinniii]

Try this.

 

[WhiskeyRanger]

We store conduit and unistrut vertically at work no problem. Heavy steel stock gets stored horizontally for the obvious reasons as mentioned above.

 

[RWorth]

I store quite a bit vertically in the back corner of the shop, it has a foot stop so it can't slide.

 

[Vegaman_Dan]

I keep mine leaned up around the center of the garage where the roof peak is to give clearance. It's leaning on a post and my stand for steel cutoffs. It does have a tendency to tip over if I am not careful, so really I could benefit from a proper stand attached to the garage. I prefer carts and wheels whenever possible, but in this case, it may be worth building a simple rack with some chains to keep the lengths in place.

Hmm! I have a new project!

 

[matt_i]

Welding a washer or tab on the end would be the ticket.

Depends on your lengths, a lot of steel comes in 12' bars and that's a tall wall, plus tougher to get the 3' bar off the 12' wall

Also most steel comes oiled which tends to get nasty on the delivery process, that will get on your walls. One can do something like clean it and coat it with LPS3 (etc) and let that dry, but it takes additional time.

 

[kazlx]

My steel supplier has 20' lengths stored vertically in their showroom. It works fine if you have the height. Best way is to make some arms on either side to contain them and have some sort of tray with a lip at the bottom so if they so slide they can't keep going. You can store a lot of tube in a 12x12 square with side arms that come out 12" maybe 3-4' off the floor. I think the only reason it's mainly stored horizontally is for ease of handling with a fork.

 

[Lelandwelds]

Yuck. I use purlin for flat. Rest on arms.

 

[D1005]

I store steel vertically. The only problem I've ever encountered is the ceiling height not being high enough at times.

 

[NUTTSGT]

Mine is stored flat on a rack welded to the steel I-beam in my garage.

If I was storing vertical, I'd want to make sure it doesn't have a way to fall over. Whether it's arms that come out from the wall to chains lagged to the wall studs or utilizing a corner area.

 

[srr]

Try this.

Wow, now that is nice. I think the bottom should be heavier though to prevent tipping.