Sorry to ask such a lame set of questions but I am in the middle of building my first home theater and for that matter my first in-wall rack. I was going to buy a slim 5 Middle Atlantic rack to put in-wall with complete access to the back. But after chatting with fellow members they informed me that there would be no benefit to buying the complete rack when you have access to the back of the rack. They said to buy the rack rails instead and just build it in-wall. My uncle is a builder and informed me that it wouldn't be hard at all. He is going to come over and help me with it. It would be very helpful to see any pictures you have of your in-wall rack that has been constructed like this. Here is the plan for my rack made with Racktools.
http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y103/FNPinMO/Rack.jpg

Am I making my rack too big for the components that I have?

I was also told to look on EBay for the rack shelves but the largest that I can find are only 4 spaces and according to Middle Atlantic I need a five space shelf for my receiver and another for my Power Center. I don't really want to pay $100 just for one shelf. Have you found any other good resources for shelves? Or do you have any other ideas?

Thanks for any help that you can give.

When I built mine, I purchased 4 SHELF STANDARDS (http://www.rockler.com/product.cfm?page=1547) , and a couple of packages of the shelf supports (scroll down on the same link). I made a half dozen shelves out of some pre-bullnosed shelving lumber I found at HD (you could also use plywood).
I attached the 4 shelf standards to the 4 "corners" of the unit and placed 4 shelf supports for each shelf. I cut the shelves for an exact fit and painted them black. Now, I have 6 adjustable shelves for all of my equipment needs.

Here's a pic of mine (mine's not built in - it's on casters and slides in and out of the wall, but you get the idea). It's not a very good pic and not a close-up, but you can see how it's easy to build a component rack to your own specifications and for pretty cheap.

Just an idea.

http://www.kellystewart.net/albums/album63/rack_in_place.jpg

Sauwill,

I tried to use the search function to direct you to the exact example I am thinking of but alas I was not successful so I will try to describe it to you.

The rack was inwall with acess to the back so a rotating rack was not necessary. The builder on the back side of the wall on a stud mounted a pair of these.
http://images.lowes.com/product/converted/077355/077355122077md.jpg
These were then finished with MDF shelving painted black. I found this at the Lowe's website. The builder notched the front part of the shelving to give the appearance of a custom built in unit the width of the equipment and trimmed the front with a nice moulding. The A/V equipment appeared to "float" in the wall and looked good enough to inspire me to do the same when I get around to building my HT

I hope I have described in enough detail to give you an idea and not confused you more.

Good luck,

dazed

Thanks for the inspiration! Great looking theater BTW! Love the autographed movie posters. I too am collecting movie memorabilia. I only have one autograph though but its a beauty, Sean Connery signed Gold Finger 007 movie poster.

I think you'll need to search the archives for that type of rack design. It was given the unofficial title of the "Larry Fine rack".

My rack is just rails. It is open in the back to a utility room, so I can walk into the other room and access the wires. The rails were in the $50 range (35 spaces), vs a rack that was several hundred. The install is reasonably straight forward, although the there is some tricky elements in measuring and getting things level (didn't go perfect). I also added a door, which is not spec for rails greater than 20 spaces (but is for a full enclosure). That took a little extra doing, and we just got that up last night.
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u129/dc_pilgrim/rack-closer.jpg
behind
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u129/dc_pilgrim/DSC_0382.jpg
Door
http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u129/dc_pilgrim/doored.jpg

My home-made equipment rack is constructed from MDF.
It was a tricky process, I needed to cut the drywall first to see what I had to work with and then design a cabinet that fitted into the hole! This was a little scary.
I had to remove one wall stud and so had to make the cabinet strong enough to take it's place. The main cabinet carcase is made from 18mm MDF and the center "post" is two pieces of 25mm MDF, plenty strong enough to replace the removed wall stud.
I ended up with two racks of 26 units each. The inside of the cabinet was painted satin black, I bought steel rack strips from a commercial music road case manufacturer. The finished cabinet then fitted into the hole in the wall almost perfectly with about 3/16" on each side needing packing.

This is a picture inside the back of my rack (excuse the dust!)
http://www.users.on.net/~michaelcarey/pics/office/IMG_0054.JPG

The back screws on with 3/16" bolts screwing into T-nuts, cable entry is through the bottom of the rack. The rack is secured into into the existing wall studs on on the front and I used 1/2" bolts to support the back of the rack to the concrete floor.
You can see some more pictures of my rack here :-
http://www.users.on.net/~michaelcarey/pictures.htm
I don't have any more "rack specific" pictures. If you want some close-up's, let me know and I'll see what I can do.
Check the links in my sig for some pictures (albeit darker) of the rack populated with equipment.
Regards,
Michael.

I built mine on the cheap. I made my rack straight into the wall and had a vertical 2x4 stud on each corner. Bought some shelf clips from Lowes that just use a round hole for mounting and a flat portion for the shelf to sit on. I made a drilling template for putting holes in each stud and then drilled holes into each stud. The shelves are just stained MDF with a trim piece over the front. I think it turned out fairly nice, but you must have access to the rear.

Great looking racks guys......will probably never catch me saying that again :-). Can you find the shelf railing at Lowes or HD?

If you were talking about the rails I posted the picture of then yes you can find it at Lowes and HD.

dazed

Ok Thanks Dazed

you can get the 19" rack bars in different lengths from places like parts express and ebay for less than 50 bucks.

for example

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showdetl.cfm?&Partnumber=262-394

They have all sorts of different sizes. There are other vendors out there as well.