In preparation for building the upper frame, I needed to make the 5-degree bevel cuts. I cut all the bevels at the same time so I could tilt the blade just once, make the cuts, and reset the blade to 90-degrees.

That entailed a lot of tedious layout work, because each shelf has a different length. The shelf side and interior braces needed a 5-degree bevel on their front end.

The long front “rails” needed a 5-degree bevel on each end (to form a very long parallelogram). I don’t like dragging my miter saw out, so I used my table saw and crosscut sled (and clamps to keep the long board from tilting away from the blade).

The shelves’ front braces needed a bevel along their length. When installed, the top of each brace is horizontal (to support the shelf panel), and the front is angled back 5-degrees to align with the tilted front rails.

With that prep work out of the way, I started framing the long-offcut panel. I attached the rear frame first. Positioning it was easy; it’s flush with the back of the base. Then I attached the side braces, followed by the front frame (of the offcut bin, not shown). Positioning that was also easy, because it was based on the brace lengths.

Before I attached the front wall’s frame, I cut the short side braces that formed the top of the rack’s lower section and the base for the upper section. Then I connected the front wall’s frame to these side braces and the base, taking care to maintain the 5-degree tilt angle.

Earlier, I mentioned that Matthew Peech’s rack had two side framed connected by horizontal braces, and that mine was different. The disadvantage of my approach was that my rack’s sides aren’t guaranteed to be perfectly flat. Here, you can see where two parts of the side don’t align perfectly. That means my rack’s sides aren’t perfectly flat. The error is probably less than 1/8” over the rack’s full height, which is okay for this project.

That joint between front brace and the top corner of the long-offcut bin is also awkward and weak (end-grain to end-grain connected by two pocket screws). That’s okay too, because the thinner brace is basically a spacer. Still, I don’t like this part of my design. If I were to do it again, I’d just use one 2x4 brace running from front to back end to avoid the end-grain joint.

I used a minimum of five pocket screws to attach each vertical assembly to the base. For the front wall, I used two screws in each upright, and one in the middle, into the base’s middle joist.

The other assemblies rested on solid wood across their width, so I used more screws.

To finish the rack’s frame, I added the top and the back of the tall vertical section.