Home made bed rack

First off, if you are anywhere near competent in metal work you may want to turn away now, you may have a stroke after looking at pictures/methods used here.

Anyways, I've been eyeballing softoppers for several months, I have a hard time convincing myself to put out $700 plus bucks for one, and have had no luck with craigslist. So I starting thinking about how to use that same idea to make my own, figured I'd start with a steel base, and then go from there with a canvas top, still not sure how I'm going to make that happen, but if nothing else I can put a canvas top on to keep the sun off the hound in the summer.

Since I had the day off and the wife was working I figured today was the day, and took a tape measure to the truck to get a rough guestimate for the amount of steel I'd need and headed to the steel place. I've got a hook up there, so I just went in with a rough idea of what I wanted, ended up with 3/4 pipe, and 2" angle...I'd go with three or four inch angle if I were to do it again.

Anyways, got the steel home and started to figure out what actual lengths I needed, and about what angles I needed. This is where you really want to turn away if you are competent in metal work, my methods are not pretty, but they get the job done...that goes for my welding too, I refer to my welding as farm welding; ugly, but strong. Thankfully they make grinders that help me out in the looks department. So, the tools used: a speed square(angle finder), portable band saw, grinder, and welder...that's all I used.



First step was fitting the risers to the angle, the angle was eyeballed and then duplicated for the rest. Seemed to work out just fine.


Then the harder part was cutting the spanning length to the appropriate angle to match the top of the riser, using my super high tech speed square, a 30deg cut on the riser and 45deg on the spanning piece fit them up pretty well. Still had a little bit of space to fill, but that wasn't an issue, and it gave me more adjustment room to get everything level.


I decided to go with two crossbars, because this is really just here to hold up canvas...and maybe some tools if I get froggy and decide to tap the steel for bolts.


Now, the part I messed up and will have to redo at a later point, I only had the steel for one support piece between the two crossmembers(I'll be adding one more at each corner later), but I got the support welded to the first crossmember and then I guess I was getting excited, because I forgot to square up the support to the second one. You can see that it's off in the next picture and when it's on the truck, but I didn't notice it until everything was welded and ground down and it was sitting on the truck. Whoops


And here it is in place, had to order the T nuts from Amazon as the local bolt/nut place didn't have any, so they'll be here at the end of the week.


Next step is putting the front bar back into square, and then adding the two more support bars from corner to corner, a coat or three of paint, and trying to figure out how I want to make the canvas topper(suggestions appreciated). Also though about putting some lights on the bar closest to the cab facing back as bed lights, but that's just in the preplanning phase. Oh, and the best part about this whole thing...it cost me $12, and that was for the T nuts, steel was free!

The obligatory shot of the helper checking for oil leaks.